The World Gets Bigger

We didn’t stay too long in my grandfather’s house that my father must get permission from the Captain’s ship to bring us on board: it was a glorious moment to move to the ship.  It was big and it was fun to be on it.  I was sure that I run all over and it made me feel like a grown up man.  We stayed several days and I remember it was awful hot, but I enjoyed every bit.  I remember one day my father commissioned one of the kids that were hanging around the docks to go buy one lira of ice promising he would get a tip for his service and I had a notion that that kid never comes back, it was right, we still wait for him.  After two or three days one night around 10 or 11 they pull the anchor and start sailing toward Riposto; but what thrilled me was the trip.  I never went to sleep and I was all over with every move and out on the open sea.  I was most of the 20 miles on the ship’s bow to see how the ship cut through the water like a master through those calm water,I most got tired and final I went to sleep - in the morning I was back in town and home again.

The ship didn’t stay too long that my father was gone again, maybe for a while, some time long as 3 or 4 months.  That summer I felt I was a grown up man (Because) I already had been so far away and I know now that the world must be a lot lot bigger than I thought.  I said yet that my family was compost (composed) of five.  It was my parent(s), me, my half brother; he was 6 years older than me and my younger bother Sal or Salvatore, he was five years young(er) than me.  My mother, I guess, she was hoping that my brother Sal should be a girl.  But instead he was a full boy.  He had a very nice curly hair, so my Mother never cut his hairs so everybody thought he was a girl.  He really looked like a Angel with all those curls on his shoulder(s).  My older Brother, he started to be a sea man on morging (merchant?) steam ships.  I remember that it was a relief for me because he was the one that could give me a licking any time he thought I was a snary(?) so only thinking that I would be the boss without him in my way.