Homesick (A train ride from Rome to Formia and back again)

I was on a train from Rome, heading towards my mother’s home town by the sea – Formia. This wasn’t my first visit. Ten years earlier I was here with my mum and dad. This time I was on my own and it had been three months since I’d seen them.

I was infinitely sad. Without any real reason I wanted to cry quietly for most of the two hour journey. Maybe I was just homesick, I thought at the time, perplexed.

I knew I’d glimpse the Mediterranean in the Gulf of Gaeta when I got closer to Formia. As I looked out the window waiting for it, I thought about how little I knew of my mother’s youth here. Bits and pieces of information gleaned from snippets of conversation, some of them only overhead by chance. It was so little. All that I knew about my mother’s life in Formia I could list in bullet point. Sketchy ideas that didn’t even make sense sometimes – she stayed in a convent during part of World War Two (where?); Mussolini made a speech on the town hall balcony (why?); American tanks rolled down Via Appia which cuts through the middle of Formia, on their way to Rome; her father died in a road accident when she was a child; her single mother was so poor that they had to keep moving every time rent was overdue. Her family later ran a bar and this at least I can confirm is true – I’ve seen the black and white photos of her older brothers in white jackets, circa 1950-something, serving aperitifs on tiny silver trays. I’ve seen pictures of my grandmother working there too, with a cynical smile and her arms folded. They didn’t get along – so many misunderstandings between them, cleared up decades too late.  

The train kept shuffling along. I tried in vain to remember the station names and their order, to judge how far we still were from Formia. Then I thought of my first trip with my parents a decade ago and how much my mother loved just walking along the beach. It had been years since she’d been in the water so one day she just kept wandering out further and further, past her ankles, past her knees and then her thighs so that she ended up waist deep – fully clothed in her sundress and clutching her handbag. Someone from the jetty called out jokingly ‘Hey lady, what have you got in that handbag that you couldn’t leave it behind!’. She just laughed and wandered back to shore, utterly content.

That summer we ate gelati every night at the local lido. Her sister-in-law made tomato salad that we ate with crunchy bread and milky buffalo mozzarella. We promenaded down the esplanade late at night and went for long drives along the coast. Every afternoon the town fell quiet for the siesta that everyone denied still existed. I remember my mother telling me, on one of our beach walks, how glad she was to have me there with her – to show, to tell and to know.

Close to Formia and there it was, the Mediterranean as you would surely know it – sapphire blue, shimmering cool in the contrasting heat. Deep breath and smile. I was met by my cousin at the station and she drove me back to my aunt’s for the very same tomato salad and buffalo mozzarella as a decade ago. I started to feel content.

Three days later I was back at the station. My sister had called to say my mother had an extremely aggressive form of leukaemia and I should hurry back home to Australia. My cousin hugged me and told me to be strong. She didn’t say how? This time I did cry for the whole journey. A middle aged man wrung his hands and begged me to stop crying – he was anguished by my grief. But when I told him my mother was dying – the first time I’d said those words aloud – he nodded sadly and left me alone.

Waving goodbye at the platform felt like I was already saying goodbye to my mother. I was leaving, but she was leaving too. I found it bizarre and ironic to be so close to and so far from her. So close to the heart of her existence but unable to hold her hand and tell her it would be ok. All the same memories I’d had on the earlier journey had a strange intensity about them this time. So many things to ask before she left. And I was alarmed that I knew. This sadness already felt familiar. I already knew on the train journey there that something was terribly wrong and that I should be catching a plane instead. A thread still held me close to home.

The Mediterranean held it’s tongue. But I remember the bright blue flashes between trees, hills, buildings as we turned inland, saying goodbye to Formia.