The Road Less Travelled By

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

Robert Frost

 

There is something that happens when I make these rare trips (although in recent years less so) back to the States. It was two years ago when I last came, and my itinerary was pretty much the same then as this visit. I remember my final day when departing from JFK in New York to head home to Cape Town, that the inauguration of Barak Obama was visible on every TV screen at the hotel I had stayed at, it appeared on electronic billboards along the route taken by the hotel limousine to my terminal drop-off, and then on all the countless airport video monitors. I distinctly recall the frenetic circus atmosphere, and how impatient I was to board my flight and depart. The Queen of Soul flubbed the lines to one of her most famous songs, Senator Ted Kennedy collapsed and the live televised swearing-in ceremony was incorrectly spoken, and would, for legal reasons, be redone off camera. 

‘Change Had Come’ and ‘Yes We Can’ were the hottest tunes moving across the airwaves, while the change that was coming from before day one of the new president’s taking office was a global crash with a magnitude that would rock not only the US but the rest of the world as well, far greater than the famous 9/11 shock. The perpetrators this time were Wall Street bankers, traders in debt credits, sub-prime mortgages, derivatives, futures and a plethora of toxic assets.  Unsecured home loans had been handed out like candy, highly inflated real estate ‘values’ were borrowed against, conveniently packaged as home equity loans, with the only rationale being that the balloon would just keep getting bigger and bigger, going up and up. The passenger jet that is the US economy was already into a nosedive when Obama was handed the controls. His immediate response was to put in place a rescue plan for the financial institutions, which came down to passing the controls on to a consortium of the very same individuals who had been directly responsible for the crisis in the first place. So much for change!

Part of the brilliant campaign strategy of Barak Obama was that he would build on establishing the broadest base of voter support since JFK, when in the early 1960’s folks from all over the country mailed off $5 and $10 contributions to the headquarters for the handsome young Democratic candidate.  In Obama’s campaign this grass-roots support constituted about 2.5 % of the total amount raised, that total being the largest amount for any presidential candidate in US history, with the shortfall coming from Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Bros. and Goldman Sacs, etc. Well, there you are, and ‘No You Can’t!’

This time, my trip will carry with it a different reminder. The day before I landed at Boston Logan, my mother had been laid to rest in the cemetery in Winchester, Massachusetts.  She was 87 and had been ill for a very long time. My son, on his own initiative, had flown out from San Francisco to attend his grandmother’s funeral. He departed from Logan on the morning of the same day that I would later land in Boston.  

However cold this may sound, I had (emotionally) laid my folks to rest many years ago. This being said, I have instinctively believed that one must know one’s grandparents, and I have done my best to encourage my son and daughter to do just that. Have they laid me to rest in the same way? That I can not say for sure, but I have held to an implacable resolve that my children be left unfettered to be able to establish their identities for themselves.

I left home at 17, which was forty-four years ago, and have, during those long years, made short visits, sometimes for only a day or two, often separated by intervals of four or five years or more. Once I left I never went home again. I do not consider it remotely possible that I would return to New England to live; it was strikingly clear to me that, in a way, I had all but forgotten that this was the soil (presently buried under a foot and a half of snow) from which I had grown, and these unreserved, often loud, garrulous and not ungenerous people, were my family. While unlike them in many ways they are observably part of who I am. There are ways, despite a carefully cultivated differentness, in which I am a Luongo, and also a Bonaccorso. Recognisable traits appear in both them and me.

The days I spent in the small New England town outside of Boston were expressly to be with my father, who at 94 and having been married to the same woman for 64 years, was visibly shaken. While he appears in the most excellent health, he is not too sturdy on his legs, shuffles a bit, while adamantly refusing to even consider a cane. During the time spent there I also saw my two brothers (one younger by several years and the other two years older), a sister, a bunch of nieces and nephews who, much to my delight, call me Uncle Abdullah, as well as an aunt who is my father’s kid sister by 19 years, and who I haven’t seen in well over forty years. She called me Robert. My father suggested I come over again in early June to turn over the ground in his garden. A bit of hard work! During my first night in New England there was a heavy snow fall and I was awoken by the sound of my father, aged 94 remember, ploughing the drive way. I had no choice but to get up, bundle-up in warm clothes and head outside. With his wry sense of humour he said, “See if one of those snow shovels fits you and do the front steps.” 

There are now other men who are in many ways far closer to me than my blood relations, some of whom I have known for forty years, as well as other much younger ones that I have obviously known a relatively shorter time. Nevertheless, this Italian American clan are family and maybe for the first time since I left home all those years ago I was, at long last, at ease with all of them.

The second leg of my trip was out to California to visit children and grand kids. That is something I’ll reserve for my personal diary, uniquely for my pleasure as a parent and a grandparent: unequivocally one of life’s great joys. 

Having been in Sonoma County in California for a week, I will stay on another few days before departing, first for Amsterdam where I have a full day and night before continuing on to Cape Town. I will visit the Rijks Museum (I had discovered online that I could catch a world class exhibit of some of the famous Dutch Masters); I also plan on taking myself out to a very good lunch. Maybe I’ll have a swim in the hotel pool and then a good night’s sleep on a proper bed before embarking on the final long leg of my journey back to South Africa.

 

Postscript

I made it to the Rijks and there was a special exhibition of works by the Dutch master, Gabriël Metsu, as well as numerous pieces by Vermeer and Rembrandt. Apart from the cold, Amsterdam was wonderful!