Where we come from

I was wondering today about how my father grew into the man he was, with views of the world so much broader than those of so many men of his generation and culture who clung to a small and narrowly prescribed role that was both domineering and scarred.

In part, I think, it was something about how his parents thought and treated him that allowed him to imagine a bigger life. I find this extraordinary because neither Louie or Amelia had a chance to explore much beyond the bounds of theirown Italian immigrant backbone. Neither had the chance for education, yet Mikey got his Master's at Boston University. (I was two when he graduated and have the pictures of daddy in his cap and gown holding onto a pouting me.)

Perhaps it was the way his mother read to him and took him to the library or the way Louie, a barber, allowed more for Mikey than life on the same block, in the same shop. Amelia, before she died so young, may have told Mikey about her dreams of an easier, richer life. She never had it easy, abandoned by her mother at 12, pulled out of school after the sixth grade to care for her father and brothers, never once taken on vacation. Imagining a different life took a kind of courage I can barely conceive of.