The Courage to Leave Everything Behind
I was not yet five months old when my parents made a decision that would determine the course of my entire life. They left their homeland. Not because they no longer loved Italy. Quite the opposite. Italy would always remain their country. But love alone does not fill an empty table.
After the Second World War, thousands of Italian families lived in poverty. Work was scarce and the future uncertain. Fathers faced an almost impossible choice: remain with their family, or leave for an unknown country in the hope that one day they could give their children a better life. My father had already made that choice. He was now working deep underground in the coal mines of Belgian Limburg. Every day, he descended into the darkness within the earth.
Not for himself. But for us. When I was born, he could not hold me in his arms. He knew me only through the letters my mother wrote to him and the photographs that sometimes took weeks to reach Belgium. While I was still a baby, my mother decided that the time had come to reunite our family. With very little luggage but immense courage, she set out on the long journey to Belgium.
Today, we board an airplane and reach the other side of Europe within a few hours. In 1948, it was very different.
Every mile meant another farewell. Each stage of the journey carried us farther from the familiar hills of Abruzzo. My mother was not simply leaving her homeland. She was leaving behind her family. Her memories. Her childhood. Everything that had ever given her the feeling of having a place to call home.
Of course, I remember nothing of that journey. I was far too young. But throughout my life, I have often tried to imagine what may have been happening in her heart. Was she afraid? Did she cry along the way? Did she wonder whether she would ever see Loreto Aprutino again? I will never know.
But now that I have a long life behind me, I understand how much courage that journey must have required of her. Along the way, we had to stay in Milan for several days. Like so many other immigrants, we were placed in quarantine before being allowed to continue. For my mother, it must have been one of the hardest moments of the journey. A young woman. Traveling alone with a baby. Far from home. On her way to a country whose language she did not speak.
And yet she continued. Not because she knew what awaited her. But because she believed in the future. On October 22, 1948, we finally arrived in Belgium. Our new home was the Lindeman mining community in Heusden- Zolder. To my parents, everything was foreign. The language. The climate. The customs. The people. And above all, the homesickness.
For however grateful they were to Belgium for the work and opportunities it gave them, part of their hearts remained forever in Italy. I grew up between two worlds. At home, we spoke Italian. Outside, everyone spoke Dutch. Within the walls of our home, the traditions of Abruzzo remained alive. Outside, my Belgian life was slowly taking shape. As a child, all of this seemed perfectly normal to me. Only many years later did I understand how special that world had been.
Our mining community was home to families from different regions of Italy, alongside Belgians and people from other countries. We owned little. But we shared almost everything. Neighbors' doors often remained open. Children played together in the street. Mothers helped one another. Fathers understood one another without needing many words. All had made the same sacrifice. Today, when I think back on those years, I understand that my greatest wealth was never money.
My greatest wealth was people. Human warmth. Solidarity. Simplicity. Perhaps it was there, without even realizing it, that I learned the lesson that would remain with me throughout my life. A person does not become great because of what they possess. They become great because of what they give to others. That is probably the most important legacy my parents left me. Not through their words.
But through their example. Without their courage to leave everything behind, my story could never have been written. And whenever I later faced a difficult decision in my life, I returned - often without realizing it - to the image of that young father and young mother who, in 1948, had found the courage to set out toward an unknown future.
Perhaps true courage does not mean being free of fear. Perhaps it simply means deciding to move forward despite it.
