Returning to My Roots
As the years pass, many people feel an increasingly strong need to return to their origins. Not necessarily to live there again. Nor because the past was better than the present. But because we want to understand where our story truly began. I felt that too.
To me, Loreto Aprutino was never merely a village. It is the place where I was born, on June 5, 1948. The place where my family's roots reach deep into the earth. My parents lived there before Belgium became part of our story. My grandparents worked there. Generations of our family were born there, long before anyone could imagine that some of their descendants would one day build a new life in Belgium.
I was still only a baby when I left Italy. My memories of Loreto Aprutino therefore do not come from a long childhood spent there. They came to me through my parents' stories. Through the Italian language. Through our family. Through the customs they brought with them to Belgium. And through the visits I later made to the region of my birth. Italy was far away.
But it was always present in our family. In my father and mother's words. In the dishes served at the table. In the stories about family members. In memories of the life they had left behind. And sometimes also in a homesickness they did not always express in words. Every time I return to Abruzzo, I feel something difficult to express. I walk through the streets of Loreto Aprutino.
I look at the hills. I see the olive trees. I breathe the air my parents and grandparents once breathed. And I become aware that there, I am part of a story far older than I am. Some houses have changed. People have disappeared. New generations have taken their place.
But something remains recognizable. A silence. An aroma. The way light falls on the hills. And the feeling that the ground beneath my feet preserves something of my origin. When I walk through those streets, I often think about my parents. Their simple life. Their sacrifices. Their dignity. My father did not leave his native country because he did not love Italy. He left because he loved his family.
He went to work deep underground in the Belgian coal mines because he wanted to give his children a future he himself had never known. My mother too eventually left behind her familiar surroundings, her family, and her language. She began again in a country she did not know. With few possessions.
But with immense inner strength. As a child, I did not fully understand what that demanded of them. Today, I understand it better. Emigration does not mean only arriving somewhere. It also means leaving something behind. A home. A family. A familiar language. A landscape. And sometimes even part of oneself. My parents carried Italy with them every day as they tried to build a new life in Belgium. I too have always continued to carry those two worlds within me.
I am proud of my Italian origins. And I am equally proud of the life I was fortunate enough to build in Belgium. I never felt I had to choose between the two countries. Why should a person be able to love only one place? Italy gave me my origins. Belgium gave me the opportunity to grow, work, start a family, and pursue my dreams. The man I became was born from the meeting of those two worlds.
Even my languages tell that story. Italian remained the language of my family, my origins, and my childhood memories. Dutch became the language of my daily life in Flanders. And thanks to Dorina and our family life, French came to hold an important place in our home. Three languages. Not as walls between separate worlds.
But as doors through which I was able to know people from different worlds. Perhaps that very combination taught me that identity cannot always be summed up in a single word. I am Italian. I became Belgian. I am the child of immigrants. I grew up among mining families. I built my life in Flanders. And all those parts belong to me. None must exclude another. Our roots do not hold us back.
Nor do they dictate where we must remain for the rest of our life. Roots give us a point of support. They remind us of those who came before. The sacrifices that were made. And all the roads that had to be traveled before we could stand where we are today. A tree does not grow by forgetting its roots. It grows precisely because those roots nourish it while its branches reach ever farther toward the light. That is how I see my own life too.
One of the most beautiful symbols of that bond came into being in 2003. My brothers Remo and Maurizio bicycled the 1,745 kilometers from Liège to Loreto Aprutino. When they arrived, the entire family was waiting for them. It was far more than an athletic achievement. Our parents had left Italy for Belgium to build a future. Their sons retraced that road in the opposite direction, through their own strength, toward the place where our family's roots lie. That day, the distance between our two countries seemed to disappear completely.
My roots lie in Loreto Aprutino. But my life continued to grow in Belgium. That is where I went to school. Where I learned to work. Where I met Dorina. Where my children were born. Where I built my companies. Where I knew my greatest joy. And where I also faced my deepest sorrow. Both countries therefore carry part of my story. I hope my children and grandchildren will continue to feel that bond too.
Not because they must live in the past. Nor because they must make the same choices as those who came before. They have a right to their own life. Their own dreams.
Their own future. But I hope they will know where their story began. That they will know the names of those who came before them. That they will understand how much courage it took to leave Italy and begin again in Belgium.
And that they will feel that part of the strength with which their great-grandparents built their future continues to live within them. Those who know their origins do not have to let those origins hold them back. They can draw strength from them to move forward. Memory need not be a burden. It can become a light that helps us find our own path. Every time I leave Abruzzo to return to Belgium, I do not truly leave Italy behind.
I take it with me. In my name. My language. My memories. My character. And in my love for the people from whom I come. When I then arrive back in Belgium, that too feels like coming home. Because that is where the life I built myself is found. My family. My friends. My memories. And almost everything that shaped me into the man I am today.
Emigration is not only a gift. It cost my parents too much for that. But it gave me something special. The ability to have more than one home. Two countries. Several cultures. Three languages. But one heart. A heart that does not need to choose between Italy and Belgium... because it is large enough to love both with the same sincerity.
