Lost & found: a family’s grip on an aegean island

The scent of thyme and salt still clings to memory, a phantom limb of a life irrevocably tied to Alicudi. It’s a place that both suffocates and sustains, a brutal, beautiful inheritance that few truly understand.

The stairway to nowhere

D.H. Lawrence recognized it – the inescapable pull of a lost Home. For my family, that Home was a volcanic shard in the Mediterranean: Alicudi, an island defined by its impossible steepness, a place where cars are ghosts and steps – hundreds of them – are the only path to the past. Getting there wasn’t a vacation; it was a ritual – a flight, a boat transfer, a donkey lugging our belongings, and then, the relentless climb. 450 steps to a defunct crater, a space carved into the rock where, for decades, my mother sought refuge.

It began as a ‘room of one’s own,’ a deliberately rustic retreat, a sanctuary gifted by my adventurous, and frankly reckless, uncle in the late 80s. It became, for my mother, a crucible for her writing, a space to wrestle with history and create worlds born of the island’s raw beauty. And for me, a desperately needed antidote to the noise of a city, a place to cultivate a strange, solitary joy.

Silence and storms

I remember long afternoons spent listening to “Rhythm Is a Dancer” on a Walkman, utterly bored by the absence of connection, sprawled on a limestone bisuolo, gazing at the turquoise sea. But even in that apparent solitude, I recognized the value of the quiet, the permission to build universes from stone, sun, and water. It was a vital training ground for the stories I’d later tell.

My mother’s empathy, so fierce in the outside world, softened on the island. The intensity of her emotions, fueled by a difficult youth, found release in the island's primal energy. Arguments with my father, his competitive spirit muted by the island’s stillness, would dissolve into shared silences, punctuated by the clinking of glasses and the scent of her eggplant, fried with ricotta and capers. It was there, amidst the jasmine and the sea breeze, that she was truly herself, generously offering her warmth and wisdom.

A sudden departure

Then, almost without explanation, it vanished. My parents, citing a desire for a ‘breezy, horizontal’ life in Greece, sold the house. The news arrived as a jarring punctuation mark, a wrenching severing of a lineage etched into the rock. It wasn't the house itself I mourned, but the unspoken pact – the shared history, the understanding, the feeling of belonging – that had been woven into its very walls. The loss felt less like a transaction and more like a theft, a silencing of a vital part of my family’s narrative.

Echoes in the stone

I learned, belatedly, that the decision hadn’t been discussed. The indifference, the casual disregard for the emotional weight of the place, stung more profoundly than the sale itself. It was a stark reminder that some things – the intangible bonds of family, the irreplaceable resonance of a place – cannot be quantified or negotiated. The house may be gone, but the island – and the echoes of those who loved it – remain, a persistent reminder of what was, and what can never truly be recovered. A legacy carved in stone, a silence that speaks volumes.