ENGLISH
When you learn a language, a new person begins to grow within you.
It does not happen all at once. At first, you learn a few words, repeat a sentence, try to recognise a voice. Then comes the moment when you can say something you could not have expressed before: a question, a thought, a part of yourself. And the world grows wider.
For me, that world also began with my family’s story.
There were my grandfather and his brother, who had emigrated to the United States. There were relatives across the ocean whom I longed to find. America was far away, yet it had a deep connection to me. I wanted to go there, to meet people, to understand.
Before leaving, I had begun to learn its language.
Before the great journeys, there was Professoressa Daniotti, my English teacher at middle school. She accompanied me through all three years, right up to the final examination.
I was thirteen. At the end of the comprehension test, she gently stroked me and smiled.
I left middle school with the highest marks. Yet my most vivid memory of that day is that gesture: her hand, her smile.
When I think back on my journey with English, I find her there too. Before the conversations far from home, before the words I would use to find my relatives, there had been a teacher who guided me for three years. And who, at the end, said goodbye with a gentle touch.
I continued studying with records and cassettes released every week. I listened, repeated, waited for the next instalment. A recorded voice brought me words that were not yet part of my everyday life, but that I hoped one day to use for real.
By the time of my first trip to the United States, I already spoke excellent English. Those hours of listening had built something: I could leave with a real ability to talk, ask questions and get to know my relatives through their language too.
That journey was made possible by my mother’s determination and love. She was part of that departure too, with her resolve to make something happen that mattered so much to me.
I would return to the United States twice more. Three trips in all, and so many memories I would like to put in order.
There are my “uncle” Angelo Jr and his wife Anita. There is Marta, the very sweet wife of Angelo Senior, whom I did not get to meet in time. There are Sal and Enzo, Shirley, the children and their families. Behind every name are more pieces to tell.
This summer, I met Lorraine and her son Peter in Milan. Two rare people. After my journeys towards America, a part of that family connection had arrived here, in my city.
But the desire to leave had begun even earlier.
At eleven, I went around at parties with a piggy bank. I collected tips for a language-study trip to London. I had a clear goal, and in my own way I tried to get closer to it: one coin at a time.
I never made that trip.
The child with the piggy bank stayed home, still wishing to see London. Looking back today, I am struck by how seriously I pursued that dream. At eleven, I could not organise everything, but I could start collecting the coins.
I saw London many years later, with my first and only true love.
The city I had imagined as a child finally entered my life by another route. I brought a different age, someone I loved, new expectations. The desire had remained, but in the meantime I had changed.
More recently, I returned to London for work. Another reason to leave, another way of living in the same place for a few days.
I think languages accompany us in this way too. We learn them for one reason, then life gives us others. To find relatives. To travel with someone. To work. To follow a curiosity whose destination we do not yet know.
Each time, those words become a living part of an experience.
When I say that learning a language brings a new person to life within you, this is what I mean. The possibility of entering a conversation that would once have been closed to you. Of listening to someone without waiting for a translation. Of telling someone far from home who you are.
And I think of roots too. Sometimes a language draws us towards something new; at other times, it helps us return to a part of our own story.
The Italian Mosaic grew out of this too.
Out of the cassettes I waited for each week. Out of Professoressa Daniotti and her gentle touch after the examination. Out of the piggy bank at parties. Out of my grandfather, his brother and the relatives I wanted to find. Out of my mother’s love. Out of London, finally seen alongside the person I loved. And out of bonds that endure, all the way to a meeting in Milan many years later.
I would like to offer those approaching Italian a little of that possibility: finding words that have a place in their own lives. A phrase to use on a journey, a voice to recognise, a story that makes them want to discover more. Perhaps also a way to draw closer to their family’s history.
This is my mosaic. There are pieces I remember clearly and others I have yet to find again.
The first I see is an eleven-year-old child, at a party, with a piggy bank in his hands.
He is collecting coins to go to London.
The journey has already begun.