Our first pack ... The first case of Cristina: the intricacies of memory
" who has no memory has no history."
Lately, it will be advancing age, this adage is the mantra that makes me at least once a day to do memory exercise: what I ate the day before yesterday, the names of my old classmates high school, the surname of a former colleague, perhaps known only by his nickname, the name of a street or square of cities visited in the past, and more. Simple things but they help to remove some 'rust to neurons of the memory.
Today is the first suitcase made from round one: total emptiness!
Maybe hypnosis would get some results or may not remember because it was not memorable, and therefore has no right to belong to my story.
Oh no, here there is the challenge! I'm lazy, I say it all and then some 'must be true, but I never give up so soon ... basically I just think, I do not have mica run the 100 meters (in that case dropped immediately without remorse, of course).
Provo with the technique of association of ideas and thoughts freely (some would say brainstorming, but I have no storm, the worse or better, I would say, a nice cool breeze of early spring): will arrive somewhere sooner or later, right?
Indeed something slowly emerges. Let's see, the word "autonomy" is beginning to be insistent, almost annoying.
Want to see what I have to go back in elementary school to find the memory of my first suitcase made by yourself? Yes, because as I did the tasks alone (unspeakable horror these days), I did my research and the jobs of Easter and Christmas, Mother's Day and Father's alone, I do not want to be done even from the first bag alone? No, it can also be because I traveled a lot in that time; times were difficult and my family could not afford holidays or other (we were a single-income family quintet) for which there was limited to visits to relatives and outings during the day.
But I associate that word to the trip (because otherwise I would have a suitcase?) And then I convince myself that if I remember the first trip I'm forced to remember the first suitcase. For consistency and accuracy (I am a bit 'picky , as they say here in the States) I try to go back in time and so I find myself thinking about the first 2 days of school trip: the third high school, half Assisi.
I know think that will also be the first trip worthy of the name, but certainly not the first case alone dall'indizio easy to calculate the age at school, and instead I have to deny, it was not. And from then all the others. My mom certainly did from the supervisor, any integrating my forgetfulness, but the choice of clothes and the rest was absolutely necessary to me as well as their arrangement inside the case, even if it was not a case in itself, but only a brown bag inherited from my older brothers.
In my first microcosm shoulder then nothing special, just some clothes and the need for personal care e. .. notes and course material that every good student goes on a trip below. Memory of things was written? No unfortunately, I could try to do some deduction and launch into some erudite quotation, but I do not like cheating: as You Like It!
The first case of Enza: first flight from Italy!
" Leone is related to the color orange, symbol of dignity and nobility of spirit."
Orange is the color the working bag full of cards and disappointment, I drag behind to persuade or convince, I represent something in my company, and orange is the color of the Leatherette big suitcase that I started preparing way back in August 6, 1993.
The candles for my nineteenth birthday I would have extinguished two days later, far away from my family, but despite this my greatest wish is coming true: an entire year Boston, to mother's sister's house, to study English and finally know the 'American way of life .
loved not interested in the preparations, and so before every trip I just leave things on the bed that were not to miss and the game was done, my mom would have thought of everything else.
But this time was different.
That case had to be large enough to contain the emotions that I was leaving, the pain of that last year, fears, personal and professional failure of my father and my mother's hopes for a different life at least for me. Years later I realized that that trip was the first of a series of leaks that have characterized my life, running away from what I can not change and to places that do not know reach.
did not have a suitcase in a position to deal with a transatlantic flight, and so my grandmother gave me one of many that the daughter " miricana " systematically left at the end of every trip to Italy.
Aunt came from the United States with huge suitcases, the time a hug, some tears of joy and then everyone, young and old, attend what had already become a real ritual: the ' opening suitcases.
While "men" pretending to distance themselves, when they watched with keen eye, there were those who, like her grandmother had a place of honor in the first lines, who sat on the stairs, and who was space between the packages, but everyone was waiting anxiously at the time.
Suddenly here before us the " new world", we could smell it, see savor the colors and flavors.
And what if my grandmother would never wear any of those too bright colored clothes made up for his appearance, the day after I came to school fair with my giant pack of Crayola colors!
Thus, of a mixture of emotions hovering in the air clothes, toys, kitchen tools and a miraculous endless amounts of creams and soaps, and while the aunts were fighting it all: "This is good for me " " What you say is my size? "Grandpa exclaimed astonished air: "There pariah who does not d 'aviumu cà Sapün .
the evening before departure " by Soru miricana " the laughter gave way to bright eyes, the excited voices and frantic in a short time they had to fill the gap years distant past, now became sad and no one had the courage and desire to help her aunt to close her suitcase.
grandmother's house was all a bustle with friends, neighbors and family that you had to say goodbye to my aunt and uncle, each with a gift.
These were the years where you do not yet know the meaning of "flight", the Twin Towers were still one of the most beautiful sights of New York, and Italian immigrants could hold in their suitcases tastes and smells of their homeland , taking care not only deliver food unknown to Americans.
