Freedom Has A High Price

By Giulia Mancini

On the threshold of her fifties, Michela retraces the important stages of her life and going back and forth between  past and present she relives crucial moments: the pain, the downfalls, the defeats and rebirths, up to the full understanding of herself and the achievement of a form of serenity and, maybe, why not, of true happiness.
  "The choices we make, especially the rational ones, are too often dictated by social conventions and by what others expect of us . We do things out of duty and make the big blunders . With hindsight I would never do things that everybody considered perfectly legitimate and sensible. What I have done only following my instinct and my heart, I would do it again today.”
"To start again I needed a superhuman courage, because I had to get my life back.
And only when I overcome all this, when I am the master of my time and I feel calm and happy of solitude as well, of my space, so hard-won, and of my time because finally I'll know how to handle it, only then I will be able to declare myself truly free, to be alone or to fall in love again. This freedom must be won, but freedom is sweat and blood, freedom has a high price.”
"It's strange but I have found happiness through winding and tiring roads, overcoming the greatest sorrows, I have overcome anger and pain through my passion for life, despite it all. I always tried to be like others and comply to common rules, but the paths of life have led me to be different, and I have always paid the price.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Giulia Mancini
• Release date: Feb 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781507171608

Book preview

9786050311518

I

Going through the important days of my life everything now seems incredibly close and strangely clear. Everything now seems understandable to me, like a thriller where eventually every piece of the puzzle perfectly fits with the others and the picture, blurry and undefined at first, now becomes finally clear. I go back to every far away memory, even to those very far back in time that seemed to be forgotten. What was once confused it becomes now clear and the reasons that seemed unintelligible back then become totally understandable to my eyes and my heart. What happens in our life can completely change us and, sometimes, we don’t even realize that till we see, by looking inside ourselves and looking back, that things haven’t been the same from a certain point on. I often find myself smelling scents in the air that bring back moments and memories, the smell of lighted fireplaces reminds me of the beginning of fall and of the first cold spells of the season. Today it would be a perfect day to light a fireplace and it seems to me to smell the smoke of our fireplace in the air, the smell of glazed almonds my mother made with caramelized sugar under the yellow neon light of our childhood kitchen with flowery tiles. At the first cold spells of the season I always long for glazed almonds, not for their taste actually, as I didn’t like them that much really, but I long for the feeling they came with, that familiar and safe feeling. Thinking back of my mother’s smile reminds me of the other women in my life, women who left a permanent mark, who left a mark simply because of who they were, for the battles they faced and for the wars they often lost, always with all the love and passion they could give though, always tameless.

Nowadays I feel all them are inside myself, I am them and they are what I am now.

My name is Michela, I was named after my grandpa, whom I’ve never met, who went to the United States and then came back to never leave again.

II

Forty days and forty nights, that was how long it took to my grandfather Michele to cross the ocean and reach the United States. He travelled that route twice, the first time with his brother Pietro, the second time to go back to Italy, I’ll be back he told his brother, I just need to see my homeland one more time.

But after long nights of sailing, spent breathing in the salty and steely ship’s smell, he couldn’t think of the sea anymore without feeling sick.

Pietro wrote him many letters for a whole year before realizing Michele would have never come back and he accepted he had to go on without him, even if everything seemed harder without him. My grandfather stayed in Italy.

I wonder how it would have gone my mother said sometimes we would be americans now,

Deep inside my heart I was happy to be Italian, I thought living in Italy was better.

I was six years old and I always listened to grandpa’s journey story in awe.

My mother, through the magic of her stories, is always present and alive inside me.

Benedetta, in her twenties, was a tiny woman with big breasts she used to hide under layers of bandages.

Her long black hair went down her shoulders soft and curly like whimsical streams. Michele was mesmerized by that thick hair and when he thought back of America he knew why he came back.

While he was watching her approaching the altar, beautiful and classy like a princess, he felt he was the luckiest man in the world even if he was one of the poorest.

He never regretted he came back and, in spite of his poverty, two world wars and so many struggles, he felt he didn’t waste his life and he knew he had been happy.

Benedetta was my grandmother.

One day, I was about eleven, our Italian American aunts came to visit us; they were Pietro’s two daughters and one of them looked exactly like my mother: she had freckles, red hair and green eyes, and they even shared the same name.

Names and last names are the same from generation to generation in the south of Italy, so you could happen to find the same person with the same name and last name after years, only fourty years younger. Nowadays this tradition has almost disappeared.

Our American aunts, who lived in Boston, were with their seventeen years old nephew, tall and with blond hair who didn’t speak Italian at all and who was always smiling, and they spent a whole day with us. Our aunts seemed very happy to have found a piece of their family and they told us about their life with great excitement talking in their old and hard to understand, even for my mother, native dialect, as they used words not used anymore. In that moment I totally understood what my Italian teacher meant when she said spoken languages are alive as they change and evolve along with us: my aunts, my mother’s cousins and Pietro’s daughters, were grown up listening and learning their father’s language, that had never changed since the beginning of the twentieth century.

I’ve got a photo I sometimes look at: from the left there’s my father smiling with a smooth face with no wrinkles, even though it’s a rugged face; my mother is smiling as well and I’m in the middle, tiny and very skinny, my sister Benedetta (named after my grandmother), our two Italian American aunts Maria Sole and Immacolata, with the same names of my mother and my aunt. Now I wonder where my great aunts are, if they are already dead like my mother and my uncles or if they’re still alive; I wonder if my handsome blond second cousin, who should now be well over fifty, is still handsome and if he runs the New York marathon or if he turned into one of those bulky and fat Americans.

All in all I’d rather remember all of them as they look in that black and white photo: alive, young and smiling. When I still had to do everything in my life, when my all life was still ahead of me.

