Personal Essay: The Italians

A little slice of my personal history

Hello!

This week has been pretty insane in a good way, so I haven’t had time to delve into publishing topics. Instead, I decided to share a personal essay about my Italian family. It isn’t finished or perfect, but that is how writing works, right? It’s terrifying to share a piece of my writing, but so many of you share yours that it inspired me.

Please be kind in the comments. I feel vulnerable publishing this, but I want to share more personal essays in the future, so why not start now?

Without further adieu, I present THE ITALIANS.

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     If you think all Italian families are like the ones portrayed in “The Godfather” (except part 3), “Moonstruck,” and “The Sopranos,” you are entirely wrong and entirely right. Allow me to explain.

     My childhood was filled with Sundays when my mom would make a pot of gravy, meatballs, and spaghetti. Gravy, for those not in the know, is red sauce. If you refer to gravy as “red sauce” before The Italians, you will never be invited to Sunday Macaroni Day again. But I digress. While Sundays were generally spent at home, Saturday nights were reserved for visits to my grandmother’s house for dinner (more pasta, more gravy) and a full gathering of Italians, who consisted of aunts, uncles, and cousins. I was the youngest and, therefore, relegated to the kiddie table with my slighter older cousin until spots opened up at the adult table. The kiddie table was my grandmother’s kitchen table, where one of my aunts would cook, and my cousin and I would devise a plan to get more dessert while we spied on the adults. We would then watch “Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island.” This was about as simple as the Italians could be, but not the status quo.

     The two most enigmatic figures within The Italians were my two aunts, who lived with my grandmother. They never married and never brought a boyfriend around but traveled when they could, sometimes taking me to the Bahamas, St. Thomas, and Aruba. I credit my single aunts for teaching me about the good life at a very young age. Finding out that an island vacation is not something one does annually was just the beginning of many disappointments I would weather.

     My mother was the youngest of five children, so she had two brothers and my aunts.  My grandfather, who died before I was born, was of the common male mindset of the 1950s: only boys get to go to college. And so one uncle was a doctor and The Chosen One, while my other uncle was a pharmacist. My mother and her sisters held various office positions that constituted a career for each of them. If you’re wondering whether it is more beneficial to be related to a doctor or a pharmacist, the choice is easy: PHARMACIST.

     I was well aware of the hierarchy within The Italians at a very young age. But, my family was blue-collar, so we were at the bottom of the totem pole. There were exceptions, such as the trips I took with my aunts, but for the most part, it was very clear that we were low-hanging fruit. Every Christmas, my aunts would shower The Chosen One and his family with lovely gifts: jewelry, clothes, and plane tickets to Florida. I usually got a sweater, as did my father, and my mother would receive a small piece of jewelry that she didn’t like but always gracefully accepted. You cannot disrupt the hierarchy of The Italians. My brother and sister were somehow excused from the holidays, which meant my duty as the youngest of our nuclear family was very important. Since the presence of all other cousins was mandatory, my parents had to show up with one kid in tow—and that kid was me.

     I will dispel a common myth here and tell you that the depiction of Italians having loud, large family dinners is not the norm. Most Italian families are very subdued and sometimes frosty. However, the presence of my boisterous Sicilian aunt (wife of the pharmacist uncle) always got the side eye from the rest of the family. The rules were fairly simple: No shouting, no drinking, no smoking, no music, no television unless competitive figure skating was on, no half-eaten food left on your plate because that is insulting to the chef, and by no means will anyone express feelings. Stay within the limits, and Happy Holidays.

     The Italians' non-emotive nature went by the wayside on only one occasion: death. You have not been to a real funeral until you have been to an Italian funeral.

     My grandmother did not speak English, so I tried to understand her Italian. I didn’t know how to speak Italian, so I pretended to know what she was saying. When I was twelve years old, my grandmother, who suffered from diabetes, became very ill. I don’t remember a whole lot from that time except frequent visits to her hospital room. I spent my 13^th birthday surrounded by my aunts, parents, and my grandmother’s fragile body in the ICU. My big gift was a digital alarm clock. No cake, no singing, no friends. Just the fading beep of a dying Italian woman’s heart monitor.

     A few weeks after my birthday celebration, my grandmother passed away. It was the first time I was old enough to realize what it meant when a family member died and the range of emotions that come along with it. When I walked into the funeral home with my parents, I was scared. I had never seen a dead body and had never been to a wake. I felt sad, but perhaps not sad enough since all the adults around me cried so much. I didn’t cry at all.

     My eldest aunt threw herself on my grandmother’s coffin as soon as she entered the viewing room at the funeral home. My father sat me on a bench outside the room to spare me the drama, but I could hear her screaming, “Mama! Mama! Oh, Mama!” I didn’t know what to do or how to feel. No one talked to me about how to “do death,” so I observed The Italians mourn. Seeing emotion from people who could barely muster a hug any other time you were in their presence was shocking.

     When I was finally allowed to kneel in front of my grandmother’s coffin, I found myself unable to take my eyes off her. She wore a mint green chiffon dress, her gray hair in a tight bun, hands crossed, holding rosary beads, and the slightest hint of make-up. I almost willed myself to see her chest move up and down, breathing again so that I wouldn’t have to know she was dead. That was the moment when I realized the finality of death and that life had an ending.

     If my grandmother’s wake shook me to my core, her funeral broke open a part of my heart that I didn’t know existed. I had never seen my mother cry until that day, and I felt helpless as she broke down in tears. The mass continued for what seemed like hours before we went to the cemetery. After the family gathered and prayed, we were each given a rose to place on top of my grandmother’s coffin as we made our way back to the car. Since I was the youngest, someone thought it best for me to be last in line. I went to the coffin's side, nervous but determined to gently place my rose with the others. When I put my rose down, every other rose on the coffin fell into the grave, and I could not stop laughing. My parents looked like they wanted to kill me, but my sister, having the same nervous laugh affliction as me, started cracking up. This was not the way The Italians did death.

The Italians, a Cheat Sheet:

·       Never refuse food from an Italian mother/aunt. They will think you are on a diet and tell you diets don’t work.

·       Cannoli is a gift from God, and pasta dishes are the Lord’s carbs.

·       Show up for family functions because someone will tell you off at a funeral if you don’t.

·       Unless you are a doctor or lawyer, The Italians don’t care what you do for a living.

·       You will always feel guilty, even when you didn’t do anything.

·       Only introduce a non-Italian boyfriend/girlfriend to the family if you are going to marry them.

·       Try to marry an Italian.

·       “Shut up” is the most useful phrase to know in Italian (sta ‘zitto)

·       All Italians love Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

·       Sofia Loren is a goddess.

·       Never admit that you don’t go to church. God will forgive you. I promise.

END NOTES:

I’m only going to tell you what I’m watching because it’s so much fun:

PALM ROYALE on Apple+ is so campy. If you like the fashion of Mad Men with a wicked twist and a country club setting, this is for you.