And then there were those who wore "a ricotta 'funn," who "in passuluta Liva, who, like my mother, a crocheted doily, but never failed the usual frame with the souvenir photos of the Sicilian family, in exchange for the American relatives in front of a beautiful car surrounded by a thick blanket of snow.
I had dreamed of that world, I had breathed for years and receiving wanted more than anything else ... and now he was there, just nine hours of flight.
In the orange large suitcase with my few clothes - from shortly after the clothes I was going to buy with the shopping cart - I put the letters from friends, Italian music and a favorite box where my family, each in its own way, I a good trip.
In that case, and then forever in my life, I had reserved a special place with a small note written in haste from my paternal grandfather, who advised me to always look ahead even in difficult moments, when nostalgia was this was to want to go back.
The nostalgia I "fucking", after that year I came back el ' America for me has again become an unattainable goal.
The first case of Giulia: summer in Belfast
"Hello, Mom. Hello, you steal a minute ... just wanted to ask, in your opinion, what was the first bag that I got really alone? "
(long silence)
" Well, perhaps that of the week ago when you went to the conference in Milan. "
Seriously, my relationship with the preparation of the luggage is easily explained: if one part I love the idea of \u200b\u200bthe trip, which has now become an integral part of my DNA, so that, in order not to miss an opportunity, I support (lied) that he Always ready suitcase under the bed, the other live act to pack in a perpetual state of indecision between the syndrome of the nut and the tramp ... the eternal dilemma between essential and superfluous . The result of this uncertainty is manifested in the continuing search for the right advice on the use of a particular item of clothing or footwear on the amount of bear with me (" these sandals look great with that dress, and then weigh up to 5 gr ... .! "), and the patience of the people involved is proportionally reduced with increasing my age and the number of cases processed.
Despite so that setting up the classic trolley represents more to me than the result of a teamwork, personal initiative that I tried to focus on the moment that marked my emancipation to "independent traveler".
Summer 1994: I just finished the first year of high school. To improve my English, it was decided that I spent a couple of weeks at the host family of a colleague of my father, Belfast.
I was excited because, despite having already traveled without my parents, for the first time I flew alone and I lived in a typical Irish family. I was determined to demonstrate from the outset that I had trouble to get by, then, to the detriment of my mother's insistence, the preparation of cases occurred, as it were, to my peril. So alongside the inevitable Levi's 501, sweatshirts and raincoats, took place in the suitcase miniskirts, tank tops and dresses to Lolita, all without taking into account that the temperature in August in Ireland differs by at least 15 degrees from that of the Po Valley the same period.
The result was disastrous: a hair touched the broncho-pneumonia. The my host-mother, a teacher of Gaelic at the University of Belfast and mother of five children, took care of my ailments with homeopathic medicine, or plant compounds with disgusting, and a period of enforced rest in the room, all hung with posters Take That and East 17, which I shared with her teenage daughter, Claire.
raffreddatura But perhaps one can stop a girl of fifteen years to discover a foreign city? The answer is obvious ... of course not! Those were unforgettable week in Belfast, and how right-thinking people would say, a real opportunity for growth.
Perhaps only a few months later, thanks to the success of the song Zombie The Cranberries, I could share with me who was standing near the contradictions and the feeling of tension, cleverly disguised behind a lively and commendable hospitality, that characterize the inhabitants of a region accustomed to war : armored vehicles with soldiers on a war footing along the streets of the city, the curfew imposed by my host family, the roar of the bomb blast in public schools that was behind the house ( that I have carefully refrained from telling my parents for fear that forces me to return), the prohibition in some neighborhoods ( it's not safe ").
At the end of my stay in Ireland I was fully aware that, with my suitcase all wrong, bring home a piece of history , of \u200b\u200bwhich I was a bit 'part too.
When I saw the image appear three medieval knights behind Saviano, I wondered if this second episode of "Come Away with Me " born under a bad star too much controversy, and the well-known young writer (when I think that is only a year older than me makes me shiver!) would abandon the socio-political themes that made him famous, for avventurasi in an interesting (and certainly more sure) treaty in history. 
Despite the heart of the Capital has consumed the party of "Allowin - sign post next to a van that was selling pumpkins on the Cristoforo Colombo - more cool of 2010, where VIPs mascheratissimi, seem to have crossed the black carpet of the Aquarium, converted from an old church, complete with a pulpit, altar, holy water and religious, to access the 'Heineken Halloween Night , I do not "really know me prudent de nothing." 
In the following days and before the fateful October 31, turning the streets of Redondo I came across, in witches, horror film characters in some pet friendly. I was about to return the greeting of a skeletal hand protruding from the window of a moving car if I had not jumped in fright, and I avoided instead of strings, for reasons of physical safety, the female version of Edward Scissorhands to supermarket, where I had a strong temptation to buy the cupcake for Halloween; beautiful, orange, inviting ... but then my conscience kept me healthy, sigh! 
