That’s soooooo cuuuute! (dat so ki_ut!)

I moved to Canada almost 3 years ago. It was March 17, 2010 and my flight landed at 2:45 pm at the Pearson International Airport.

That day was a gorgeous day. It was sunny and warm, inside me and outside. It was exciting and thrilling. It was, in one word, the beginning of a new life.

I was not by myself, of course. Apart from my excitement, my son Lorenzo (4 ½ years old), my daughter Maia (13 months old), one stroller, 9 luggage and 2 supervisors, advisors, team builder grandmothers were with me.

At the doors, we were sure to find Daddy Alessandro with balloons, tears, emotional and excited after 2 months of separation. We were also expecting music in the air, like in the movies, or that Tim Horton’s commercial, going on and on in 2010,  with a father buying winter coats for his landing immigrant family (basically my story)...

The door finally opened, Lorenzo started running (I know some of you are already saying “oooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that’s so cuuuuuteeeee!), Maia clapped her hands and...Daddy Alessandro was not there! He was late, but with flowers and balloons!

Behind, in Sicily or, to be more specific, at the Airport “Falcone-Borsellino” in Palermo, I had left in order: my previous life, my sea, my anger and disillusion and, most important, about 10 people waving their hands, wiping out their tears looking at my back and wishing us all the best.

That was the only tough thing...to push Maia’ stroller!

Being an Italian, and above all Sicilian, I was expected to be extremely loud, suntanned, scared of any temperature below 0˚C, in love with gelato and any type of pasta. I was also expected to speak dialect, to go for a soccer team, to prepare tomato sauce at the end of each summer, to eat soppressata (which comes from Calabria) and, last but not least (I wrote this just because I love the sound it makes!), to know by heart each single sentence pronounced in the Godfather movie.

Let’s go through that list once again, one characteristic at time:

-         Extremely loud = loud, not always.

-         Suntanned = yes, I was.

-         Scared of any temperature below 0˚C= I love COLD weather.

-         Gelato & Pasta = just once in a while.

-         Dialect = I know it, but I don’t speak it, unless I am having a blast with my friends and we are in a kind of “silly mode”

-         I hate soccer

-         Unfortunately, I don’t know how to prepare tomato sauce for the winter.

-         I don’t eat Soppressata.

And, last but not least (I am trying to break my personal record J), I consider “Il Padrino” one of the best movies ever. However, Don Corleone doesn’t exist in that sort of elegant version of what in the reality is something AWFUL, such as Mafia, and I don’t know each single line, especially if in English!

Having said that, we are left with three options:

1)   I am a liar!

2)   I am not Italian and my Italian passport was given to me by my Sicilian step-parents who founded me on a Sicilian beach one windy day. Apparently, it happened that Scirocco (warm wind blowing from North Africa to Sicily) blew my stork far from Sahara where I was supposed to be shipped to Palermo (in Sicily). This would explain why I do love Cous Cous so much!

3)   An Italian moving from Italy to Canada in 2010 not necessarily corresponds to an Italian who moved to Canada in 1940. As well as, Canadians don’t necessarily wear a checkered shirt and live in an igloo.

Canada is a great place to live in, also because it’s giving me the opportunity to observe what happens when a Culture -and everything that it embraces - moves from the native land to a welcoming different one. I was given with this bless and now I would love to share something with you.

(Please excuse typos – It’s not my Samsung, Blackberry, Blueberry, whatever phone. It’s just me, an Italian accent!)