Carmela Delia Lanza

NOT HERE OR THERE

Because of the Capitol record, Christmas in Italy, throughout my childhood I thought Italians spoke their language like children. I had no problem understanding the children who spoke throughout some of the songs on the record. The one, Dolce Risveglio, with the two girls talking about not having enough money, and how they decide to break open a piggy bank (not plastic, I would imagine a colorful clay one) and then they start counting the money so they will have enough for gifts for their family. When I hear that now I feel like I am this eight or nine- or ten-year-old Carmela, back in my parents’ small living room in Deer Park, Long Island. I am wearing my polyester pants that are probably too short and my hair is in some kind of knotted mess with a plastic headband. I feel excited and it is all about Christmas, about the baking, the frying, the taking out the very heavy board my mother uses for all the kneading and cutting of the dough. It all rushes back when I hear those two girls talking.

So I thought that when I would travel to Italy, I would understand every word. And that everyone there would sound like a sweet girl talking about her “mamma.” I was not prepared for the reality that I did not belong there. That people in Italy are not all perpetual children, and most of the time I had no idea what they were saying, and they had no patience with me as I stumbled with every word. “Do I say it in Napoletana or in the ‘real Italian’? I would ask myself before I even started to respond. The first time I went to Italy, I was in my twenties, and that was when I learned I was not Italian, not really. And after that I started to feel I was also not American, not really. My Italian for that trip was basic. I was able to understand simple directions, and when a waitress got my order wrong, I was able to correct her speaking in Italian. I was still living in New York and I was hearing Napoletana whenever I went out to Long Island to visit my parents. But that all changed when I was no longer hearing the language, and the last time I went to Italy, I felt like a toddler trying to speak, trying to wrap my tongue around simple words. One man, a restaurant owner, said to me while I was trying to order food speaking in Italian, “Please, just speak in English,” he said.

I have to listen to Christmas in Italy every year. And yet when I was a child I would complain, “Oh no, Mom wants to listen to the ‘Italian record’.” I have no idea how she felt about that, but she would still play it and we would have to somehow endure it. Now I don’t feel right about the Christmas season if I don’t listen to it, just like I don’t feel right unless I have fried some tarale or strufoli even though I am sitting at a table alone eating it. The entire record puts me in the world of children—how they describe Jesus as a poverello, a tiny or even cute poor baby. How the girls want a doll for Natale, how the first song is children singing the sweet lullaby, È Nato Gesù, Jesus is born. This is no longer a world of adults, of pain, of suffering. But that does come later in the album, when suddenly we are placed in the world of sacrifice and human suffering with the song, La Ninna Nanna a Gesù. I never understood the words, but the music always placed me in a world of sacrifice and human suffering:

Fermarono i cieli la loro armonia cantando Maria la nanna a Gesù.

Con voce divina la Vergine bella più vaga che stella cantava così:

“Dormi, dormi, fai la ninna nanna, Gesù”

La voce più bella e gli occhi di fata sul viso sembravan divino splendor.

La mamma felice il bimbo divino cullava il suo amore cantando così :

“Dormi, dormi, fai la ninna nanna, Gesù”

Suonavano a festa le sante campane vicine e lontane squillavano in cor. Gioivano i cuori per lieta novella, apparve la stella nasceva Gesù:

“Dormi, dormi, fai la ninna nanna, Gesù”

The heavens stopped their harmony by singing Mary the bedtime to Jesus. In a divine voice, the most vague beautiful Virgin who star sang like this:

“Sleep, sleep, make a lullaby, Jesus”

The most beautiful voice and the fairy eyes on the face seemed divine splendor. The happy mother the divine child cradled her love singing like this:

“Sleep, sleep, make a lullaby, Jesus”

The holy bells rang near and far and rang in cor. Hearts rejoiced in glad tidings, the star appeared, Jesus was born:

“Sleep, sleep, make a lullaby, Jesus”

La Madonna is singing to her son, in the night, “sleep, sleep.” But I did not know that when I was a child. I only heard the music and it never sounded like a happy kind of Christmas with candy canes and laughing a lot. All of those feelings of suffering, of the journey ahead, all of that became a part of how I experienced Christmas, how Christmas felt for me.

Yes, as an American child, I was excited to see what Santa Claus brought me, and I did spend time during the night listening for any strange noise. We did not have a fireplace but I believed that Santa just walked into our house and found his way to that small living room with the usual deformed tree, tangled clumps of silver tinsel, and big, fat Christmas lights. I don’t know what he thought of the codfish soaking in a clay pot, sitting on the washing machine, or the prespia that was spread out on the dining room table.

I was always the one in charge of that, and it grew every year. We needed the entire dining room table for the prespia, but my mother was fine with that. We would just pile more stuff on the washing machine or on one of the kitchen chairs that did not have piles of old newspapers or paper grocery bags.

Every year I would start the prespia with the rolling up newspaper and placing it under a tablecloth, so it looked hilly. Then I would go outside and dig out some moss that was usually around the side of the house that faced north, very close to our neighbor’s fence. The moss usually stayed green for a few weeks. The prespia pieces included some made of a kind of plaster, and they were from Italy, but we also had plastic pieces and even some strange ones like miniature dinosaurs. For some reason, we had more than three Wise Men, and I made sure to include a valley scene with the shepherds and the tiny sheep. I placed a small, round mirror that was supposed to be a pond for the sheep. There were some plastic palm trees along with the stable and the usual animals—a cow, a donkey, and a few horses. I would hide the baby Jesus figurine until Christmas Eve. Did anyone notice? I don’t think so. And of course, there had to be snow so I used a small basket strainer and sprinkled flour everywhere.

At some point all the prespia pieces including the old, plastic stable were packed in boxes and left in the cellar. After my mother died, the prespia disappeared—probably ended being thrown out on the heap of what was considered trash. I collected some pieces when I traveled to Italy but I stopped making a prespia after moving to New Mexico. No one understood what the heck I was doing, and I lost my way with it all. Now I just walk around saying “it doesn’t feel like Christmas.” Spending it alone, where are the people? And how to explain the sorrow? It cannot be translated into English and it is not exactly Italian anymore. It is a space that was created as a child of English and Napoletana. I cannot find it in Firenze or Roma and I cannot find it on Long Island. There is no place for me to go to anymore to find what it is that I remember and can even still taste and smell.

Bio:
Carmela Delia Lanza’s poetry and memoir essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Coming from a working-class, Italian immigrant family, her writing focuses on identity, language, and cultural transmutation. Her publications include two chapbooks of poetry (Malafemmina Press and Finishing Line Press), and a book of poetry, Atterrando, (Epigraph Publishing). She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and teaches writing and literature at University of New Mexico-Gallup, in Gallup, New Mexico.

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