On Being Rootless in Italy
I’ve been thinking a lot about roots lately.
Inevitably, when I meet a local here in Calabria, which I moved to six months ago, they assume I have Calabrian roots.
No, I tell them.
Well, you’re Italian though, right?
Again, no.
I moved here because I fell deeply in love with this country, its culture, and of course, its food.
To them, I have no roots. And maybe to me as well.
What Does It Mean to Have Roots?
I’ve been asking myself this a lot lately. Roots don’t have to necessarily refer to family, though that’s where most of ours begin.
For me, I grew up not physically close to most of my family, so being in a culture where men live with their parents until they get married and where many families get together every Sunday for a meal is foreign to me. But appealing.
I’ve lived in nine cities and three countries in my life. In a sense, I’ve always adjusted to the fact that, if I did put roots down in a place, it wasn’t for long.
To me, having roots is feeling connected to and a part of a community. In Kensington, the quaint little San Diego neighborhood I lived in for the past 10 years, I had roots. I knew so many people. I…
