“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
– Emma Lazarus
My father is first generation American.
Italian, born and bred.
So, when I graduated high school I asked for proof.
In other words, bring me to them.
My relatives.
We traveled first to Rome.
A hotel, he’d booked online.
We’d spent exactly two nights ever together in a lifetime and suddenly,
we were residing in a closet.
On to Naples, Pompeii and Calabria: the place of my grandfather’s birth.
Rich with olive trees, oil and seven-layer fresh lasagna.
Here, I bonded with my foreign relatives as I screamed “Aye! Aye! Aye!” on motorbike
through winding streets, experiencing food like it was the first time.
Eating “al fresca”, pretending I followed their animated conversation.
Next, to Sicily where we knocked on many a neighbor door
until we stood in the room my grandmother was born in 1898.
I looked around and wondered, “how?”.
And here I am.
Standing in my father’s hospital room wondering, “how?”
If there was ever a man to give to the tired, the poor,
Those that needed to breathe and required refuge,
He’s right here.
Beside the golden door.
And here I am.
Standing in my father’s hospital room wondering, “how?”.
New Leaf Parenting 