AIRE MOVEMENT -   MAIRE

We have left the Lira and we do not yet know the Euro coins.
There we are accustomati a exotic flavors, eating sushi, having lunch with sandwiches in the office. We call espresso coffee and drink it stretched American style . 
We met the Consulate and we are  registered with AIRE, making endless lines for the passport.
We have stopped voting and following Italian politics. Berlusconi, Bossi, Prodi and D'Alema passed us, without really understanding what they wanted and why they were fighting. We stopped watching Rai and Canale 5 but we never fail to follow the Sanremo festival.
We vissuto  looking for cheap flights on the internet, booking tickets months in advance. We met hundreds of people who arrived and many who left, like carriage companions on a long train journey.
We have non-Italian friends but we are always and only with Italians. We helped each other and even though we laughed at each other, we were each family who was not close.
We returned to Italy 2 or 3 times a year and each time we felt more different, saying more and more often sorry and please. 
We missed the sun and food, parents and friends and we remained tied to our childhood memories, as if suspended in time. 
We still have our friends from school and at each return we eat the things we ate before leaving.
We discovered  that friendship is sharing and we found new true friends who shared the joys, the nonsense, the embarrassments, the conquests and the defeats but above all the melancholy and the nostalgia.
We left Italian girlfriends and discovered easy sex. We have learned that we are the most loved and the best lovers in the world but we have always criticized Italian men and women. We have forgotten the distinction between North and South and have known Italian without geographies.
We got married in Italy but our children were born abroad, often to non-Italian mothers. We have raised children without grandparents or uncles, who speak to us in a language that is not ours but who feel Italian and cheer for the national team. We have tried to understand a school that is alien to us, which we have paid more every year than our entire university. And we still had to help our children with their homework after 8 hours of school.
We always plan the return definitivo to Italy but every year we postpone it for some reason . 
We never wanted to take another passport because it seemed like a betrayal but in the end almost almost ....
Let's look at Italy and we find it hard to see the bad things they tell us about but they are the same that made us leave in our early twenties and that we basically knew before the others. 3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_
We have learned a lot and given a lot.
We represented Italy in the world and won the respect of all our colleagues, despite the mafia, despite the scandals, despite our politics . 
Now maybe we are ready. Ora maybe we can help improve Italy.
If only they wanted us, if only they had room for us, if only  made us get hold of the things they have appropriated  in our absence. Unfortunately, however, Italians before us had understood that "nemo propheta in patria est". And tens of thousands of prophets continue to postpone a return that seems increasingly difficult.

Pasquale Cataldi " 

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