Thomas Bennici
He came to New York over 50 years ago. He left his hometown of Licata, Sicily, a tiny and winding sea of beige plastered villas and cobblestone, and set out for a lonely two-week stay on the high seas. Fourteen days later, he arrived in New York Harbor. The day looked promising—the sky was a cloudless and transparent hue of blue warmed by the sun that peaked out from behind the blazing torch of the Statue of Liberty. He stood on the ship’s deck admiring the glittering waves of the ocean that crashed against the outer edges of a vast, metallic city. Reaching into his pocket, he fumbled through its contents, scooping them into the palm of his hand. He looked down at his coiled fist that hung half-extended before him and unfolded his tanned fingers with knuckles that had turned white from the tightness of his grip. Pressed into his cupped hand were a few small coins that amounted to a mere 75 cents in American money and, while silently mouthing the Lord’s Prayer, he tossed all that he had into the waters. He had paid his entrance fee. He wanted to start with nothing.
15 years later, she had stepped off of a nine-hour flight from Rome. Coach. Bright-eyed and with the naïve optimism of an eighteen-year-old, she marched her way through the hustle and bustle of the city streets that hosted crowds of people she had never seen before, let alone imagined, who hurried in and out of the cylindrical glass carousels at the foot of colossal buildings that were much different than the two-room home (if you could call it that) that she had grown up in. Within days, she had taken the first of several menial blue-collar jobs that would earn a living for her large family and a sense of pride and self-worth that she had hoped America would provide her with. Within six months, she had picked up the language by watching primetime television quite regularly. And within 9 years she had gone from being a wife and mother to a widow with two very young girls. In the true American spirit of independence and self-sufficiency, it was time that she made it on her own.
The two had come to know one another through mutual circles of friends that they tiptoed in and out of every-so-often, but had no intention of making any unnecessary attempts at sociability. Downtown Brooklyn, however, was a small community—especially for Italians. So the two courted each other for years through minute-long exchanges of smiling eyes and congenial small talk when they would meet on the same side of the street. Until one day, he offered her a helping hand and soon enough, she offered her hand in marriage.
We are each the biological products of our mothers and fathers who, depending on the extent to which they are present in our lives, go on to rear us in the manner that they have been reared, instilling more of themselves in us than just their DNA. I have lived in Brooklyn, New York all of my life. My family is Italian. I have two sisters and a twin brother. We are all Brooklyn born and Brooklyn raised. Therefore I am, by standard definition, a legitimate New Yorker, but the true sense of myself as an inhabitant of this place far surpasses the happenstance of pure geography. Many can argue the authenticity of my citizenship insofar that it is based solely on my parents’ decision on where to raise me, and while I’ll admit that this is an undeniable convenience, I will be the first to insist that is it not only where I was raised that makes me a New Yorker, but also how I was raised and by whom.
My father left the small-town and dead-end life of Sicily because he had dreams that extended far beyond the Atlantic Ocean; dreams that would go unachieved should he settle for generational poverty and rarely overturned social caste. My father wanted to build—he wanted to build his independence, a foundation for a better life, and most of all, a name for himself and a reputation to go along with it that would remind all who hear it of the courageous pioneer that made a home from more than some mortar and stone.
My mother was relocated with the rest of her extensive family to escape the traditional, single-track life that awaited most young people in Mola Di Bari, Italy. Though they had no idea what awaited them on the other side of the world, they were driven by the vague chance that they would achieve something more. While the prospect of life in America seemed like a dream come true, it is safe to say that my mother was not someone who basked in the pools of sunlight that reflected off the “gold-paved” streets of the city. In fact, there are few people that I know who have fell on harder times than my mother. Just as surely as she has enjoyed some of the greater moments of her life here, my mother has choked on the dense and asphyxiating smoke of industry in the heavy and overcast skies of the concrete jungle. Like a true New Yorker, however, she developed the attitude and drive to push on through adversity and never lose sight of her dreams.
People always say that I’ve inherited my mother’s green eyes and my father’s smile, but I’ve adopted a layer of this filial inheritance that is not so outwardly apparent. I’ve inherited citizenship. I am a New Yorker because I have been raised by true New Yorkers—those who know first-hand what it means to make it here. I have an unshakeable desire to achieve the goals that I have set before me, to leave my mark in whatever form I choose, and to one day say that my dreams have come true in the land of opportunities like the dreams of my parents had come true when they serendipitously helped each other achieve them. I may live in “the city that never sleeps,” but that doesn’t mean that it is one that forgets to dream.
Gotta write this!