we are the grandmothers in the making.

wondering why I do what I do.

This week my back went out. Well it went painful. My right shoulder, should blade, back of my neck, traveling down to right arm, then right hip.

It’s a combination of old injury meets new stress meets hormonal shifts, meets possible Lyme inflammation meets the wild, wild winds of the NE woods that seem to scatter pin like rain everywhere and as we all know, or as the nonni knew: shit the windows and don’t let the winds on to your skin. Cover up. Back of neck. Stay warm.

I am doing a lot. I mean… maybe I am not, maybe it feels like a lot or maybe it’s just a lot. Who can tell anymore? We are so conditioned to keep going. Is it a lot? Or is it the human normal of not listening and aligning with the trees, which decide to stop, die, shed, and rest?

I leave for Sicilia in 3 days. I leave to go gather people together to experience whatever collective grief is, in this moment. To just have a space to be in joy and also sink into the dark soil of what is, of what being human means. Loss.

Preparing is a lot of work. Layers of work. A lot of the layers is constantly living in the question of : why. Why. Why. Why do I do this? Who called me here?

In many moments and times of exhaustion, of leaving my family, of struggling with the language,, etc — it just doesn’t make sense to me. It is a lot of creating and curating and space holding and organizing and navigating. And yet, any time I try to say “ok enough, I think. am complete” — something/one comes right up to my face, chest to chest. Pressed me. Gets right in my ear. Warm breath. And says “like hell you are done”.

Today I was looking at all the things I still need to tend to, feeling the twitch and pulsing in my back and arm. I collapsed, cried, and uttered a little prayer to San Francesco. Help. I say that a lot. Just: Help. And to my dad, who describe my work as “running junkets in Sicily” and I say to him: If I am meant to do this, send some fucking back-up, ok?

I sat up and do what I do when I want to forget all the things I need to do, I logged on to my FB. And of course their fucking memories. I found out my Uncle Rossie turned 99 today. He is the last one left of all my father’s siblings. He is amazing and sweet as hell. He still walks to McDonalds every day for a cup of coffee and hash browns all on his own.

And then in memories, this little tid bit I wrote a few years back, I think it was from 2018, resurfaces. And not only and I reminded of my why. I am also flooded with who was sent to help me. I can’t forget that I had/have a circle of elders.

And we (as a collective) can’t forget, we need to turn to our elders now, tune into them, whether they are “elder-ly" with a capitol E or not. I mean some elders need some balls. And some elders and just waiting for us to listen. We turn to them and remind them we are here, they are here, and now what? We don’t assume they don’t care and don’t have the skills. If our cells contain all the information, then their cells contain it too. And we remind them of this time/space/moment before they die when they can show up and tell a few stories here and there.

Anyway, here is the tad-bit, just an old FB post, but I wanted to share today because it fed me. Maybe it will feed you, too.

(((and please stay tuned in, I am going to be sharing little bits of morning writing when I can in Sicily. I will be gathering with 12 beautiful humans to write and have space to be in ecstatic grief together))).

from 2018: a Facebook post

When I was a kid I was surrounded by elders that I adored. My parents had me late in life. So everyone was really old by the time I arrived in 1973.

In a Sicilian/Italian community/enclave mostly made of immigrants and first generations - the elders also lived in close proximity to each other; same street or block and the same side of town for the most part. In Jamestown, where I grew up, it was known as the Lost Neighborhood, and it eventually was bulldozed down and the folks scattered, but still remained in similar parts of town. And in these enclaves, family was blood but also not blood, was also made up of friends, because that's how we do, how they did it. And to be honest, at some level, they were all related anyway. Many came from the same villages on Sicilia, or the same areas from Calabria. People from other places, with less immigrants, would live with these folks from the south and their cultures would weave and merge together anyway.

At my house, on South Main, which was mostly Italians at the time, I could ride my bike to Uncle Charlie and Aunt Stella’s house who lived a block away. Charlie was the husband of my father’s sister Josephine, who died when she was only 38, and left Charlie and 2 very young kids, my cousins. Stella was his new wife. And they both were “just peaches” according to my dad. Wonderful people. They were always so styled out, easy carefree, a highball on the lawn, a static-y radio on the picnic table, a lemon print table clothe. Aunt Stella always appeared with an italian lemon ice pop for me, Uncle Charlie humming along to Dean Martin, doing little danced in between trimming the rose bushes.

My cousin (his grandchild) just posted (on FB) a photo of my Uncle Charlie later in life, in his 80s, wearing gorgeous lavender dress pants and a crisp button-down. She mentioned how he went out dancing every weekend until he died. As a child, I chose to ride my bike there. I could have went to the penny candy store up the street. I could have rode to the plaza from an ice cream. But, I went there, because I wanted to be there. I would sit on their lawn, drip lemon ice down my front, listen to their music, and listen to them. They told me stories and seemed to just get a kick out of me when I asked them questions. The more I came, the more they wanted to share.

