Throwback Thursday - The Notebooks

To clear up some confusion, the Notebook passages posted on Throwback Thursday were written by my father and found by me after he passed away. They were his attempt to tell the family history. He was in his late 80s or early 90s when he wrote them. Today's chapter:

The other thing that my father-in-law was interested in was becoming a grandfather. We were not in a hurry for that at the time.

One night at the dinner table after dinner, he started to ask me a question which Concordia tried to shut him up.

He asked me, "Joe  when you go to bed what do you do?" The moment he got to the word bed I knew what he was after. I looked at him with a puzzled, innocent look and frown, "I go to sleep." He got up  and headed for the parlor saying as he was shaking his head and in Italian about the stupid Americans didn't know anything. He's going to wait for the stork to bringa the son."

During the first year or two the housing area was tight. It was hard to get an apartment. We were looking and I asked my co-workers to be on the look out. One day I got a chance when my co-worker came in and said that there was a vacancy in his town of Cambridge. Knew the name of the landlord and gave me the address and her telephone number and hot to get there.

I called and made an appointment and Mary and I made it after work. We looked at the place. It was a parlor, bedroom and kitchen. The area was not far from the Charles River and still close to work. We took it. We were so happy and we went home together and told my in-laws what we had done. Boy, did they get mad. This was on a Friday. On Saturday, my father-in-law, Domenic called my wife into the parlor and asked her what did I do or say that made your husband leave us? She explained that we would like to have a place of our own as we were crowded as it was. On the same morning, Concordia who washed our laundry as well as theirs threw ours on the floor and told Mary, "You wanna leave, you washa your own clothes. I no do it no more."

Strictly Italian. You have children. They marry and still live with you. Why should children leave? In Italy, they do not.

There was a television interview with young Italian. And the interviewers couldn't get over the fact that they still lived with their parents. One was married and every night, he went home to his parents and had dinner there while his wife ate with their children. Another built a house and it was unoccupied because he still lived with his parents. The interviewer even spoke to a professor of sociology who stated it was Italy. And that families are close in this country.

[ed: This story surprised me and made me laugh. I have to add a story from my own young adulthood. Around the age of 25 or 26, after a broken engagement, I began to get restless. I was still living at home. All my girlfriends had or were getting their own apartments. One weekend, I broached the subject to my parents. My mother cried for the whole weekend and wouldn't speak to me. Dad called me into the living room and said, "What are we doing to make you so unhappy that you want to leave?" I told him they had done nothing wrong. It was just time for me like all little birds to fly the nest. He listened to me. Said, you have made a thoughtful argument (ever the lawyer), but there would only be one reason you would want your own place and that would be to "entertain gentleman." There are only 2 ways you can leave my roof. You can get married, and he gave me a leveled look. Being the smartass I am I asked, what's the second way? "You can go out in a box." That was the end of the discussion.

My brother was expected to go out and sow his wild oats, but as a young woman, I was not allowed to reap a harvest. Double standards.]