Sicily — On Uncontrollables
It has been nearly a year since I graduated and I can’t stop thinking about Dr. Seuss. Rather than reflect on his witty rhymes or the generations he’s inspired with timeless character, I have come to the realization that perhaps Dartmouth’s most famous writer was wrong.
Hear me out. It has been nearly a year since I not only graduated but lived in the Hanover bubble where cause most certainly triggered effect; if I checked all the boxes I was supposed to check - if I took the right classes, got the right grades, found the right internship, met the right people - I could control my outcomes: what I did on campus and what I would do beyond it. For graduation, my mom gave me a copy of Oh, the Places You'll Go! in which Dr. Seuss himself told me I would move mountains. He told me to steer myself in whatever direction I chose. I steered myself just fine in Hanover, New Hampshire and, rest assured, I would steer myself in the world beyond.
Armed with this mentality, I mapped out my first year of postgrad life. While my friends would move to Manhattan or DC for the kind of 9-5 that doesn’t end at 5, I would move to Palermo, Sicily, as part of a Dartmouth postgraduate fellowship in which I would write about my Sicilian roots. My grandfather immigrated to Brooklyn as a teenager and died before I was born so I knew nothing about his family back in Italy or the way he started his family here. All I have of him are his Italian passport and his high school diploma, which now hangs beside my Dartmouth one. As such, I wanted to process this part of my identity via non-fiction; like Dr. Seuss, I wanted to write. So I booked my flights to Italy before I even earned my diploma and made airbnb arrangements while textbooks and flair still filled my on-campus apartment.
Fast forward to this same time twelve months later. I am reflecting on my year not from Palermo but from New Jersey where I have returned to in order to avoid getting deported, defunded, and detained. After the Italian embassy denied my visa to remain in Italy beyond the allotted 90 day period, I scrapped my initial year-long plan. I left for England - the quickest, cheapest way out of the Shenghen region - after exactly three months, intending to remain and write elsewhere abroad until I would be allowed back into Sicily.
But moving those mountains wasn’t so easy. After Dartmouth’s Fellowship Committee wouldn’t approve changes to my proposal - I did, after all, propose living in only Italy- I had to return home. I spent the next 90 days in America planning for the last leg of my year abroad. With two weeks before I’d fly into Treviso - a small town right beside Venice where my Mom’s family originates - the news stories hit as hard as the coronavirus first struck that very region. If I went to Italy, I would risk being detained or quarantined, and before I had time to weigh the risk, Dartmouth chose for me. My year in Italy ended in February; there were no mountains left to move.
In the time since this realization, COVID-19 has spread throughout the world and everyone’s lives are on hold. I can’t help but think of another Dr. Seuss quote: “If things start happening, don’t worry, don’t stew, just go right along and you’ll start happening too.” I’ve never been able to adopt this mentality; I’ve never been one to just let things happen.
But that’s the thing about life that this year has forced me to confront. College often equips its students with the formula for success, but beyond that bubble, there are no rules or steps for the outcomes we seek. My plan for this year has changed over and over again from the one I devised in Sanborn Library last spring, but I’ve realized the only world that’s ended is the one I’ve tried to control. The real world has been the world I’ve let happen.
Because here’s what else I could never have predicted about my year, other mountains that have moved for me. I not only lived alone for the first time ever in a foreign country, but became proficient in the Italian I first learned fall of my freshman year. I befriended an 85-year old vegetable seller who has worked beneath my Palermo apartment for 85 years. I learned the art of ceramics from a tattooed Sicilian who stops his classes midway through for espresso and chocolate. I wrote more fiction that non-fiction after drafting a manuscript based on a painting I discovered on my walk home from the markets.
And then I moved a mountain I never even knew existed. I took a bus one afternoon to Marineo, a small town outside of Palermo where my grandfather was born. I’d planned to explore the town and see its main attraction, the Castle Beccadelli. But it was early in the morning, everything closed, so I stopped for a croissant and chatted with the cafe owner. Upon hearing my Italian, she knew I was not from Marineo and I informed her that yes, I was American but also Sicilian, last name Staropoli. After I told her my grandfather’s full name and his mother’s maiden name, I showed her his Italian passport. Her eyes widened and her lips moved and suddenly, my croissant forgotten, she ushered me out of the cafe and across the street and over three doors and into the home of Lina Staropoli, an elderly woman with a penchant for pasta and a soft spot for her favorite cousin - Ciro Staropoli, my grandfather, who happened to once live in that very house. After sharing a four hour lunch, too many cannolis, a few tears, a few more hugs, and a lifetime of information, I found a mountain taller than Sicily’s Mt. Etna and let things start happening.