January-December 2010, vol. 1

Maclean sings of "the immigrant's deep sunken feeling." 9Knowing that she was dying, Mum listed the music she wantedplayed at her funeral. Her list included Verdi's Va, pensiero. Ipersonally had never heard Va, pensiero and we didn't have it inour collection, so the day following Mum’s death, I foundmyself trawling the music shops in Hobart's CBD, eyes blurredwith tears. When I found the song I couldn't understand thelyrics anyway and it was only after a bit of internet research did Idiscover that this was the anthem of Italian patriotism. Thewords were painfully evocative, oh my homeland, so beautifuland lost to me. As if I didn't have enough to cry about at Mum'sfuneral, a huge wave of homesickness now engulfed me.Fig 8. Brooch presented to Giuseppina Maniero (nee Vertovec) uponleaving Trieste for Australia in 1959.My parents met on that second voyage to Australia and by theend of their sailing on the Galileo Galilei, they had decided tospend their lives together. In March 1965, Dad worked for atime on Blowering Dam at Tumut in the Snowy Mountains,then, in August of that same year, my parents were married inMelbourne. They moved to Sydney and it was there that theysettled and started a family. In 1966, when my sister was born,our parents were Italian. The following year, our parents sworeallegiance to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second at theRandwick Town Hall. When I was born in 1969, our parents(and therefore all of us) were Australian.Nostalgia is defined as a painful yearning for one's homecountry, stemming from the Greek root nostos, homecoming. 6Add this concept to Umberto Eco's statement that "to survive,you must tell stories" 7 and you get my mum. Of my twoparents, Mum was the story teller, the one who missed herhomeland deeply and who kept it all alive by weaving andreweaving the threads from that part of her life before shecame to Australia. While my dad encapsulated the optimism,adventure and possibility of the migrant experience, Mumexpressed the deeper tragedy of migration, of family lives livedapart, of friendships severed, of familiar places lost, accessibleonly to the wanderings of memory. Many artists and writershave sought to give voice to this sense of tragedy. The youngIndian writer Kiran Desai expresses it well in her novel TheInheritance of Loss, "This way of leaving your family for workhad condemned them over several generations to have theirhearts always in other places, their minds thinking about peopleelsewhere; they could never be in a single existence at onetime." 8 In reference to the Scottish diaspora, songwriter Dougie6 As defined in The World Book Dictionary (Chicago: Doubleday andCompany Inc, 1973).7 Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before (New York: Harcourt Braceand Company, 1995), p. 207.8 Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (London: Penguin Books, 2006), p.311.The feeling of homesickness which was my mother’s has alsobecome my own. Italy has never been my home and yet I toofeel homesick for Italy, for the streets of Trieste and the Basilicaof Sant’Antonio di Padova. I feel homesick for the parallel life Icould have lived if my parents had met in Italy and lived outtheir lives there. What would that have been like for me? Whatif? It's a ridiculous question, the stuff of daydreams and coldrainy days when the mind turns in on itself and wonders howthe twists and turns of life could have gone, could still go. Theyear after my mum's death, I went to spend some time with mycousins in Trieste in the house where my mum grew up, and yetnot that house at all as it has been rebuilt and renovated anddragged into the 21st century. Grapevines planted by mygrandfather shade the front terrace with the view over the portand the Adriatic coast. On what would have been my mum's78th birthday I was sunbaking down at l'Ausonia, the old publicbaths in the middle of the port where you can swim in theshadow of huge ships unloading semi-trailers from Turkey. Mymum used to come here when she was a young woman. Iwonder if I could be lying in the same spot where she mighthave caught some sun, all those years ago.Fig 9. L’Ausonia baths, Trieste, 2008. Image courtesy of DorothyManiero.My cousin takes me to see my aunt's grave, the sister whoremained in Italy and who died only three months before mymum. The cemetery in the industrial part of the city is vast andbleak, endless rows of memorials with endless photographs,9 Dougie Maclean, Scottish folk singer in the song “Garden Valley,”album Real Estate, Dunkeld Records, music and lyrics by DougieMaclean, 1988.IHSJ ITALIAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL VOLUME 18 2010 | 23