Canada 120/150: Cradle Rhythms

Cradle Rhythms

New Canadians, they called us,
the families on our street,
Italians and the Greeks,
Portuguese and Ukranians,
New Canadians
to distinguish us from the old Canadians perhaps, 
like Mrs. Brown from two doors down
who had a moustache
and a stubby black dog who waddled when he walked
and a carpet beater made of metal and wood

New Canadians who brought old words 
from the old country
like sculapasta 
for draining spaghetti
and sculapiatta 
for draining the plates,
paletta and scupa
to sweep up the floor

who brought old habits 
from the old country
like wearing black for the rest of your life
if your husband passed away,
bonarma
and praying to Sant’Antonio
to help recover
something you had lost and praying to
the Madonna to assure safe travel

who brought old ideas
from the old country
like indulging children,
li picciliddri, and respecting
the elderly, li vicchiariddri
and not forgetting where you came from

unforgettable moments,
this growing up in this
new Canada like
45s on the record player, dancing
when company arrived, like
pleating, tying, unfolding kleenex tissues
into rainbow-coloured flowers to tape onto
the silver Pontiac Strato-Chief
when our cousins got married, like
watching my nanna roll paper-thin lasagna 
from the magic of flour, eggs and a pizzicuni of salt,
using a stegnatore, a four-foot long rolling pin
my father fashioned for her by sanding 
an old broomstick, like
picking basil from the garden,
fresh and fragrant
for the jars of tomato sauce we were 
preserving in the bagno marina

and then there were the rhythms
of a language that predates Italian,
this Sicilian that has roots
as wide and as wild as its branches,
not just in Latin but in Greek and in the 
tongues of the Spaniards and the
Moors and the Normans and the
Carthaginians who came to the sun-drenched
triangle of an island and liked it so much
they never left

Rhythms that continue to resonate
like the ninna-nanna, lullabies that soothed us
as babes, like the
tarantella we danced at weddings, like
the pluckings of the mandolin,
sad strains that speak of longing
of leaving the beloved land
and crossing an expanse of ocean

these were my cradle rhythms,
the sounds I in turn rocked my babies to,
the snippets and stories I pass on to them of the
subtleties and complexities of
what it means to me 
to be a 
new Canadian