If I Still Lived in Sicily

    

  I shudder to think, “what if both sets of grandparents, then in their twenties, were afraid to ‘tread the Atlantic’, and decided to stay in Sicily?”  Would the maternal and paternal families have Introduced Sam and Jessie producing my brother and I?  Of course the maternal  family was from Messina, and the paternal , from Palermo, nevertheless, people travel, especially in that tiny “heel” of the Italian boot.

     I would have been born on the outskirts of Agrigento, among the peasants, in a three story stone block home with dirt floors, no plumbing,  and wood-burning  stoves. At six am, I’d  daily greet the many odd animals , (chickens, ducks, goats, even pigs) roaming  freely on the first floor, and then help “Gramma” on the third floor where the kitchen held the fresh dough we had to “beat into shape” for our daily bread and pasta.  Later, we’d trek to the nearby fields to pick whatever “greens” grew there to be cooked with the chicken, killed with our bare hands. (Still can’t believe how they walk around “headless”!)

     Since I innately love to dance, I would be doing Tarentellas in the village square and at the local weddings.  Music would flow joyously from Guiseppe’s  accordian or Antonio’s mouth organ. Homemade flared cotton skirts, peasant blouses and flowers in my hair would complete the “Barefoot Contessa ”.

     There would be no “dancing lessons” of course, and school – only until sixteen. “Girls are only going to get married and have babies, so why do they need an education?” (the philosophy of every macho Italiano)

     So, at sixteen, momma and poppa, along with grandparents and “Parina” (the inevitable godmother), would pick the best signor in the village for me – one with a good farm, of course.  Heaven forbid I should be  an old maid at  seventeen

     Without my consent, a marriage would be arraigned.  If I objected, I would be met with “You’ll learn to love him.” Then would begin the daily gathering of “La famiglia” and neighbors making the mountains of cookies Giovanni and I would pass around at our wedding.  My first baby would be born at age eighteen, and many more after that. (that didn’t change much here in America, however I began a few years later.)

     I would have lived a simple life as a Sicilian peasant, happy, but always wondering what my future would have been if I had been born in America… but thanks to Antonia, Josephine, Salvatore and Vincenza, getting on that boat – I now live in the greatest country in the world where  unbelievable doors of opportunity have been opened and given to me and my children.

     I still dance the Tarentella, still talk with my hands, but I at least, I don’t have to kill chickens!