III

The house where I live now is at the end of Bologna’s hills and the road to the sea.

I hope it’s going to be my last and forever home, because I’ve really moved in and out of several ones before settling in this one. It’s a small two floors building with a small garden all around, far enough from the main road and from traffic’s noise, but close enough to town not too be too isolated.

I like sitting on the balcony on summer evenings, when it’s extremely hot in town while here on the hills it’s a bit cooler and the air is fresher. I’m quite close to town anyway, and sometimes I like to go back there, just for a while though, it feels it’s too noisy and busy after a while and I gladly go back to my hills.

Francesco pokes his face in my room.

They said it’s going to snow today, I would light the fireplace, what do you think about it?

I think it’s a good idea I reply smiling.

Francesco is my partner and the man I love, maybe from the mists of time. He’s the man who saved my life and he, somehow, made it special.

I’m still surprised at how he lightens up my days, I get up in the morning just to follow him when he leaves, I spent so much time away from him and now I don’t want to waste one second.

I get in the kitchen following the smell of coffee Francesco has made, while he was placing firewood in the fireplace. I wrap myself up in a big wool shawl I bought during one of our latest trips, as temperature isn’t that high outside of bed.

I sip my coffee while looking at Francesco, I love looking at his shoulders line, at his strong and sturdy body.

What are you doing? Why are you looking at me with that weird look on your face?

It’s my usual look and I’m staring at you because you’re handsome.

Handsome? Maybe I used to, now I’m old! Stop it! You’re really crazy,

He says laughing and I find his laugh wonderful as usual.

You’re not old! You’re the most handsome sixty years old man I’ve ever met.

Francesco shrugs as if to say Alright, let’s not go there…

He seriously doesn’t believe me, but I think he’s very handsome.

And he’s really in great shape for a man his age, he’s tall, muscular and imposing and his wrinkles look wonderful to me, I think maybe I love him more now than before.

At first I loved his look really much, but now that’s not what makes him so special to me, love goes way beyond beauty and good look, obviously when we’re young that’s what we’re attracted to, at least at first, but what lasts, what grows strong and is fed by human weaknesses too is what made a relationship unbreakable.

Sometimes I feel like I lived several lives, as I’ve been through a lot, but maybe they’re just the seasons of life that, day by day, are overwhelming.

I’m going to town to buy some groceries Francesco says.

Alright I answers while I get close to kiss him gently on his cheek and I’d like to hold him tight, as if he was leaving for a long trip, but I don’t so he won’t tease me. I always feel a bit nervous when he leaves, even if it’s just for few hours.

The thought of parting from him is unbearable, so I keep myself busy by making lunch with all his favourite food, setting the table with decorated dishes and crystal glasses. I want everything to be perfect, because every moment spent with Francesco is important and it’s worth using the good china.

Life taught me there aren’t days more important than others, every day is important, so I want to live every day at its best as if it was the last one.

I’ve always met the important people in my life while I was busy with other things, when I had actually gone out by mistake, I had forced myself to, as if I could feel something would have changed my life. It was one of those days when I first met Francesco, about twenty years ago.

I went to a lunch organized by some acquaintances, I had agreed to go without enthusiasm, because I knew few people and I was sure I would get bored, and that morning there was a thick fog and the restaurant was on Bologna’s hills after a long uphill road.

I was thinking of texting them to call it off, but at around 11.00 fog started clearing, so I decided to try to go in spite of my little enthusiasm.

I arrived at the restaurant while a shy sun was trying to find its way through the thin fog almost gone, I was able to park my car in the last car park in the parking lot and a grey Panda behind me was not sure of what to do. I got off my car and I told the Panda’s driver he could park behind my car, as long as he let me go away after lunch.

He got off his car and he thanked me and we found out we were going to the same lunch.

My heart sank while I was looking at him, his look, his voice felt so familiar even if I had never met him before, my heart had probably recognized him. That man was Francesco.

IV

The place where I used to live as a child was terribly small, at six years old I already knew I wanted to live somewhere else, possibly in a big town.

It seems strange, but even at such a small age I was very clear about it: I wanted to travel the world. Or at least I wanted to try and live somewhere else. I didn’t know how I would have achieved that yet, but I was aware I wanted to leave to do something for myself, even though I didn’t know exactly what. Actually I wanted a life full of adventures and surprises back then, but that wasn’t very clear in my mind: I daydreamed on becoming famous, on proving myself on an important field and on surprising everybody with my amazing skills.

The clear awareness I had when I was six would have slowly faded away during the following years, to became an unclear hope in the future during my teen years.

Growing up I had understood every single milestone is the result of sweat and blood and of a great effort.

I wasn’t so sure anymore to be able to leave and the place where I lived didn’t seem so dull anymore, I hung out with a bunch of nice friends, I had a nice boyfriend, some besties, I had everything I needed basically. Sometimes our paths take different turns depending on what happens during the most important times of our life. If my then boyfriend would have talked about a future together maybe I would have stayed in my birthplace and my life would have gone on quite uneventfully, without going through so many different places.

My life took the path I had envisioned when I was six though, I found myself moving from town to town, between Italy and abroad, before going back to the first place I had been. I love Emilia Romagna, not just because it’s the place that welcomed me, but also because somehow it reminds me of the south of Italy when it comes to warm, genuine and true people.

And that’s where I stopped after so much travelling.

V

The day of my grandmother Benedetta’s funeral I had just turned five, but I remember it very well. She had been a very strong woman, she had faced strong pains in her life, maybe the strongest was when she was already on her deathbed, waiting in vain to see her son one last time. I was very resentful towards my uncle back then, I couldn’t understand how a son could refuse to see his dying mother for one last time. I was five back then and there were many things I couldn’t understand. I didn’t understand life is often full of tears