Found in Translation

I’ve been brushing up on my Italian lately. Which is to say, I’ve been letting a cartoon owl guilt-trip me into revisiting one of the languages of my youth.* It’s been interesting because, while I’m not sure how much those lessons are teaching me in terms of vocabulary or useful language**, practicing has seemed to dislodge something that had been blocking things I used to know. It’s like a wedge under the door marked “Italian” has been kicked out, and I’m free to access that room again.

My mother is from Italy, and I spent a lot of my childhood trying to convince her to speak to me more in Italian, to teach me. She would try to remember, then fall back into a mix of English and Italian, then go back to all English after a few days. As a kid it would frustrate me to lose touch with the language in the months or years between visits to her hometown. When we were there, I could pick up a lot in context and my skill improved enough that I would have dreams in Italian by the time we returned home. Then, as if it had all been a dream, too, it would fade with a return to normal life. We had some Italian family friends locally, and I loved going with my mother to their house and listening to them speak to each other in mostly-Italian, with some English words or American idioms thrown into the middle of sentences. I wanted to be able to do that, too, to move through both languages fluidly because they both belonged to me.

Reflecting on it now and knowing what I do about her teen years assimilating to American culture, it must have been disorienting for my mother to have her child want to be more Italian. The pressure and difficulty of learning English before the days of ESL education were intense. She was just thrown in to an American school and had to learn quickly through immersion or else fail classes. While a couple of the nuns were kind to her and her brothers, most were stern and strict (I was told one even injured my uncle’s ear by yanking on it). Fellow students could be cruel and impatient, too.

Assimilation goes beyond language but that is often where it begins, and where it is acutely felt. My mother worked so hard to become an American, and, at the time, that required giving up some Italian-ness.

I felt longing for this. I felt its absence even though it had not been mine in the first place.

When I was in middle school, Italy began allowing dual citizenship with the United States. As a result, my mother was able to apply to regain the citizenship she had relinquished to become a U.S. citizen. When she did this, they informed her that any minor children she had would also automatically be granted Italian dual citizenship. I had never considered that I might be granted Italian citizenship, but when it happened, it felt like something that was missing was returned to me.

This morning, I was thinking of how to say, “I miss you.” In Italian, the phrase is [Tu] mi manchi. In most contexts you leave the “tu” out, because it’s implied, but the syntax is more like “You are missing from me” than “I miss you”. I think because English is my first language, it never occurred to me to analyze this phrase beyond its usage - it’s so common, its meaning widely understood. But today, thinking this phrase in both languages, it felt somehow profound.

What a vulnerable thing it is to admit to someone that they have become such a part of your life that they feel intrinsic. When they go, when they are far from you, it is like a piece of yourself has gone, too.

You are missing from me.

Their absence is an excision, their return a restoration.

Tu mi manchi.

Of course, it means the same thing in English. One could say I am missing you, which points more toward that feeling. But it wasn’t until I did the work of translation that I considered this connotation. I miss you is shorthand, and maybe by saying it this way, I’ve also been shorting the emotional context.

The part of me that is you is missing. The you of me is missing.

This tiny moment of translation restored something for me. It also made me think fondly of all the parts of me that are wandering around the world, being carried by people and places and creatures I have loved. The them of me, moving outside my own body, allowing me to travel even as I sit here writing you this note. It feels less like loss this way. My affection has seen the world.

Xo,

J.

*I’m talking about the Duolingo app, which both infuriates and encourages me.

** Ok, I definitely didn’t know how to say rent or backpack, so that’s helpful. I can also now heartily exclaim that my apartment has three rooms and ten balconies, which I’m sure will come in handy.

P.S. I’m playing a show in Durham this Friday at Night School Bar. It’s at 8pm and it’s free to attend. I’d love to see you.

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