This morning I was happily listening to music on my iPod while doing some house cleaning (I know it’s unusual, but it was overdue) and then all of a sudden it dawned on me.
“Shit! today it’s the 20th, isn’t it?” I said, rushing into the living room, taking off my headphones and frantically looking for the phone. “Yeees…” said my husband, wondering what the heck I was freaking out about. “It’s my mom’s birthday, I have to call her!” “So? It’s noon, it’s not really late or anything.” I paused my search to stick my tongue out at him and said “But I should call her first thing in the morning, I shouldn’t forget.” It was his turn to pause. “Riiight, like they did on your birthday?”
This took me by surprise, because my husband isn’t petty or vindictive in the least. And to be honest, until he mentioned it I had forgotten that this year on my birthday they didn’t call me until late at night, when I was getting ready to go to bed.
Now I remember. They had forgotten it was my birthday. And I had to admit, I was a little hurt. I’m an only child, it’s not like they have a lot of birthdays to remember.
I’m happy my parents don’t sit by the phone and wallow, waiting for me to call. I am happy they have their own life, which doesn’t revolve around me. I have been away from home a long time, and they are young, just in their 50s – I’m glad they are keeping busy, boredom isn’t healthy. People in our family tend to get depressed and grumpy when they are bored. I should know that, I have inherited that lovely trait myself.
It’s just that for years I have been feeling guilty, for leaving home, leaving them behind. Sure, it’s the destiny of every child to leave home, leave the nest, and make a nest of their own. But where I grew up, people don’t usually go very far. Certainly not as far as another country, let alone another continent.
But I knew from a young age that I wouldn’t stay there. No matter how much I loved my parents, and all the cousins I grew up with in the classic example of the Italian extended family, the family so tight that I never felt like an only child growing up… No matter how much I loved them, and still do; no matter how much I adore the sea, the blue-green color of the Mediterranean, the noise of the soft waves on the deserted beach in winter, or the soft, warm sand under my feet in summer.
A little taste of home. Thank you to 123Sardaigne, who shared this on Flickr.
And the long summers, the dry heat, that made it okay to take a nap in the afternoon, stay inside the house, kept dark in an effort to keep it cool, ward it against the intense heat of the afternoon. And the warm nights, the gelato stands, and the markets with the handmade, beachy jewelry, the kind of jewelry that is perfect to wear on vacation, where a caftan thrown on top of your bathing suit and a pair of wedge espadrilles count as evening wear 
No matter how much I loved all those people, all those things, I knew I could never stay there for my whole life. I wanted to see things and places and meet new people, people who spoke different languages and had different cultures, people I would never meet if I stayed there and did what everyone expected me to: stick around, go back to live with my parents after finishing University, while looking for a job and finally settling for one I was over-educated and overqualified for. That’s what all my old schoolmates did, some have since gotten married, maybe have kids, some still live with their parents, or not far.
I have always felt a measure of guilt for not following that path, not staying. Their only child, I took her away. But the guilt was never enough to make me want to stay, nor was it enough to make me want to go back after I left – except for the occasional vacations, which became yearly once I moved to Switzerland and had Sarah. And Sarah’s birth added to the guilt: their first grandchild, their only grandchild, and she was growing up away from them.
And then I had Stella, and shortly after we moved to New York, literally on the other side of the world. And through all the fun times I had there, the life I was creating for myself, and despite the wonderful feeling I had finally found somewhere I belonged… through it all, in a small corner of my mind, I felt like I shouldn’t be so happy, because it was selfish of me to be so far away from them.
They kept talking about how much they missed us, how they wished we lived closer, and how happy they were when we told them we were moving back to Switzerland! And now that we are here… they never call. Seriously, they never call. And for a while there I felt resentful, ’cause I had been feeling guilty for so long, and maybe I shouldn’t have.
But I don’t, can’t hold on to things like that; I forgive and forget, and life goes on. Which is why, until Sascha did that really out-of-character thing and mentioned that this year they almost missed my birthday, I had actually forgotten. Because in the long run, it doesn’t matter. Because there are MUCH worse things a parent could do to their grown child than almost forgetting their birthday.
Which is why I turned to Sascha and said “Well, I can’t necessarily treat people the same way they treat me. I try to treat them the way I would like to be treated. Ah, there’s the phone!”
He smiled at me and said: “That’s right. Please wish your mom happy birthday for me.” And so I did.
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Dear Stella,
