My dad Luigi loved stories. Born in Sicily in 1922 he went to work at age six and never stopped. Dad never attended even a day of school and later in life, like most in his army group in World War Two he had to pay someone literate to write letters back home to his parents and many siblings, and they then had to find someone able to read them.
My mother Cristina spent only one year at school. Dad and mum married in 1951 but he came to Australia in 1952 alone. By 1956 he had saved enough money to bring mum out. They had a wonderful life in a little town in NSW, Taylor’s Arm and then Macksville. They grew bananas until the late 1970s. They loved Australia and the acceptance they felt in what they thought was a strange but very familiar world of kind people in a little town, just like where they’d come from. Their kindness and inclusiveness strongly informed my passion for helping people.
I remember when I was small the other kids I knew had stories read to them by their parents. Although mum and dad could not do this, they more than made up for it. Instead of reading to us they would sing old songs, tell us folk tales and inventively make up stories - including retelling the plots of old John Wayne western movies. Dad and mum loved going to the movies and following stories on the radio and TV.
In his later years, dad had the time to slowly and painstakingly read simple romance and adventure stories in Italian. They gave him immense joy to read and reread. I collect books of every genre so I was especially thrilled to finally see my parents experience the fun of a new book. In their retirement years, when a new book arrived, I could see they felt it was a true wonder, the book became a journey or a mystery that they shared together. They often read just a chapter a week and then they would talk about it for hours before moving on to the next. When I think back about it, it puts me in mind of how the readers of Charles Dickens must have felt, going over chapters one at a time together, then waiting for the next instalment.
Dad and mum both grew up in the same small village in Sicily and both had fathers who recounted to them old adventures of the historic Charlemagne and the Paladins of France. When I found a children’s book about the historic knights, written in Italian, simple enough for them to read, it was like bringing home the Holy Grail.
They died a couple of years apart, in their 80s, after a long and happy life in the little town in the country that accepted and loved them. The adventure book, with it’s thrilling front cover of a bersagliere, (a running infantryman) a ridiculous but beautifully romantic nod to the infantry brigade in WW2 that my dad was so proud to be a part of – and ironic given his general horror at WW2 itself) now sits next to a couple of other similar potboilers at my home, the cluster being flanked on either side by Raymond Chandler and Jane Austen, for me these books give the same joy.
Dr Antonio Di Dio
October 2021
Luigi Di Dio, 1950s Australia.
“Looking like a friend of Philip Marlowe.” – Antonio Di Dio.