Know Your Roots...
There could not be two people from more different backgrounds than my parents. My father was the first born of a white, non-practicing Protestant middle class family from Quincy that moved to a house they had built that sat upon a good amount of land for the 5 children they would eventually have – 4 boys and 1 girl - to run around without being on top of each other. It was only a 3 bedroom house, however the basement was dry and livable and very large. When the younger siblings came along, the eldest children – now in their teens – were moved downstairs to rooms in the basement, so there was never overcrowding. His parents – my grandparents – were a happily married couple, consisting of an accountant and a former secretary turned housewife. They were everything that embodied the 1950’s and the family values of that era. Both of my paternal grandparent’s families had been in America for generations.
My mother was the fourth born of a strict Catholic household, consisting of 8 siblings – 4 brothers and 4 sisters. They grew up in East Cambridge in a house with a very small backyard and not enough bedrooms to accommodate 8 children – bed-sharing, a la Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was the norm. Her parents were married, although ended up divorcing a few years after I was born and was probably due to my grandfather’s infidelity – to be fair, I’m not clear on whether it was actual infidelity or just a wandering eye, but regardless they divorced and he remarried within a few years, whereas she never did. My material grandfather was a fry cook. My maternal grandmother was a cleaner for offices in Boston. Needless to say, my mother grew up poor – like Government cheese poor. Both of them were first generation Americans.
