Happy summer everyone!
It has been a little crazy the last few months and
have had precious little time to post anything at all. I just celebrated a
birthday and as usual my family and friends made me feel special and loved. I
was reminded of my very first birthday celebrated in America...
July
12, 1965 Weymouth, Massachusetts
My
fifth birthday! We had been living with
my Aunt Tina and her family since arriving from Italy. The adults had been preoccupied with things
like finding us a house to rent, jobs, and putting me in school etc. My aunt was starting to get a little crabby at
having houseguests for so long and my mother was getting uncomfortable with the
whole thing. She was anxious to get out
of there as quickly as possible.
For
me it had been all fun and games. I was
treated like a minor celebrity by the neighbors and kids on the block. I guess we were a bit of a novelty and a
distraction from the heat and boredom that summer. I had been befriended by two girls my age,
Stacey and Shelley. Shelly showed me how
there were handprints in the driveway cement of her and her siblings which I
found fascinating. They taught me
important things like how to run through the sprinklers, eat popsicles, and they
introduced me to the magical world of Barbie!
They also taught me to speak English.
My parents were amazed that after only two months I could converse with
these girls without any problems or accent.
The
trade off was that they wanted to know Italian. They would point to stuff all
day long and ask things like “How do you say Turtle?” Tartaruga, I would
reply. And so it went. They would try to
repeat the word in Italian and then dissolve into fits of giggles. I was happy
to keep them so entertained. So when
Shelly’s mom heard it was my birthday she insisted that she was going to bake me
a cake. I remember sitting on a bar
stool at their kitchen counter and watching in awe as she deftly frosted a 4
layer chocolate cake letting us have the extra icing and a couple of
spoons. This was heaven and a very
foreign concept to me. The only cakes I
had ever eaten had come from a bakery. My mother was an awesome cook but didn’t
know the first thing about baking. And
here this woman was turning out this delicious thing right here in her own
kitchen! I was mesmerized.
These lovely people were my first exposure to Americans, their foods, language and customs.I was hooked! Shelly decided that she was going to call me Patti because Patrizia was too hard to say and anyway “you’re an American girl now”…Twenty two years later as a new mom, I asked the men doing the cement walkways at our new house to wait just a minute. I held Christina’s little hand and made an impression in the still wet cement with her name and the date.When she was older, she thought it was pretty cool too. I guess some things stay with you whether you realize it or not
.
