CHAPTER I Post # 4

I know now that our family did not have a monopoly on familiar dysfunction. But we wore it on our sleeves as a badge of honor. That’s probably Italian. My father was first generation Italian American. Both my paternal grandparents, Grandpa Francisco or “Cice”and Nona Teresa were born in Castel Morone, a village a few miles outside of Caserta in the hard mountains above Naples. It was from Castel Morrone that the father of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, founder of the Pre-Rafaelite Brotherhood art movement, emigrated to England. My grandmother was a Rossetti. The Italian ran strong in my father though I found later it ran stronger in me.
Love was never absent in our family, though at times it was well disguised. My father instilled a strong sense of family, expounding ‘the Family this, and the Family that.’ “Never repeat what is discussed here to anyone,” he’d say. What goes on in the Family stays there and in the end it is always the family you can rely upon. Friends, lovers and even husbands and wives come and go -- the Family remains. Dad showed his love by being a good provider. We never wanted for anything. Mom gave us children a mother’s unconditional love for as long as she could. Then she went away promising to return but she never did. I had a hard time forgiving her for it. But that was my story. The truth, I’m told, lies elsewhere.
My father believed in strict division of labor. The women had their chores and the men theirs. Growing up, I accompanied him every weekend to work on his real estate projects. These were mostly three and five family apartment buildings that he renovated, rented for a number of years then sold at a profit. He had a good eye for real estate instilled, he said, by my grandmother Teresa. I painted apartments, cleaned out basements, and learned to lay tile, repair plumbing, sheetrock and do minor electric work. I also raked dried condom-filled sludge from acre-sized septic filter beds of a forty-one unit complex Dad owned in Sagamore, Massachusetts -- a job none of the workers wanted. At home, except for taking out the trash, I was not required to do any house work. That was the realm of my two younger sisters, Carol Jean and Susan. Outside work was delegated to me; I mowed the lawn and racked the leaves, washed the cars and painted the house every five years.
Grandmother Teresa, or Nona died when I was seven. She was a shrewd woman, owned real estate and ruled her family with an iron hand. In a weak moment my father said, she had nagged my grandfather Francisco to death after he had been injured in an accident that left him a partial invalid and unable to work.
Grandpa Francisco played the guitar. He was also the president of the Lincoln Credit Union that served as a bank for the local Italian community,
A hard woman or not, death had marred Nona Teresa. Early in her marriage she had returned to Italy with her youngest child, a year old daughter who like her had blond hair and sky blue eyes. It was winter and cold in the Appennini Mountains that surrounded Castel Morone. The oversized floor-level fireplace that kept the house warm was blazing with wood gathered that afternoon in the fields and forests that surrounded the town. Nona Teresa and her baby slept on the floor near the hearth to keep warm. During the night the baby rolled over into the fire and Nona Teresa watched her baby burn alive. Her next child was a boy she named Nicolas, after another child that had died. Still mourning her lost daughter she dressed him in girls’ clothing and kept his hair in long curls until he was twelve. Nick was her favorite.
Nona Teresa was fickle and would change her will as one of her children would fall into or out of favor. Perhaps hurt by the injustice of a parent playing favorites, my father never openly said any of his children were his preferred. We were treated equally. Of course I was the male and had close proximity to him, a wide and wildly swung two edged sword. In the end any inheritance was equally divided between the children as per his often stated instructions. My father was a man of his word. If you got it in writing.