Seeing that photo of Uncle Charlie (RIP) that she shared on FB was actually what made me want to write this post.

My childhood days were dotted with daily visits from Mary and Jiggy and Aunt Jay and Aunt Betty and Herkie and The Runt. The Chief and Bootie. Blondie. Pepper. Zia Cos(ima). Aunt Babe. The Lombardos, The Favatas, The Basiles, my godparents, all the cummare/i.

I was brought to smoky parties, Sunday feasts, and church basement festivals, all served and cared for by elders. All organized by elders. I was watched over by elders, antico, anziano. I was served plate after plate of food, platters of sweets, a splash of anisette, or a shot of amaro, to soothe the belly and for a good nights sleep.

I spent weekends w my beloved papa and every single house on his street was occupied by his older sisters and "family" from the old country. Every one of them. And I’d visit and sit for long moments with them, just to visit. Aunt Placida, who lived in the stone and brick house, Aunt Nellie who always gave me money and was a little cranky, Aunt Amelia who had dolls she let me play with, Aunt Louisa who was short with curly hair and thick glasses and always seemed to giggle, Victoria who was a true, singing, dancing, rebelious wild one, who wore thick undergarments you could see under her house coat and Erma who seemed shy and sweet — almost relaxed all the time. I don't always trust my memory, but these are some of the things that stick with me. Summer nights on their back porch. Owls hooting. A chair rocking and creaking the wooden boards. The curfew bell ringing. During the day’s I walked around the neighborhood with my papa and we would gather wild flowers and plants and fruits and he would tell me how to make things with them. He passed on this medicine to me.

Most always these elders came with armfuls of stories to tell :: not just wisdoms to give away:: but stories to share, without any meaning at all, but inside them, you learned something. They had the ability to ask a kid the good questions, hold the strong boundaries, and let you know what was right and what was not. I could tell they really loved me being there with them. Like it was their duty and obligation to be there for me, not something tangible, something fluid and also ancient, something so comforting. A container. A place to just grow and be. And if you asked me what it was, I couldn’t even tell you a name for it. But it was who we were. That much I know is true.

I felt like they were ever surrounding me. Ever protecting me and teaching me the ways of non-nuclear family, not by strategy but because they lived no other way.

…

I feel such grief in this moment. Where are all the elders now? The selfless ones. The ones who are not taking up space with their wants and needs but instead wanting to give, not just passing on useless wounds and baggage, but the wise ones? The ones that know the natural passing on in life, the progression of things, the falling of leaves and the beauty of death all over the ground.

The ones who kept their cultures, tight and loose, around them— like a white pantsuit, a pair of red dice, a bundle of thyme dropped in a pot, the red carnations encircling the house, but more than that— they downright refused to be complete and utter traders, because they knew it was crucial to keep alive the deeper meaning of certain things, things unspoken maybe, but known in the bones. They held it. They hung it over the door in the form of a horseshoe. They encapsulated in the perfect balance inside a pot of sauce. They moved it with the oil they anointed you with when you had a headache or stomach ache. And they left it as offering on the ever present enshrinements, in every house, making a web, a weaving, from space to space to space, no matter whose house you visited, there was an altar of prayers. It was constant. And it was to be seen by me.

Where are the elders who are not so hungry all they want is to take? Or the ones who know they need us just as much as we need them. Or those who have not been so smashed down to a barely-there life, holding the weights of capitalism on their shoulders like some kind of reward. Or still think there is a god in the sky and a heaven to climb too and no longer cares to remember their feet are still on the ground.

Who are thinking about what they are giving, not just what they are leaving behind?

Those who know wild and don’t try to tame it. Name it. Understand it.

I grieve that my kids aren’t growing up like me. With true non-nuclear elder energy around them. Especially the cursing, smoking, singing, drinking, yelling, messy, scary, soft, powdery smelling, garlic frying, sfincione baking, cardoon breading and gold horn corno wearing, amari every night, ones. Those ones. I am trying to become those ones. Or at least bury them well and allow them to re-seed and re-birth within me.

I grieve I am almost forgetting my own childhood. I grieve I can’t tell more stories. There is so much space between then and here. And so little bridges for me to walk back and forth on.

I guess this is the part of longing I cannot satiate. This is the hunger that must stay hungry. This is where we have to carry the load from those who couldn't put it down that came before us.

This is the part to just grieve and fall apart and devote to becoming the elders we have lost. That it's my job to grow into what I miss because each generation has betrayed their own wisdom, each generation has lost what the ones before it were slowly forgetting, have forgotten who the ones before the before were - the ones who were fighting so hard to protect was being taken, --- and so on, and so forth.

-We are the grandmothers in the making

follow me on IG: @marybethbonfiglio and/or @radicisiciliane