After Croatia

Today I came back home from Croatia. I greeted my parents and discovered that my dad fell sick during the ten days I was gone. He had started to develop a fever just the day before my departure. Then, the fever got worse and my mom told me that they spent ferragosto at the hospital. He showed signs of a respiratory infection, although he tested negative to the virus multiple times. He got full of herpes and they gave him antibiotics. Then, the next day, the fever was gone. During this whole time I kept sending my parents pictures of my trip. I noticed their replies were particularly short, but I kept asking if dad was ok and my mom told me not to worry. Even when they went to the hospital they didn’t tell me anything not to scare me.

Tonight we had a nice dinner. I brought sheep cheese and a plum liquor from Croatia, and my mom got ham and salame. We talked about the trip and then I showed them the pictures I took. My parents also took a trip to Croatia in 1989. At that time, my dad was 26, and my mom was 24. So they were approximately my age. At the time, Croatia was part of a bigger state (now collapsed), called Yugoslavia. After dinner, my dad brought up a projector from the basement downstairs, and we started to look at the pictures they shot at that time. The interesting thing is that we had been in some of the same places, and in some places we took very similar pictures. For instance, inside the Predjama Castle (which is built partly inside a cave), me and my dad both shot a similar view of the forest from one of the windows.

Ever since I came back from Japan, I noticed that I have a different relationship with my parents. We have been separated for almost one year, and when I came back I felt like a different person in front of them. In a way, I feel like we made peace. I am starting to feel a strange sense of nostalgia when I think about them. As if I was aware that these months are, in all likelihood, the last ones I spend sharing the house with them. Japan really felt like an introduction to adult life, since I basically lived independently for nine months, of which the last three I was literally alone in my apartment in Meguro. Now that I came back to Milan, I somehow feel like I can’t stop time anymore. I am a different person, and I behave differently with them. Sometimes, when I’m in my house, I feel like I am a guest. I feel like I don’t want to disturb them too much, that this is their place and I am a sort of temporary visitor. This used to be my house before, but now it just feels like my parents’ house. The old house.

Looking at the pictures of my parents in their mid-twenties, I get a strange feeling of nostalgia and pride. They are beautiful. I suddenly realize I am blessed to be the son of two beautiful people. I could only take one picture of them together: they are shy and they don’t want me to have pictures of their young selves on my phone. They think they look ugly. It’s the opposite. I saw a picture of my mom in my dad’s old car (a Ford Fiesta, light green). Her perm, moved by the wind of Corse Island, covered her eyes with long black curls. Her pink lips bent into a sort of malicious semi-smile. The vintage decoration of the car. An old walnut shell is also there, hanging from the rear-view mirror. It is a shell that my grandpa gifted my dad when he was a kid. My dad told me he kept it in every car he owned ever since. Every one of this details seems beautiful to me. And in the pictures where my dad is alone, his smile looks exactly like mine. I can see myself and my insecurities reflected in him.

In general, what I feel is a broad sense of gratefulness towards them. Opposite to the sense of entitlement that I felt before, I now feel like I owe them something, rather than the other way around. And they must have noticed the start of a more servile behaviour on my part. I help them whenever I can. I wonder if this will change with me getting used to living here again, but it won’t be for so long, so I hope it won’t change. All of this makes me think of a beautiful movie that I watched recently. It’s called “Tokyo Story”. It was filmed in 1953 by Ozu Yasujiro. The film tells the story of an old couple who travels from a town in the South of Japan all the way to Tokyo, to pay a visit to their sons. The movie brings up many different themes, one of which is undoubtedly that of filial piety. Because during their visit in Tokyo, the two parents realize their sons are too busy to take care of them and show them around, and so they decide to anticipate their way back home to not be of burden. When they arrive home, the mother falls sick. All the sons rush to their hometown to see her, and they reach her right the night before she dies. Then, after the funeral, they all have to rush back to their lives in Tokyo, and they don’t have time to look after their widower father, who eventually ends up alone.

The movie has a clear way of portraying the shortcomings of filial duties and responsibilities. Of course, this theme interacts with many others, more idiosyncratic and specific to Japanese society, as there is in my opinion some clear symbolism at work in this story (that is, which generations the parents/sons represent, and which worlds Tokyo/the old town symbolise). Nonetheless, the story moved me. It touched a string that has been vibrating in me since returning from Japan. Confucius rightly said,

父母之年不可不知也，一则以喜，一则以惧。
It is not permissible to ignore the age of one’s parents, to rejoice (for their longevity) on one hand, and to fear (for their death) on the other.