Each of us will keep in mind a particular Christmas. A Christmas to remember in a unique and unforgettable way. My first Christmas in Toronto was spent soon after my mother and I arrived. I was eleven years old, and we had been away from my father for far too long. Until that point, my father shared a small apartment on the second floor of a townhouse with his son and daughter-in-law, which was called a “flat” back then.
Within a few days of our arrival, old grudges from the past took over, and we were forced to find housing for just the three of us. That street seemed never-ending as we walked down it, my father on crutches, partly because of the slow pace, partly because of the mood of that sad moment. There was a lot of snow, and I was feeling a strange cold. It was difficult for him to walk because of his cast from hip to ankle and emotional wounds. I noticed his hands clinging to the crutch handles, the skin on his knuckles turning white from exertion. His earth-colored fingers had a muscular thickness developed through peasant work, day after day, year after year, in exchange for a few liras that the village’s landowners did not always pay. Despite the cold of the day, those strong, warm hands appeared graceful when the sunlight fell on them. Seeing my father in that condition, I felt joy at his proximity and sadness at his condition, echoing the echo of misery.
As I walked, I noticed the strange, long, narrow grey sidewalks and the wide ribbon of asphalt for cars that neatly lined one side of the road. A completely different landscape than the one I left behind, made up of dust, nature, and animals. There was no mule, donkey, or hen in sight. I was disoriented, disturbed by the rumble of the streetcar rolling along the tracks as we approached the intersection. “We’re on College ‘strit’“, my father said over the noise. “But the road is very wide!” my mother immediately replied. “The word street is in English for road“, he replied, smiling. That’s how I learned my first English word. College Street was bustling, but it was devoid of everything we had left behind after boarding the ship. I silently realized we were in a new, strange, and unfamiliar place.
When we arrived at St. Francis Church, a grey stone building, my father turned left and walked to the end of the church, and we followed in his crutched steps. He took a few more steps and came to a halt in front of a small grocery store, where he stepped inside after adjusting his cap. He briefly spoke with a young man before pointing to a nearby house, 56 Mansfield Avenue. My father gently knocked, a gentleman opened the door, and after a brief exchange, he let us in. On the second floor, he showed us a small kitchen with a stove and a tiny table, as well as a small bedroom with no furniture. The bathroom was supposed to be shared. After the deal was completed, my mother and I made a few trips back and forth carrying what little we had. We began to bond with that place, relying on each other, with hearts full of hope and three cardboard suitcases full of humble items, with much melancholy and a few dreams. We finally went to bed that night, drained by the exhausting search for a place to stay. We were all in the same room. I could hear my parents whispering from my bed, unaware that I was listening in.
My father told my mother about the accident. A pile of wood fell on him on the fourth day after he was hired at a lumber yard. He had lost consciousness, and it wasn’t until he awoke in the hospital looking like a mummy that he realized what had happened. My mother listened to his story in silence, taking on her husband’s fears and uncertainties. She recounted how her heart had been tortured each time a letter arrived in the village from family members who lived in Toronto, informing her of my father’s accident. They said my father had died or that his legs had been amputated. The day we received a letter written by my father, we were relieved of our pain. In it, he explained in a few words that he had been in an accident at work and that, despite his severe injuries, he was on his way home from the hospital. “I cried at what happened to you, and smiled at you being alive“, my mother said as she embraced him.
Snuggled in his arms in the silence of that room, she could finally tell her husband about the arduous journey from Vittorito, while I relived that experience through my mother’s words.
We had just left Lisbon, where we had our last quiet dinner, when the ocean began to raise its waves, shaking the ship. Throughout the voyage, the days and nights blurred into darkness, and fear intensified. The power of the sea was terrifying to those of us used to the stability of mountains and valleys. Those waves were as high as our mountains in my childhood’s eyes, crashing down on the ship from every direction. I saw them while trying to get some fresh air on deck to escape the horrible smell of vomit. I would hold on to ropes strung along stairs, corridors, and decks as the ship tossed around. There were vomit bags everywhere. Another reason for reaching the upper deck was to meet that old, black-hatted gentleman, returning to Argentina, who seemed to bring to life the story from the book Heart ‘From the Apennines to the Andes.’ Throughout the trip, I alternated between the deck and the cabin, which my mother and I shared with another woman and her young daughter.
