Finding the boy my father was

I didn’t invite my father on our family vacation. But there he was anyway, everywhere I went, front and center, pointing, explaining, reminiscing, sharing, reflecting, the way he never did in life. During our two-week stay in Sicily, my father, who died 18 years ago, never left my side.

“This isn’t the Italy I knew,” he said every day, more than once a day. He was my tour guide, showing me what he saw when he marched into Italy, a soldier with the Fifth Army, a seasoned soldier at the age of 20, having survived combat and malaria.

The father I grew up with walked beside me pointing out the boy he was. In life, he never talked about the war he fought. What I know I have pieced together from photographs, letters, military records and conversations with his younger brother. So was it my imagination trying to fill in the blanks every time I saw a building that looked as if it had been bombed and abandoned? A gutted-out church? Rutted dirt roads and dead ends and dark alleys and mountains no human could climb? Or was it my father finally able to show me what he spent a lifetime trying to forget?

The boy he was, the boy I see everywhere we go, is tall and lean with dark curly hair and teeth that are big and white. His eyes are serious but bright, still. I recognize this boy because of old photographs. What I don’t recognize until now is how that boy feels. He is hot, he is always thirsty and uncomfortable, because the sun in Sicily is strong and the air is still and he is dressed in long pants and long sleeves, an olive green uniform that does more to attract the sun than repel it. His clothes weigh him down. His combat boots weigh him down. The rifle slung over his back weighs him down. The haversack he carries full of equipment he needs to survive weighs him down. The war he is fighting and the life he is living weigh him down.

My father is not alone. He is not the only 20-year-old in battle in 1943. He is just one American soldier. There are thousands of young men like him in Italy, in France, in Japan, in Sardinia and Corsica, in combat across the world. More than 16 million Americans served in World War II. More than 100 million soldiers from 50 nations fought in this war.

But I don’t see all these millions. I see only my father — not as the man who taught me to ride a bike and drive a car, but as a boy just a year older than my oldest grandson, Adam. And it’s this boy who was my father who won’t leave my mind. Because in Sicily, 2023, he stands alone, a soldier among thousands of handsome boys who don’t wear a uniform, who have dark curly hair and teeth that are big and white, but who are not fighting a war, who are simply living their lives, enjoying their lives, dressed in shirts and shorts and sneakers, riding scooters and driving cars, boys who are walking with their girlfriends, with their boyfriends, carrying backpacks and not survival gear, smiling and laughing, smoking in cafes, cursing, drinking, eating gelato, talking on their cellphones, taking selfies, swimming, sunning, free to do all these things, getting along, not getting along, living a life my father fought for. Living a life my father would loved to have lived.

My family is here living this good life, too. In a villa, laughing, smiling, dancing, drinking wine, eating pizza, swimming, taking photos, posting moments. All of us. I wish I could give my father this. I wish I could pluck the boy he was out of the past and drop him into now, remind him to put on sunscreen and watch him dive into the huge pool that is ours for two weeks. I wish I could watch him toss a football back and forth with the rest of the family, eat coffee gelato, walk with him through the marketplace in Palermo, and sit with him somewhere, anywhere, and ask him about his dreams.

There is a word that artists use which refers to a painting or drawing that has been painted over and is hidden underneath a newer painting. The word is pentimento. In pentimento, an image may be unseen but it is not gone. Scrape away what is visible and the old painting is still there. This is what I want to do: Scape away what is visible and find the the boy my father was.

Eighty years ago, in July 1943, the Allies landed in Palermo. The mission was called “Operation Husky.” It was the beginning of of the Allied campaign to liberate Italy from Axis control. I Googled Sicily, US Army 1943 and learned this.

Eighty years ago, my father was part of this liberation.

There’s an old World War II song my mother used to sing:

When the lights go on again all over the world

And the boys are home again all over the world

And rain or snow is all that may fall from the skies above

A kiss won’t mean “goodbye,” but “Hello to love”

The lights are on again, not all over the world but in a big part of it. My father fought for this. More than 400,000 Americans died for this. My family, like so many families all over the world, can travel the world, to places like Sicily, because of this.