Posts Tagged "italian"
Nonna Maria Mettere La Giacca!! (Put on your Jacket!!)
and here’s a little extra bonus for the fans:
Nonna Maria: Fresh Price L’Inter Marché
Get the MP3 of the song. Just right click and “save as”. Download the MP3.
Read MoreBoyapalooza and Living With Your Parents
Yesterday, my buddy Eric, Dave, and I took a roadtrip to go see my buddy Mim in Lennoxville Quebec. It’s something we do fairly often. It’s a 2 hour drive from Montreal and we make sure to pack music, instruments, and lots of videogames. Throughout the trek we talk about movies we’d want to make, music that inspires us, and, yes, women.
Every time I head over to Mim’s place, I always get inspired. I feel more loose. More free. Then I remember why.
See, I’m european, Italian to be precise. It is an Italian tradition (or curse) to live with your parents until you’re married. So, I (and most of my friends) live with our parents. There’s pros and cons to having this type of situation. Mainly, my laundry gets done, I get free food, I pay no rent, I have internet, heating, a pool, free food, my own room, an awesome T.V., homemade Italian food, alcoholic beverages, and, oh yeah, free food. See, it does have it’s benefits.
Equally, there are cons that come in a more subtle emotional package. My parents are great wonderful people and I love them with all my heart. They’re open minded, fun, and support me in any craft I dare partake in. The problem comes in the form of a routine that’s very hard to be broken. See, I’ve lived with these people for 25 years. They changed my diapers, cleaned up my vomit, fed me, bathed me, bought me a guitar, praised me, punished me, bought me my first Nintendo, we vacationed in Florida, the list goes on. Don’t worry, last week I asked them to stop changing my diaper (HA!). My parents account for some of the more awesome parts of my life. What pattern exists, after all these years, that begins to get detrimental? There’s a few.
Mainly, I’ll always be their son but as long as I live under this roof I’m still their kid. What does that mean? Well, since they’ve spent the last 25 years treating me like a kid, I’m still a kid to them. It’s completely understandable how it’s a hard routine to shake. I mean, I don’t really make it easy for them. I play videogames, watch cartoons, microwave different random objects. I hold dear to me the values that children posess that can help me get the most out of life; curiousity, enlightenment, the ability to go for what I want, and the random urges to make Taradactyl noises. Perhaps it’s this routine of theirs that keeps me kid-like when I have to be.
Another problem that arises when you live with your parents for too long is you, well, tend to take things for granted. My mom does A LOT for me. She cooks, she cleans, she does my laundry, and sometimes she does my bed. On Sunday afternoon she wakes me up from my alcohol induced slumber. I promptly drag myself out of bed, up the stairs, and to the dinner table to find a lunch of homemade pastas, wines, and the traditional orange salad. I can never ever complain about this sort of treatment. It’s such a common happening in our Italian community. I know full well there’s people out there who don’t get a quarter of a quarter of this. However, I don’t derive anything from it cause it’s always been there. That’s what bugs me the most about this whole deal. I’m ready and willing to cancel this type of treament from my life in order to better appreciate what my parents do for me. I can’t stand myself for sitting at a table with such great food and preperation and only feel the slightest gratitude. I fell into a comfort zone with being treated this way that it’ll in fact be detrimental to my own life skills. Comfort is your enemy. A life worth living is a life lived on your edge.
That’s why I’m moving out in July. I know what some of you might think. Moving out, big whoop. Well, my buddies and I would be the first to do so without getting married. It’s kind of a break in the tradition and I’m excited and also a little scared. Knowing that my days in my house are numbered I’ve become more grateful of the little things. These same little things that I’ll love completely when I come visit my parents for a hearty Italian meal.
My buddies and I have a great dynamic. One that takes me away from my mundane patterns and self-consciouness into a place where I feel creative and free. Last night a jam session broke out in Mim’s bathroom. We sang song about laundry detergent, the snow, the rain, and loving and living. There’s no better feeling then letting the infinte speak through you. As humans, it’s that same feeling that also scares us to death half the time.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination. ”
- Marianne Williamson
P.S. Special thanks to Elizabath (lrntoswim) for coining the term Boyapalooza.
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