The high point of my life as a pre-teen boy in the immigrant enclave of Perth's Morley suburb was our big Italian family dinners every Friday night.
One of my first assignments in English class was to do a presentation on something specific about you.
I wrote a piece titled ‘La Dolce Vita con Mia Famiglia’ (The Sweet Life with My Family) about my beloved Friday night family dinners.
Michael Trusso. Source: Supplied
I looked up to receive the applause and looks of wonderment and excitement but alas, I was in for a very different kind of reception to the one I had envisioned. There were sniggers from the class, sideways glances and smirks, even looks of complete shock on some faces as they muttered behind my back.
Tagliatelle. Source: Supplied
"What’s tagliatelle?"
"Why is Michael hanging with his younger cousins on a Friday night and not his friends his own age?’"
"What is a Nonno and why is he playing games with it?’"
After class, word spread, and things only got worse. I had never felt more out of place and isolated. I had been so proud to share these personal insights into who I was. I thought it was ‘cool’ to experience what I did every Friday night.
Nonno and Nonna (in the middle) surrounded by all their five children and 16 grandchildren taken in 2018 for Nonna's 80th. Source: Supplied
I’m the son of an immigrant father from a small rural town in the hills of Sicily.
My parents, Catholic working class people, came to Australia in 1963 with very little. They cherished their culture and traditions whilst banding together as a family in the face of extreme uncertainty and hardship in a foreign land.
These dinners were an education for me, they taught me about family, tradition, culture and respect. These dinners were more than good food and a great time. They shaped me. I felt a reassurance; a strength from my family. I knew exactly who I was and exactly where I was going.
But following that Tuesday afternoon in year eight English, I was so angry. It made me question my identity. Do I even want people to know I’m Italian? For the first time in my life, I felt ashamed and embarrassed.
I had gone from a self-assured ‘wog boy’, proud of who he was and where he came from, to seeing myself as an anxious, ethnic kid who couldn’t identify with other students in this overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon school.
Michael Trusso and his nonno Sebastiano Trusso on his wedding day on 29 June 2019. Source: Supplied
When the next Friday night dinner rolled around, it was a different experience. It all felt alien. I began to resent my big family and the fact that we were all so close. I felt it was robbing me of growing into my own person.
My Nonno noticed something was askew. He is a softly spoken gentle man and he pulled me outside, disguising it as a request to come look at his vegetable garden. By the time we got to the end of the second row of tomatoes, I reluctantly explained what had happened. My Nonno – already a quiet man by nature – went silent for the longest time. I feared he was deeply disappointed in me and where my headspace was at.
Michael Trusso with Nonno and Nonna on his 21st Birthday, January 2001. Source: Supplied
Finally, he uttered to me only a handful of words, but they had a profound effect on me and have stayed with me to this day.
"Una casa senza famiglia e come una lanterna senza luce," he said. A house without a family is like a lantern without a light.
He explained that who you are and where you come from should not be hidden, but celebrated, and that family is at the centre of it all.
I treasure that advice all the more now because we don’t do the Friday night dinners anymore. My Nonna – after being in a nursing home for almost four years – passed away last May with my Nonno following her in November, two months shy of his 92nd birthday. But we are as close now as we’ve ever been. I am so proud and lucky to be a part of a great big Italian family. We support each other through good times and bad; through grief, loss and love.
My family didn’t hinder my development; they nurtured it. They are, for me, a light; la luce in my lanterna.
This story was originally entered in the 2020 and forms part of a special SBS Voices and SBS Food collaboration series: 'Food of My Childhood'.
