I Am the One Who Went Away

And I am the one yearning to come back “home”

I come from a part of the world where family matters most.

I don’t mean the nuclear one, but the large family which is made of grandpas, grandmas, uncles, aunts, cousins, and often others, the degree of relatedness of which is usually escaping children’s minds.

I come from one of such clans. My childhood memories are filled with Sundays at my grandparents’ house, barbecues, games in the courtyard with my cousins, summer afternoons with the women putting away impressive amounts of tomato sauce for the winter, Christmas lunches with never-ending tables and banquets, karaoke nights organized by an uncle who could play the piano, summer gatherings in the mountains for picnics and football matches.

It was a continuous feast for us children, but I suspect for the adults too.

There was no way one could ever feel alone. Each person was playing their role, and I can just now appreciate the miracle that all of that represented: so many people of different generations, so many different personalities, living one close to another, in harmony, all being important to the overall equilibrium, all wanting to be there, to participate.

For a long time, I was the youngest one. Then, at some point, a second, more minor “wave” of cousins came, and I wasn’t the youngest anymore, but I partly kept feeling like it — maybe because I was anyhow the youngest female grandchild, or because my identity was already fixed by then.

When I was still little, my grandpa would take me looking for little fruits and vegetables in his garden. We would see, touch, taste. Sometimes we would venture onto the cherry tree. Or the fig tree. Below us, the dog that my grandpa adopted “for us children” would be studying our every move.

The dog was my partner in crime, my other brother. I would spend hours running after him, playfully fighting with him, or brushing his fur under the sun. We loved each other in such a pure, strong way. The hours would be slipping away when we were together in the courtyard, playing out our mysterious romance.

I grew up a restless and curious teenager, and I always knew I wanted to travel and try life in different places. I probably also wanted to escape my — at times — suffocating and conflictual nuclear family, where my identity didn’t feel as celebrated as in the “larger” one.

So, in my twenties, I started with seven months abroad during university. The experience had both positive and negative aspects, but it’s not up to the adult me to judge whether it was a good idea or not to go for it. What matters is that, at the time, I just needed to be gone.

Coming back to my parents’ home at the end of such a period was in fact extra shocking. I started feeling even worse than before leaving. I needed my freedom, and I needed to be done with university as soon as possible so that I could leave again and put space between me and them.

However, that first experience also taught me the high price I would pay for being gone. My dog, my furry brother, passed away during the last month I was abroad. He was old and sick, and someone had decided it was better for him to stop suffering. So, I have no last memory of him.

I was not there. I could not say goodbye, I could not put my hand on his warm chunky back while he was passing on, or brush his fur one last time. I could never fully process the fact he was gone.

That is why, until now, when I wander in what remains of my grandparents’ courtyard, I sometimes expect him to appear from behind a corner, gasping and running crazily as he used to do, smiling with every inch of his canine face and body.

After university, I went away again. I lived for four years in a different city, and then for six and a half years in another country, where I still am.

I am the only one who left. The rest of my large family still live in the same city, most of them even in the same neighborhood, all close to each other and ready to support each other as the years go by, and health declines. Sometimes I feel like a traitor for not being there, too.

The years abroad have incredibly enriched my life and my perspective, and I don’t regret them. Yet, I am aware of what I have missed in the meantime. The weight of all the Sundays I couldn’t be there, at my grandparents’ house, meeting everyone, is not lost on me.

The little time spent with my niece and nephew, all the stories I didn’t hear from my grandpa and grandma, all the occasions of spending more time with my cousins that I didn’t pick.

I am also intensely aware of how much my parents have missed me. Things have been better with the two of them in the last few years. I even found a way to feel closer to my mom and forgive her, so that I now feel the two of us are allies and not enemies anymore. She now smiles and hugs me every time I arrive after a long travel, and she sometimes cries when I leave. For the first time in my life, she looks genuinely happy to have me around.

I feel, more strongly than ever, that I need to come back. There is simply no need to run away and no need to find myself somewhere else anymore.

I know — more or less — who I am, and I know a big chunk of it is buried in the soil of that garden and that courtyard at my grandparents’ house. It was my safe space, my place of discovery, play, exploration, and belonging, all together. I need to restart from there.

Even if things will never be the same.

My grandpa passed away last year. The grief for his loss bent my soul in a way I could have never imagined. My life was rich and busy, so, even if I knew I loved him very much, I never thought (based on the little time we spent together in the last years) that I would feel such an empty hollow in the center of my being when he would go. But with him, all my best childhood memories went away, together with the possibility of that mythical equilibrium that he — with his jovial and grousing spirit — was at the center of. That space of safety and belonging.

Sure, the house is still there, the family is still close-knit, and my grandma is still sitting at her table sewing and complaining — sometimes ruminating about the past, or coming up with entertaining stories about her youth.

But it’s also not the same.

Something magical is forever lost, be it a time of higher hopes, more cheerful spirits, or just my childhood.

Anyway, not coming back would be a betrayal of my spirit and what I feel like the universe is asking me to do. I am expecting a baby now, and even if I never wished to be a single mom, maybe this negative turn of fate is the occasion I was unconsciously waiting for.

I mean — I need a support system, and my baby needs a family, a large one.

This piece was written in response to this month’s MW writing prompt: