“Wow” he says. He has seen my bra. Well, he has just seen my mum’s bra. It’s my mum’s black lacy number. I smile back, but I really hope I am wearing it right. How do you know? No one talks about it, there’s no elective I could take at school.
He saw Karen turn to Karl, say something and then laugh. “Good joke, Karen,” he added with an accompanying smile. He noticed the shocked look on Karl’s face. “Karl,” he thought, “you have no sense of humour, old boy.”
I am between 10 to 13 years old, a chubby, soft boy during my summer holidays. This time I’m in Gippsland, Victoria, on a dairy farm owned by the Cascone family who comes from the same small village in Sicily as my family. We’re Paesani.
On the way home, as usual, I hide under my mother’s large ankle-length coat for as long as I can. It engulfs us both in its woollen warmth. The only way to tell there are two humans inside this cavernous piece of clothing is if you look down where two pairs of shoes stick out.
“Teresa, is this your boy?” A large lady in her late 30s bends down to take a piece of my cheek between thumb and forefinger, giving me a slightly awkward squeeze and tweak. “Yes,” says my mother. “Joe, say hello to Signora Concettina.” “Hello”, I say, burying my face shyly into my mother’s coat. I […]
Just imagine, for seven years, you are the sole consumer of your parent’s love and attention, plus the unconditional love of your grandparents. (And then I come along. What hope did he have?)
My father, like my mother, died in 2016. My father died nine months after my mother passed. Having already spoken to my mother, I thought it would also be valuable to speak with Pietro.
The locker room, obviously designed for a Western palate, was shocked by the introduction of an avalanche of Southern Mediterranean pre-packaged food from home.
People often ask me what it feels like to be literally married to something or something that you’ve never seen and never will.
He had always been told by his mother to think before he acted. “Think once, so you don’t have to think twice” she had said. “Think, think, think, boys and girls” had been the cry of Mrs Simpson, his year 9 teacher. A person whose bra made visible ruts across her back as it grimly […]
citizenjoe 