Nostalgia

They call it the American Dream, but no one talks about the weight it places on your shoulders.
Everyone speaks of excitement, achievement, determination. Yet no one mentions the moment you close the door at night and realize that what remains is not satisfaction, but a kind of burning silence—foreign and heavy. Sometimes it’s a metallic quiet, like the laboratory I’ve just left; other times it’s the sound of the wind moving through the trees on campus—gentle, but constant, always distant.

Every morning the sun in Pasadena filters through the blinds and falls onto my floor.
It’s a bright, clear, almost arrogant light—so unlike Verona’s. The sunlight back home was soft, golden, draping over the red rooftops and fading slowly along the cobblestone streets. Each ray seemed to have its own scent, its own rhythm: the calm pace of a life that did not hurry.

At Caltech, time is never enough. Every day is a chase—a string of experiments, calculations, deadlines. I feel as though I live inside a clock that never stops ticking, a mechanism perfectly wound, where the only unpredictable element is me. There’s no room for nostalgia, I tell myself. But it follows me everywhere: in the pocket of my lab coat, in my distracted thoughts that return home when they should focus on equations.

Photo: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/nostalgia-nelya-shenklyarska.html

I miss Verona.
I miss walking along the Adige River at dusk, when the water mirrored the glow of the lampposts and my footsteps echoed beneath the arches. I miss the smell of fresh bread wafting from the bakery at sunrise, the baker’s morning greeting, the woman at the market who always asked, “Everything okay, dear?” even though she barely knew my name. There was a sweetness in those small gestures, in those rituals that once seemed insignificant and now mean everything.

And I miss Bosco Chiesa Nuova at Christmas.
The snow that fell so slowly it seemed suspended in time; the smoke rising from the chimney; the scent of burning wood mingling with the aroma of roasted meat.
I miss the house filled with voices, the clinking of glasses, the golden light from the lamps warming the photographs on the walls. I miss my uncle, holding a glass in his hand, breaking every silence with a joke. He could make everyone laugh, even when there was nothing to laugh about. His voice filled the entire room, and I laughed, every time, even though I already knew the punchline. It was an old, familiar laughter — a sound that felt like home. Sometimes I close my eyes and see him again, sitting by the fire, telling yet another story, the kind that lives forever in memory, maybe they were always the same, but to tell you the truth, even if I know them for having been repeated a thousand of times, i would still listen to them and laugh, laugh to cry.

And then there’s my mother — her calm that seemed infinite, her quiet strength.
I remember the evenings in the kitchen: the faint clatter of dishes while I studied, the old radio humming in the background, the scent of basil in the air. I miss Matteo, my brother, his way of telling stories that made no sense but somehow mattered anyway, constantly disturbing me when I was studying and coming up with new soccer information. Our endless arguments about who would take the last bite of cake or choose the playlist in the car. It sounds trivial, but love lives in those small, unimportant moments that make up a life.

And there’s Betta, my childhood nanny, who loved me as if I were her own. She raised me with the tenderness of someone who has given her whole life to caring for others. I miss the sound of her steps in the hallway, her hands moving quickly in the kitchen, her scent of lavender and clean laundry, her fabulous panzerotti. I remember the comfort of her arms when she held me, the quiet strength of her voice when she told me everything would be all right. She isn’t just a memory—she is my childhood, stitched into the fabric of who I am.

Caltech, for all its brilliance, can’t compete with that.
It is a place of fluorescent lights, perfect machines, endless aspirations. The campus hums with ambition—but also with exhaustion. Here, people are measured in accomplishments, not emotions. We talk about success, research, and progress, but never about the cost of moving forward.
Sometimes I ask myself if it’s worth sacrificing the lightness of affection for the precision of achievement. I answer yes, because I love what I do—but my heart knows that no discovery, no award, will ever fill the empty space left by a shared table and the laughter of those I love. The silence every night destroys me.

Nostalgia has become my most loyal companion.
It’s not nostalgia for a place—it’s longing for people.
I miss my mother’s laughter, my uncle’s jokes, the quiet sound of Betta’s voice saying goodnight. What I miss most is the physical presence of family, the certainty of belonging somewhere. Because home isn’t a building.
Home is a collection of faces, of gestures, of voices.
Home is knowing that someone waits for you, no matter how far away you are.

When I think of Verona from afar—in memory, in dreams—I realize I didn’t just leave a city.
I left a part of myself.
Caltech teaches me to push boundaries, but Verona taught me to feel. And one cannot live fully without both.

Now I understand that growing up means learning to coexist with absence—to hold gratitude and longing in the same hand. Life, perhaps, is an endless rhythm of departures and returns, even when those returns exist only in our minds. When night falls over Pasadena and the campus grows quiet, I open the window and look up at the stars. I wonder if they are the same stars watched by my mother, by Matteo, by Betta, by my uncle. I like to think they are—that they watch over all of us, binding our distances with light.

Maybe nostalgia isn’t sorrow, but love’s persistence.
Love stretching across oceans and years, refusing to fade.
And then I realize that even though I’m here, on the other side of the world, I haven’t truly lost my home.
I carry it within me—in everything I do, in every dream I chase, in every memory that keeps shining quietly within the silence.