The Frontier

When Love Calls Us Across the Unknown

I have lived much of my life near frontiers, although it took me many years to understand what a frontier really means.

As a child, I thought a frontier was simply a border between countries. A line on a map. A place where one land ended and another began. Later, I came to understand that a frontier can also be something much deeper. It can be the line between fear and courage, between separation and belonging, between the life we are trapped inside and the life that seems to be calling us from the other side.

My first experience with a frontier came when I was very young. My parents had decided to leave Southern Italy and move to the northern part of Switzerland. Like many families, they were searching for opportunity, work, and a different future. But at that time, Swiss law placed strict limits on immigration, and foreign workers were not allowed to bring their children with them. My parents took the risk anyway. They packed the few belongings we had and brought us with them, hoping to keep the family together.

Because of the law, we had to remain hidden. I did not understand any of this at the time. I was only a child. I did not understand borders, immigration laws, fear of authorities, or the sacrifices parents make when they are trying to create a better life. I only knew that I was with my family. But during our first week there, I got lost in a supermarket.

That simple childhood moment changed everything. The authorities were notified, and my parents were forced to send me out of the country. Since the Austrian border was nearby, they arranged for me to stay with an elderly working-class Austrian couple. It was considered an easier solution than sending me all the way back to Southern Italy.

I was five years old.

The couple would leave for work and lock me inside the small house for long hours. Sometimes I was alone for most of the day. There were no children to play with, no familiar voices, very little comfort, and very little food. The house felt less like a home and more like a small fortress. I waited. I listened. I endured the silence. And when they returned, I dreaded that too, because they did not understand my fear, my loneliness, or my defiance.

A child does not need many words to know when he does not belong. One morning, something in me decided that I could not stay there anymore. I remember climbing onto the small kitchen table and squeezing myself through the window. First, I pushed out my cardboard suitcase. It held the few things that belonged to me: socks, sweaters, shorts, and the small proof of my identity as a child who still belonged somewhere. Then I climbed out after it. From there, I made my way over the fence.

The Austrian couple’s property was near the Rhine River. I knew, somehow, that Switzerland was on the other side. And I knew my family was there. I did not have a plan. I did not know what would happen. I did not know if I would be punished, stopped, returned, or lost again. But I had one certainty inside me: my family was across that river. So I began walking toward a small bridge in the distance.

It was a customs point.

I lifted my little cardboard suitcase and started crossing the bridge. I must have looked very serious for a five-year-old boy. I was alone, determined, frightened, and carrying everything I had. As I approached, a middle-aged customs officer stepped forward and blocked my way. He asked me if I spoke German or Italian. The truth is, I barely spoke at all. I had a stutter, and speaking was more embarrassing than helpful. So I stood there, looking at him, probably with a seriousness that did not belong on a child’s face.

I was not thinking about laws. I was not thinking about borders. I was not making a philosophical statement about freedom. I was trying to get back to love.

That is what I understand now.

At five years old, I could not have explained it. I could not have said that the river represented separation, or that the bridge represented a frontier, or that my suitcase represented the small identity I was trying to carry across a world too large for me. A child does not turn pain into meaning while it is happening. A child simply reaches for home.

Eventually, my situation became even more complicated. I was sent back to Southern Italy and placed for a short time with an aunt. Later, I spent several months in an orphanage before another loving aunt came to my rescue. Those experiences left their mark on me, even though it took many years before I could understand what they had given me.

For a long time, I only knew the facts of the story.

The move.
The separation.
The Austrian house.
The window.
The suitcase.
The river.
The bridge.

But as life continued, I began to see that this was not only a childhood memory. It was my first encounter with the frontier. And the frontier, I came to understand, is not always a physical line.

Sometimes the frontier is the place where we stand between what confines us and what calls us. It is the place where we do not yet know how we will cross, but something inside us knows we cannot remain where we are. It is the place where fear is real, but love is stronger than fear. That day, I was not brave in the way adults speak about bravery. I was not courageous because I understood the danger. I was courageous because love had made staying impossible. There is a difference.

Love was the force that moved me. Faith was the only thing I had, although I would not have called it faith at that age. I simply believed that if I could get across the river, I would see the faces I loved again. I could imagine them. I could hear them. I knew they were somewhere on the other side, and that knowing was enough to move me forward. Looking back now, I realize how much of life follows this same pattern. Many times, we find ourselves standing at a river of some kind. On one side is what we know, even if what we know has become painful. On the other side is something we long for, but cannot fully see. Between the two is uncertainty. We may not know what will happen if we cross. We may not know whether we will be welcomed, rejected, understood, or changed. We may not even know whether the image we carry of the other side is real.

But something inside us listens. Sometimes instinct speaks before reason can organize the situation. Sometimes love knows before the mind has a map. Sometimes the body begins moving because the soul has already recognized the direction. I do not say this to romanticize pain. Childhood separation, fear, and abandonment are not beautiful while they are happening. A frightened child should not have to become philosophical in order to survive. But later, when we look back, we may discover that even difficult experiences carried a message we could not understand at the time.

For me, the message was this: a frontier is not only what separates us. It can also reveal what we are moving toward.

If I had imagined danger on the other side of the river, perhaps I would have stayed where I was. If I had imagined only punishment, hostility, or darkness, I may have gone back into the house and waited. But in my mind, the other side of the river carried the faces of my family. It carried warmth. It carried belonging. It carried the possibility of being held again by the people who were mine. That image pulled me forward.

This has stayed with me for the rest of my life. There are moments when I still feel myself standing at that river. Not literally, of course, but inwardly. Every time a choice needs to be made, every time I feel the edge between the known and the unknown, every time life asks me to move beyond an old confinement, I recognize something familiar.

The frontier is there again. And I ask myself: what is on the other side of this fear? Is it danger, or is it love calling me forward? Is it illusion, or is it a deeper truth I am being asked to trust? Am I trying to escape something, or am I being drawn toward something more essential?

Those questions matter. Because not every crossing is wise, and not every impulse should be followed blindly. But there are moments when the heart, the body, and the deeper instinct of life begin to move in the same direction. In those moments, the frontier becomes more than a boundary. It becomes a threshold.

I did not know this at five years old. I only knew that I could not remain locked inside that little house. I only knew that my family was somewhere beyond the river. I only knew that love had a direction, and I had to follow it. Many years later, I can say it differently. There are distances the body must cross, and there are distances love has already crossed before we move. That is what the frontier taught me.

It taught me that separation is real, but it is not the whole truth. It taught me that fear can be powerful, but love can become a stronger current. It taught me that sometimes the way forward begins before we understand it, in the quiet certainty that what we love is calling us from the other side.

And perhaps this is why I still consider myself a man of frontier.

Not because I have crossed borders on a map, but because I have learned that human life is filled with thresholds. Between the physical and the spiritual. Between the past and the future. Between confinement and freedom. Between the visible world and the unseen bonds that continue to guide us.

The frontier is the line we fear.

But it may also be the line through which love asks us to become more fully alive.