THE CONNECTING PATHS OF A JOURNEY

 

Photograph by Felicity Zucchi

“Realize that everything connects to everything else” – Leonardo DaVinci.

Weaving through the bustling side streets in Parma, the market in full swing with bikes lining the walls of Teatro Reggio, people animatedly chatting over a coffee, others digging deep to find the latest bargains and store sellers dynamically serving and offering tips to clients, how much I would miss it if I were to change locations…the buzz of the city seems so far away as the train pulls up to a station in East Sussex on its way to Brighton. Flitting between countries, suitcases, planes, cars and trains, the looming question is how does it all connect, how does it finally come together?

One minute you're taking photos for end of year school concerts from beautiful balconies in an Italian church, the next you're packing yet another suitcase and reorganising one house and off to another as a guest. Since I was eighteen and lost my mum, I have spent a lot of my life living out of a suitcase. It can often be conceived as an extremely attractive and privileged existence, but the hours of preparation and constant switching between cultures is disorientating and the moment you adapt back you're off again. I generally speak Italian, another language or watch things in additional languages and so the situations I find myself in can be quite amusing for an onlooker. I recently went to a garage in the UK and asked for the bulbs to be checked, the two things at the front of the car with the lights I explained, I meant the head lamps! Dulux paint (Dewlux) became "Dullux". It is the same thing with the driving and crossing roads! When you are in one place you miss the other and vice versa. After all these years there is a fine line balancing everything, juggling family, friendships, health and work with all the added necessities.

The side streets often hold some hidden treasures that you might have overlooked had you stuck to the high street. Sometimes these hidden gems are just off our front door steps and yet because we continue along with our tunnel vision we miss so much.  How do we reconcile the two lives? Being between two places does change us as people, we are shaped by the experiences we live and the people with whom we come into contact, but it is important to remember that we don't have to be defined by every interaction. Just like the pieces that don't come initially together. Things are so rarely black and white nowadays with all the possibilities for travel, our stories are radically changing.

Lausanne, Switzerland started me on my journey to connect the pieces. I had never really been an adventurous type but after losing mum; my dad and those around me including encouraged me to go on the year abroad at University. I had always spent more time with people from different countries, like my mum, and when the opportunity arose, with some apprehension, I went for it. It led to French conversation whilst snowboarding down amazing slopes in Verbier with new friends, jumping on trains and planes to go here and there with more spontaneity discovering well-hidden secrets and places only locals knew, and then later I would meet my now husband in Parma, Italy whilst I was studying Italian and attending the local Casa della Musica (music house) and he gave me an advanced piano lessons.

We got on straight away, I have to admit I didn't understand that much at the beginning especially when dialect was added and I was just grasping my Italian, so different from textbook preparation and language practise. You couldn't just press pause on the audio when five of my husband Romeo’s friends were animatedly chatting away at the local bar, or the music professor had a subject he was particularly passionate about! My flat on the third floor in the city centre became a hive of activity with people coming and going regularly, a place for friends to stay when things got a bit full on at theirs, there was a comfy sofa at mine (I was always well stocked with breakfast) and my tiny table was often full of people eating and chatting away.

After working for a few years in a rope manufacturing company, which would turn out to be one of my best work experiences so far, I decide to go away to Vietnam. I started to learn some of the basic language... Foyles, in London became my stop off point to stock up on language materials and drink coffee! My best friend took me to the airport and as she had spent some of her formative years in Hong Kong, she was well aware of the challenges I could face. What started as a holiday became a journey of discovery that led me to consider working there. The genuineness of the people I came into contact with, the traditions and the amazing buzz of the city, sitting on a bike sideways as was tradition for girls then, going round the city of Ho Chi Minh with hundreds of other bikes and then heading along the Mekong Delta on a boat and travelling to the coast to enjoy the beauty and calmness of a truly stunning and vast country, in so many more ways than I can put into words. My return to work there fell through as I realised that my heart was in another place and I went back to Italy and created a life with my husband.

My life may not have taken the conventional path, and that does not mean to say that I do not want those things, but the experiences I have gained have been invaluable. They definitely have not always been easy, in spite of what others may see there is always a certain amount of flexibility juggling family urgencies and trying to manage for periods without your husband, who is such an important part of my life. My only advice to others would be to judge situations slowly because travel has opened many new paths, but this has equally created barriers to be broken down and new things to confront and learn from, which doesn’t have to be a negative experience if we approach the reality in a healthy and practical way.

Having worked in many international companies in Italy and the UK, I have got used to adapting my perception of things and doing my best to leave my preconceived views at the door to really live my new experiences and be open to new ideas and ways of approaching things. The pieces that don't go aren't those that matter in the end, the more connections we find, the greater the possibility of being able to complete the puzzle. We can go it alone, fighting and resisting everyone and everything that is slightly different to ourselves, but we don’t need to deny ourselves if we can see where things overlap, where there is common ground and we can see the other as offering something and not a threat to our way of life. Each of us has something to offer, when we realise that we are all unique and have a role that when joined with others becomes something far more valuable and worth fighting for.

“We get together on the basis of our similarities; we grow on the basis of our differences.”

Virginia Satir