With age comes wisdom, and with wisdom comes the gift of reflection denied us at youth, when life is redolent with lesser certainties and defined more by absolutes, where simplicity overrides complexity, in our haste and inexperience to come to terms with our surroundings. So it came about that a man of my age was able to sit back on my porch, gaze at the magnificent outline of the St. Gabriel mountain peaks, outlined with a fresh sprinkling of snow, and from the comforts of my hacienda in Southern California, relax and turn the clock back to that one momentous event in my long life when I first departed Malta.
The year was 1947, when at a tender age of seventeen, and confident that I knew all the answers which plagued mankind, my twin brother and I sailed into the far horizon on board an Egyptian rust bucket that had seen better days, in search of fame and glory outside the boundaries of our beloved island. Never for a moment did either of us falter in our unspoken but invincible conviction that we would succeed where others equally foolish might have failed. Such is the euphoria of youth where arrogance overtakes caution, and usually wins. The nexus between then and now is best seen in a series of related episodel events, which once set in motion are irreversible linked, and are as surely consequential. In my odyssey in search of substance nothing less than the fundamental question of identity arose, for which to this very day I have found no clear cut answer. While others were concerned over the intangible hereafter and the future of their souls, my fears were more earthly, mundane and dealt with the here and now. I sought to find out where as a displaced son of Malta and a naturalized citizen of the United States I weighed in on a scale of success and happiness.
To be sure contentment or the lack of it may be gauged by various criteria. The proposition involves the reassessment of spiritual values, goals, and aspirations whose genesis are traced to a family background, where as a child a person's malleable mind is shaped by parental surface attitudes shown towards matters of race, religion, politics, and perhaps most important of all, trying to survive where food and creature comforts are not always sustainable. At the conclusion of WWII, the future in Malta for youngsters who had miraculously survived prolonged Axis aerial bombing and starvation looked bleak, more so for members of my generation and age, who by virtue of hostilities had been deprived of a secondary education and were not qualified to enter University. My best choice then was to leave the secure comforts of home in Sliema and head west towards the United States, where the mounted cavalry still rode to the rescue of weary European immigrants trying to dodge arrows from bellicose, nasty native Indians, while attempting to reach the cool temperate Mediterranean like waters of the Pacific.
The metamorphosis from a native born Maltese to a hip-hop cool American citizen is never quite absolute, in that cultural residue like DNA is immutable and serves to diffuse the outcome. Values and attitudes of old mix with the new, resulting in a hybrid person plagued by split allegiances and self-doubt. This state of plurality is the price all expatriates pay in homage to their host country, and the extended opportunities it affords them for a future full of promise. For some the gradual change comes as a surprise in old age, as they realize too late that given a chance to return back permanently to their country of origin, they would contrary to fanciful expectations not fit the mold and feel as strangers amongst their own kind. The parenting and raising of children born outside of Malta, who as often as not do not understand Maltese or care to inquire about Malta, add to the feeling of alienation. Sadly I have suffered such distancing experiences.
For me the magical place that is Malta will live on, even as I am most certain to exit this earth from far away. Like Hercules, the most famous of Greek legends on his epic voyage around the Mediterranean, and his episode with melodious mermaids who tempted him into throwing himself to the mercy of a raging sea , I am often overtaken by a burning desire to renew my filial ties with Malta from the precise moment where I left off many years ago. It is but a dream, yet polyglot a creature as I may be, the gnawing emotion is a reminder of the old truism that "once a boy scout, always a boy scout", at least in spirit. The sensation of belonging from afar attests that the consequences of having been born and raised in Malta, with its strong Catholic tradition and close family values, are indelibly carried from womb to tomb. Subject as they might be to cultural mutation by a lifetime of exposure to alien influence, they remain a constant source of doubt as to how precisely an expatriate fits in within his/her adopted environment.
If the accumulation of material wealth and creature comforts are valid yardsticks by which contentment is appraised, than I owe much to the United States and the generosity of opportunities it gave me as an immigrant son. Yet these gains came at a heavy price which required dismemberment from family, friends, and leaving behind cherished childhood memories, all of which are factors which must also be taken into account. As I walk alone in reflection under the lengthening Autumn shadow of life, I am overtaken by a comforting sensation that being Maltese is more a state of mind than a state of being. If none else I now know where I still belong.
E-mail to Joseph Vella: vellajoseph@msn.net
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