“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” – Plato

I’ve recently had a new start, of sorts that is. My mother’s side of the family are by and large Maltese, with a bit of Italian, Portuguese and we think North African thrown in somewhere back in the ancestral brew.

My mother died several years ago now, and although she was born in Gibraltar she had a strong connection to her parental line and family in a little village called Zejtun. Her father had smuggled himself on board a ship as a young man to Gibraltar, in search of a better or new life. He was sort of adopted by a Maltese family, they took him under their wing as it were, as a fellow Maltese. He fell in love with one of their daughters, my grandmother and the lady who gave me part of my name.

Family is also important to me, I have three brothers and a long list of nieces, nephews and a godson. But making that link back to Malta is a thread I began a couple of years ago. I’ve spent hours on-line and scouring microfiched documents of time-faded, priests writing in scribbled ledgers, dating back over 100 years. I needed to find and secure three generations of family certificates to begin my part of this story. Over the course of several months I managed to get all the information and documents I needed. There were some sad stories in there; my great, great grandfather Salvatore, died at Gallipoli, before his daughter my great grandmother was born. The ravages of war never getting any easier. But by way of balance, a funnier tale was that my grandfather was a coal heaver, he carried hefty sacks of coal daily onto the steam ships in Gibraltar dockyard. Years later he was permanently bow-legged from the weight and duration of his job. But back to the here and now, when his marriage certificate came back, a hasty admin clerk had clearly misread his employment and he was down as a goal keeper. Which given the state of his legs, never mind the lack of a football ground in Gibraltar in the early 1900’s made this ironically, very funny. He was a particularly colourful character throughout his life and he would have laughed his head off at this typo.

But onwards to why I am telling you this story, I wanted to make that connection to my roots, our past weaves it’s way through into who we are today. From the stellar Maltese family eyebrows to an arm full of aunts who hugged you and pinched your cheeks and an uncle who had the most amazing handlebar moustache and would drive me around southern Spain in his taxi, singing while we played his Maria Callas cassettes over and over.

Last year I finally gained my Maltese Citizenship, the next step towards my passport was to go and register my birth in Malta. I made a quick trip over last week, to do just that. Sat in the waiting room with my ticker-tape number in the queue and in scenes not un-reminiscent of the Netherworld waiting room in Beetle Juice, I sat and waited with a folder with my apostille certificates.

I’ve only ever met one other person with the same name as me, and technically he was a Mario Angel, but the lady who saw me at the registration desk was also a Marie Angela. Then she told me, my birth date was the same as her brothers, and we began chatting like old friends. That’s the Maltese for you, we all make each other feel like family.

So my point is, there is always a day and a time to start over again, in some way or another. Not just to know who you are and where you are from, which is one thing, but to have that certainty that as Plato once said, ‘the beginning is the most important part of the work‘, and I’ve just had a new one.

As they say in Malta, ‘għandi pjaċir’

(nice to meet you)

Contact me at: writeupmystreet@btinternet.com

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