In This Sacred Place

You learn to love your parents when you no longer live at home. At least that’s my opinion. I don’t think 18 was too young to move out of my parents house, I think it was right. After that I had so much more respect for my parents. Especially my mom. I’ve learned over the years that she is ridiculously cool – scared – but cool.

One year I bought her a set of paints and canvases and she made a drawing of four people sitting under a large tree. Then she told me the story about when she was 3 years old and still in Sicily. Sitting in the hot shade under the Haruba tree. Using rocks as dolls and being covered by the huge branches of the Haruba that hung down to the grown. Picking up and chewing on its pods.

While she spoke I recorded everything she said.

At school in Scarborough I took a walk in the massive forest on campus and I found a spot far off from any trail. My dad is a house painter, and had in the garage for years a huge roll of uncut, unprinted wallpaper. Which has a strange texture like fabric and horsehair and canvas all mixed together. A friends helped me drag 60 feet of this canvas deep into the forest. I wanted to created something. Something big for my mom. Something connecting me and her to nature. I strung up this piece of canvas. And I really don’t know why, but I liked it.

I have exhibited photographs of this piece in the forest a couple of times now. Everytime I bring the recording of my mother’s voice and the painting that she made.

Now I live in Italy. My mom lives in Toronto. Last summer me and Marco’s mother were walking through the market, when we saw someone selling nuts and spices and other things. And there were these huge black, hard pods that he couldn’t seem to sell so he offered us 2 for free. Marco’s mom explained that they were Carruba seeds. And that the Carat measurement for diamonds comes from the Carruba, because every seed in their huge black pod is exactly the same shape and weight. When you chew on them you have to be careful not to bite down on the seeds or you’ll risk cracking your tooth.

It took me a few days to make the connection that Carruba and Haruba were the same tree when Marco’s dad explained that in Italy you find Carruba’s almost exclusively in the South in Italy.

I freaked out at the realization. Up until that point I thought that my mother had imagined the Haruba tree, since he memory is now more than 50 years in the past.

A few years back I went back to Scarborough and took a walk in the forest and wandered off the path to find my canvas in the woods. Heavy with rain and dirt and time all of the canvas had come unattached from the nails and the trunks and lay there in a long line. I like this piece so much better now.

I call this piece In This Sacred Place, because any place that makes me think of my mom is sacred. Sentimental I am.