Tears, or The Absence Of

I am at the brink of tears often. A man from Maryland poked fun at me when I mentioned this to him sometime during our shared three hour wait to see Michaelangelo’s David. 

“Do you think you’ll cry when you see him? His eyebrow raises, menacingly.

I shrug, “Mmmm, Idon’tknowmaybe.” 

For the sake of peace, I let him think me an over-emotional, idiot, girl. He spent most of the three hours asking my boyfriend about his line of work. 

He bristled when I offhandedly mentioned my studies at Columbia. That didn’t match the assumption he’d made about me. 

He stepped a foot out of line, “How much longer you think?”

I shrug.

So far, I’ve almost-cried the most in Paris. Mostly due to the glaringly obvious wealth disparity between myself and the other tourists, and an impending menstrual cycle. 

I didn’t speak the language, or get the designer-it-girl dress code memo. 

So, I felt stupid and unpretty. If you need to defeat me in any sort of debate, insult my intelligence and point out how bloated I look in my Levis. You’ll have my ruin. 

So I behaved like a bratty American girl. Pouty lip, and sniffly nose. But I held strong to my tears. They wouldn’t slip.

In Brussels, my eyes became suddenly wet in a particularly strong wind-gust, but I laughed this off. 

“Hey Lennon, look—I’m crying!” 

My boyfriend doesn’t think it’s funny when I’m crying. He takes the issue very seriously. 

In Florence, my breath went ragged after an €80 fine for failing to validate our tram tickets. And while I practically spat at the metro cop, I didn’t cry. I would call myself an ugly American for berating the Italian officer, but sincerely the Florentine metro system was poorly run, too expensive and that metro cop never deserves a good night’s sleep in his life. 

(I—I’m still mad about the €80.) 

Things that would make me blubber in New York, left me with a sigh: 

A spilled bottom of perfume, a hole in my trustworthy glove, a new scar along my ankle. 

I witnessed things that would typically stir my heart: 

A critically acclaimed play, the Dutch Masters, Van Gogh, and David. 

And while I craned my neck up at David’s 20 foot frame, examining the beauty of his anatomy, each vein and arch, carved to perfection, I felt…nothing. 

I blink hard trying to wake from this life. This life of my dreams. It’s like I’m knocking hard, on my chest, “is anyone home?” 

And there’s no answer. It’s like I’m all cried-out, my tears likely over-spent on the mundane annoyances of New York existence. 

And then came today, and a train from Verona to Roverto. 

We’re on our way to Vienna, and are on about hour two or an eleven hour trip. 

I have my forehead  pressed against the plexiglass window. 

Lennon says my hair looks “crazy,” in the morning Italian sun.

My face is a map of Ireland, and my red hair makes me a point of target at any St.Patrick’s celebration. But my hair color is from the part of me that is Northern Italian. 

I know very little about this part of myself. I know there are several generations of women named “Gina,” and all of them are ultimately referred to as Nona. 

Nona is the matriarch. Nona hand-folds cappelletti and grows her own tomatoes, which she cans special, for year long preservation. 

Nona is loved, until she dies, too young. And at the memorial, my chin is tilted to the sky by the hands of a second-cousin-aunt-three-times-removed-on-her-mother’s-side, 

“Ah—that’s your Streganona’s nose! A real, ROMAN NOSE!” 

I have that and her hair. And her butt. I have been told we have the same butt. 

But Northern Italians are quiet. They don’t talk much. Stories don’t get told as readily as they do on my Irish side. 

(Gales, we must prevail, tell our story, and don’t EVER shack up with a Brit.) 

All I know of the Italians is they came to Minnesota sometime in the 1890’s. 

They are American Pie in comparison to my Irish grandparents, who only came to America in the 1953.

So I find myself walking in Italy, in search of something I haven’t entirely known. 

In Ireland, I know it. 

My feet belong on this soil, my step at ease, home. 

And in Italy, I try to find it. Try to find the feeling of falling asleep in the car, but waking up at the last turn onto your childhood street. Home. 

The feeling of hair brushed by familial hands. Kisses on the forehead. Home. 

My feet belong on this soil, home. But I keep tripping over Florentine cobblestone, and getting into fights with metro cops. 

And I start to fear my second-generation immigrant status may only have a visa stamp to Ireland. Like I forever can only claim one half of who I am. 

Like I’ll never be able to fold my Nona’s cappelletti, forever settling for the store bought stuff. 

And then the train lurches around a bend, and like the car ride, I open my eyes, I need to wake up, I’m home. 

Before me is a blunt cliff side, stark white and brilliant, rolling mountains behind it, impenetrable green. 

The Dolomites make me cry. 

I am not sure of the name of the town where we’re from, but I know it’s a mountain town in North Eastern Italy. 

I am taking a train ride through the North East of Italy, passing through mountain towns. 

And salty tears roll down my cheeks, and my brow furrows, and I’m praying the Old Italian Man sitting next to me doesn’t offer me his handkerchief. Hoping my sunglasses disguise my red eyes. 

Because I couldn’t explain to him why I was crying. It was too big for me to explain. 

The sun licks the cliff sides, and the snow caps kiss the clouds, and there are towns there. Under all this brilliance, are small houses, and clotheslines and a train track that takes me to Vienna. 

I understand why Northern Italians are quiet, they climb mountains to get home. 

I try to imagine my 99 lbs Nona here. And I can’t. Especially the Nona who I knew at the end of her life, her oxygen tank trailing behind her step. I couldn’t imagine her scaling these cliffs. 

But her Nona did, or the Nona before her. Somebody in my blood is from here, somehow. 

I think of taking my phone to photograph the stretches of sky, and the peaks and valleys, but I’m paralyzed in awe. At some point, I stop trying to wipe my tears away. 

Now I wish the Old Italian Man would offer me his handkerchief, but he has fallen asleep. 

My tears get heavier when I hear a woman sit next to me speak to her own Nona over her phone. 

“Altri venti minutos—ah, grazie mille Nona. Si, si. Ciao, ciao, ciao.” 

It doesn’t help that I have Caroline Polacheck’s song “Billions,” playing while this happens. 

I close my eyes to the Italian sun, as Lennon looks on, worrying over my tear stained t-shirt, as she sings, 

“I’ve never felt so close, I’ve never felt so close to you.” 

And I can feel my Nona. She knocks on the door of my heart, “this is home too, and it’s ok to cry. I’m here.” 

Post writing this, I am informed that I am from a town called San Leo, which is hundreds of miles from the Dolomites, closer to the Apennine mountains, near Remini. So, it was probably just my period that made me cry. But still. Home.