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graziadiocenterilpostino · 3 years

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“Do As I Say, Do As She Does”, An Anonymous Student Essay

This essay was written for an Italian course last semester. The instructor thought it was exemplary and thought it would be an excellent idea to share it with a larger public. The student agreed to it, with the condition of remaining anonymous. We therefore publish it here with minimal edits due to the different medium and audience for which it was originally intended.

“Yep, the ol’ man was a gigolo”, Papa says with a smoker’s chuckle and tears in his yellow, beady eyes. He’s remembering his father, Gaetano “Tommy” S***, or Big Papa as he is known by the great-grandkids, seeming to forget that I’ve heard the story he’s about to tell dozens of times already. Sometimes I wonder if he’s aware of this fact, but he proceeds to tell me anyway in a subtle attempt to admit just how much his father’s infidelity had affected him as a young man. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking that Papa is speaking less about the weakness of his dad, and more about the strength of his mother.

My great-grandmother’s name is Rita, but I never knew that until third grade when I attended her funeral. We all called her Noni instead, a name synonymous with the smell of Entenmann’s, Dove soap, and the beautiful garden of lemons, oranges, and roses surrounding my great-grandparents’ house on Ellery Street in San Pedro. She greeted us with the same delight at every Sunday lunch, stepping out of her kitchen to squeeze our cheeks and cry out joyfully, “Carme-nooch! Vincenzo! Gino!”. Her eyes would sparkle as she embraced us, and she gave the warmest hugs known to mankind. She greeted everyone like this, and in our big Italian family, that meant over twenty people on any given Sunday. On holidays, at least forty people would show up, cramped together in the living room to enjoy her delicious cooking and endless supply of stories. Anywhere you looked, the walls were protected by a cross, or a statue of Mary, or guardian angels. Always surrounding these items were pictures of S*** relatives, symbolizing the central role of faith in our family. Noni’s strong adherence to the Catholic beliefs had made her a welcoming and forgiving person, who treated everyone with the same level of respect and affection no matter what. It was no wonder why she was able to attract such great company through all the years up to her passing at the age of eighty-five, ten years ago. But it was only within the last five years, once Papa started to reveal more information to me during our back-porch talks, that I truly realized the sacrifices Noni had made because of her faith, and the very different role religion had played in my great-grandfather’s life.

By the time I was old enough to know who Big Papa was, he was already disabled (which, according to my grandfather, was the only reason he stopped messing around with other women). I rarely saw him get up from his enormous throne of brown leather, but when he did, everyone made a big deal out of it. He still had the aura of a king, despite being in his eighties, which I’m told was passed down to him from his father, the first Carmen S***. My great-great-grandfather Carmen was known as “Capodochiaro” by the fishing community in San Pedro, which in his dialect meant “king of the beach”. He came to America in 1913 from Ischia, Italy, bringing with him a childhood’s length of experience in fishing and specifically, net making. Over his lifetime he had owned ten commercial fishing boats in the Los Angeles Harbor, and was so successful that at one point the New Zealand government tried to recruit him to teach their fishermen net making. At his wife’s request, the Capodochiaro refused. Big Papa was raised in San Pedro to continue the family business and maintained three of the boats. His work ethic was just as strong as his father’s, which he then passed down to my grandfather. To this day, Papa can never seem to emphasize enough his father’s ability to show him what it meant to work and take pride in your work at such a young age.

When he was not working, however, Big Papa was a lot more reckless. He nearly smoked and drank himself to death at several points in his life and, as mentioned, got himself involved with other women. Yet he did all of this while maintaining a close relationship with God. The irony of these two truths occurring at once reminds me of the irony involved with certain initiations into the Mafia. In the video we watched on Michael Franzese, he describes the “made man” ceremony in which a picture of a saint was burned in his hand, a sacrilegious act to initiate him into a life of greed, deceit, and horrific violence. At the same time, these individuals identified themselves as proud Roman-Catholics!

On a smaller scale, Big Papa displayed the same dichotomy between his faith and his actions. Though he rarely attended church himself, my great-grandfather was a strong believer in Christ and made sure to put my grandfather and his siblings through Catholic school and all of the necessary sacraments. It really shocked me, to say the least, when I found out that the man who had made such an effort to instill Catholic beliefs and morals into his son was the same man to make him sit in the car during his pre-work “errands”. Thankfully, reading Jerre Mangione’s Mount Allegro has enabled me to explore this behavior in new ways. For instance, Mangione describes his relatives as having Catholicism “so deeply ingrained in their bones that they could violate some of its man-made rules without the slightest feeling of guilt”. Was my great-grandfather so confident in his faith that he could violate the seventh commandment without remorse? If so, why was he then so adamant on raising my grandfather “by the book”? Once again, Mangione provides an explanation. In the same passage, he proclaims that “the young had yet to prove their devotion by going to church and following the rules of the Catholic Church”. In other words, the adults had done their time, and had reached the point at which they were essentially best friends with God, no longer His servants. In Big Papa’s case, he had served as an altar boy, got married in a church, and that was enough for him. His only responsibility after that was to put his kids through the same experience, for their own good and protection under God. It did not faze him that he was sinning in his own life or violating Holy Matrimony. My great-grandfather viewed God as a best friend who he would often disappoint, but who would always forgive him. His greatest contribution to the friendship was offering his beloved children the chance to grow into honorable men and women, to do as he said and not as he did.

Noni’s approach was similar and different. She certainly made an equal if not greater effort to raise her children within the Catholic faith. However, as stated earlier, she practiced what she preached; and it was because of this adherence to the faith that Noni felt obligated to sacrifice so much. For example, her propensity to forgive her husband for all of his affairs could only be attributed to a woman seeking to live her life in the image of Christ. It also revealed her devotion to her children, as she believed divorcing my great-grandfather would only create problems for Papa and his siblings down the road. She stuck it out because she truly believed it was the right thing to do for her children, not herself. For over half a century she slept under the same roof as the man who had betrayed her so many times, so that her family could remain unified. Her marriage may have been hanging by a thread, but Noni’s sacrifices proved to be worthwhile. Our massive Italian family stayed intact for all of her life, all thanks to her selflessness that she maintained because of her devotion to God and the Catholic faith.

When Noni passed away, Big Papa’s health was in steep decline. His mind was deteriorating, and he had lost almost all of his short-term memory. Because of this, he would always ask for my great-grandmother, and the adults would reassure him that she was on vacation. They never told her she had passed away, but my grandfather is convinced that he knew. Big Papa passed away on her birthday, within the same year.

Papa never complains about his upbringing as a child aware of his dad’s indiscretions. He never feels sorry for himself, instead only for his mother. But he also expresses extreme gratitude for Big Papa and reassures me that although his shortcomings as a husband went without saying, he was still a “great father”. This conclusion used to strike me as odd, but now I am able to understand it better. My grandfather inherited his mother’s warm heart and his father’s work ethic, the former allowing him still to appreciate the latter without resentment. His unconditional love for his father was the same kind of love given by Noni, who took Christ as her example.

I would like to make clear that I have nothing but love for my great-grandfather. There is so much more to him that was left out of this essay, for the sake of relevance, that I wish I could have included. I understand that people are complicated, and this essay was in no shape or form a means to speak ill of Big Papa. This side of him was discussed solely for me to explore his relationship with God and how it differed from that of my great-grandmother. From everything I’ve been told, I can say without a doubt that my great-grandfather was a good man. He had flaws like the rest of us, in some areas more than others, but I know in the end he truly loved his wife.

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