Reliving that experience through my mother’s words brought back the nausea I felt throughout the journey, nausea that rose from my pelvis and crossed my chest to block my throat. And there was the sound of my father’s voice, regretting everything that had happened during the voyage and upon landing in Halifax. The unexpected two-day delay caused by my mother’s fainting spell, as well as the inability to communicate in that foreign language. I would finally fall asleep thanks to my father’s reassuring words to my mother.
I stepped outside the next morning and noticed a large brick building near the school. My father informed me that I would be starting school immediately after the New Year. I noticed a few decorations hanging on a few doors and strings of lights on Mansfield, particularly near the church. This is how Christmas is celebrated here, according to my father. Unfortunately, we would have a poorer Christmas than the simple one we celebrated in the village. We didn’t have anything with which to decorate that small ‘flat’ with Christmas flavours and colours.
My sister, mom’s daughter from her first husband, came from afar two days before Christmas Eve to do her shopping at the grocery store, where Italian products could be found; she left some groceries for us as well as an envelope containing a greeting card and two dollars. My father was told by the owner of the house that we could share the Christmas tree that he, his wife, and their five children had already prepared. I can only imagine how my parents felt, and just thinking about it brings a lump to my throat.
But there are unexpected moments in life that provide hope. A knock on the door was heard on Christmas morning, 1958. The owner’s daughter went to open it and called my father to tell him there were two boxes addressed to him. When my mother and I went downstairs, we saw two packages wrapped in red paper that glistened in the sunlight, one of which had an envelope addressed to my father on top. He opened the envelope and took out a postcard with pictures of the crib and a ten dollar bill. “To Sabatino and family, Merry Christmas,” the postcard said. There was no indication that could help us figure out who had sent those Christmas gifts.
My mother carefully removed the ribbon and paper from the packages, taking care not to tear it because it was so lovely. My mother and I found gloves and boots, scarves, woollen caps, two nougats, a coffee can, two packages of cookies, and other items in the boxes. In one of the boxes at the bottom, we discovered booklets with drawings of an outline of a horse, outlines of men with huge hats, and others almost naked with feathers sticking out of their long hair. Finally, a package with several small boxes of ‘crayons’ bearing my name arrived. I started colouring and tracing the figures in the booklets right away. These colouring books became a treasure to me. Beginning that Christmas and continuing for several days, I would fill the silhouettes with colours, causing them to become vividly animated. The wide hats and eagle feathers signalled the start of a new chapter in life, as the limited culture of the small town left behind faded into obscurity.
Several years later, as an adult, I stopped in Italy on my way back from a business trip to Damascus, Syria. I decided to spend a few days in the village where I was born. While I was there, I was invited to a summer dinner at a friend’s house. It was a warm August evening, and there were about twenty of us gathered around the table in the garden. The evening passed in a pleasant conviviality and friendly atmosphere. As is customary in these situations, each of us had a family migration story to tell, and when my turn came, I told of my first Christmas in Toronto. I was so caught up in the story’s emotions that I didn’t notice what was going on with the lady to my right until the host asked, “Why are you crying?” When I turned to look at her, I noticed tears streaming down her cheeks. “Rocco’s tale has awakened bittersweet memories forgotten in time,” she said as she returned my gaze. “It’s like holding a beautiful rose while the thorn stings me,” she continued, her voice excited but subdued. Sadness for those who are no longer in my life, and a desire to remember what time and distance have made me forget.” It was as if those words brought back a fog in memory, which was mirrored in the atmosphere of lights muffled by the dampness created by the cooling night. Her words, I sensed, were about to reveal a long-kept secret. “I can tell you, Rocco, that the benefactors were my parents. That Christmas morning, my newlywed husband and I left those packages outside the door, knocked, and fled. The store owner informed us that a family from Vittorito had just arrived and was in a difficult situation. My father learned it was your family, and knowing your father’s physical condition, he didn’t want him to think it was a beggarly act. As a result, my father reasoned that it would be best to carry out the deed anonymously.”
In the complete silence of that moment, it was as if the nausea I had felt as a child, rising from my pelvis and crossing my chest to get stuck in my throat, had been washed away by this generous gesture. “Dear Rocco, you’ve come a long way since then; you’ve gone from a box of crayons all the way to the City of Jasmine,” she said, wiping away her tears.
Finally, after many years, I could hug the blond-haired lady sitting next to me and thank her family for making that Christmas one of hope and gratitude. This anonymous act became an act for me to emulate, and it gave birth to my own personal tradition.
