An Epic Life

World War II veteran Dominick DeGiorgio, on the left, with his brother and sister in law: my grandparents

A photo can tell incredible, complex, wonderful stories.

You are looking at one of my favorites. The man on the left gave everything. His life for his country. He was a soldier who knew great fear in the heat of battle. He wrote letters home, talking of the smell of death. He dreamed of a world where there was no war, no conflict.

The man on the right never had to run from the bullets of enemy attack. He had to make a living in the country that was home, but not his place of origin.

He didn’t die young in a war, like his brother. He lived 92 years, a physically challenging life that would include work, until he no longer could. Until his body said “no more.”

Brothers in arms, in blood, in life. They proved their mettle time and again, building the cornerstone of our family. Their influence is felt every day. Long gone from this earth, but always in the hearts of those that were close.

These are the makings of an epic life.

There is the cornerstone, and there is the mortar. The woman in the middle of the photo is my grandmother. The family may have been built by the men, but it was kept together by the women. The women held the vast influence.

Our generation was shaped, formed, and molded by the women. They taught us our truth, our ethics, our way of life.

My grandmother, and her sisters, represented generations of tradition. As our incessantly frenetic modern lives attempt to strip away any semblance of tradition, values, and common sense, we must fight back in their name.

Fight to keep traditions, values, and a vision of the world as a kind and decent place.

Legacies left behind should be handled with care.

Working class, immigrant, depression era lives. Lives that were truly epic. You and I would be at a loss to describe their stories.

Epic because of the ashes they rose from.

Epic in the tragedy they endured.

Epic in their relentless nature.

Epic with the love and comfort they created.

We don’t know the meaning of the word. Its definition is far different today.

At the time of this writing, it is the 100th anniversary of the birth of my grandmother, the former Rosa Tagliarini. Who took the name DeGiorgio from her love Sebastiano, that handsome devil to the right in the photo. The date of her birth, December 21st, will be like every other day.

Her influence will hover. Her presence will be felt.

To celebrate one hundred, my wife and I will raise our wine glasses in a birthday toast. In remembrance, and thanks.

With gratitude. For the path she helped pave, to our unquestionable abundance, by living her epic life.

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Creating Your Black Friday Traditions

Welcome to the holiday shopping season. Where the same thing happens every year.

The same damn thing.

While the crazed and wild eyed stampede into the late night/early morning hours to acquire their iPads, TVs, handbags and other assorted crap no one needs for a successful and happy life, I was doing the same thing I always do this time of year.

Namely, drooling on my pillow. Watching the back of my eyelids.

The previous night at my in-laws was another Thanksgiving success, breaking bread with family and overindulging a bit on the turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, and assorted vegetables and appetizers.

And don’t get me started on the pumpkin pie.

Whether it was the food, or perhaps that one extra cocktail, the morning came slowly. As I opened my eyes, the digital clock across the room read 9:30.

9:30?? WTF?? I have to get the dog his breakfast, and then outside to do his business. It’s late!

One problem. The dog was still sleeping as well. Thanksgiving can be tiring to our canine counterparts, too.

When Black Friday Comes

Cooper - the last member of the family I expect to over sleep — Cooper – the last member of the family I expect to over sleep

And so begins the biggest shopping day of the year in our house. In typically tardy fashion. I’m not sure if you’d call what we do traditions, but my family spends the post-Thanksgiving day pretty much the same way every year. For example:

After rolling bleary-eyed out of bed, it’s coffee time. After Cooper is taken care of, we’re ready for our morning ritual. If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know we rarely go out for coffee. Not with our full size steel espresso pot on the stove top, standing at the ready.

Strong, creamy, and just like my Nonna used to make. We enjoy this every day, but today, it’s a special cup.

After some chatting in the kitchen, and a couple of phone calls to relatives, my son decides he wants to start a new Black Friday tradition. A little game of hoop in the driveway, on this sub thirty degree day.

It’s a new tradition because we just got the basketball set-up this summer, found on Craig’s List for a fraction of its original cost. Thank you, nice neighbor.

Researching new portable basketball hoops with full size backboards, the prices ranged from $300 to $800 to start. We got our slightly used one for under $120.

Boom! How’s that for savings? And I didn’t even have to wait in a line. Take that, Black Friday!

Relaxation And Entertainment

After a half hour of exercise, I decide to come back in the house and burn a little time on-line by entertaining myself with tales of Black Friday stupidity.

Did you know that fifteen thousand people waited in line for Macy’s flagship store in New York City to open its doors?

Fifteen thousand!

Horrified by what I was reading, I shut the laptop down to go to another Black Friday tradition, house hold chores. Since I’m still a little groggy from my overload of turkey, I’m not going to do much, just vacuum the hall stairs that need cleaning. That one task wears me out.

Physically, I’m not worth much today. A perfect opportunity to write a blog post. And here we are.

Winding It Down

As I write this, my wife is watching a quality show on PBS, which is commercial free. Good thing, because the Black Friday ads on other channels attempt to make all of us look like total jackasses who are concerned with nothing but shopping, over consumption, and greed.

Since we’re not contributing to traffic jams on roads and in stores, there obviously won’t be an over indulgent trip to a restaurant, either. We’ll be eating at home, with a mouth watering rendition of homemade macaroni and cheese, made with rigatoni, cheddar, swiss, and parmigiano reggiano.

Decadent. And again, a fraction of the cost of the Olive Garden meals that shoppers will consume today after their exhausting marathon. After all of their “savings” goals have been met.

After dinner, we’ll probably relax again after the dishes are done. I may take my son to my Dad’s house for a visit, or we could just wind down with an old movie. Hopefully, with as little advertisement as possible. I’m mentally scarred from the limited ads I’ve seen already.

Another year, another Black Friday passed. We’ve lost out again. No big deals, no rude shoppers, no shoulder to shoulder jostling for the latest designer labels. No stress. No generous savings from inflated retail prices.

Unless you are of the mindset that saving 100% is absolutely the best deal you can get.

Promise and Pain: The Year of the Unforgettable

When John F. Kennedy made his now iconic address to the nation concerning the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, two young boys sat side by side, taking it all in. It was dramatic prime time viewing, in which nervous Americans were informed of missile sites primed to attack our shores just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

My cousin (Little) Anthony along with my uncle (Big) Anthony watched transfixed as the President told them of “a clear and present danger”, and then spoke of initiated steps for the defense of our security from the Russian and Cuban threat.

My uncle’s response to the telecast?

“Well, there goes Christmas!”

My uncle was just a boy, knowing nothing of political strife, or wars between countries, or the madness of men seeking to rule the world.

He cared about his family, and about how this new situation with the President would ruin the holidays.

Their paths would converge again, in 1963, as darkness would fall and the world, and its history, would change in a profound way.

Nothing But The Pain

I was born in the middle of a ferocious snowstorm in March of that year, a new member of a family that was growing and becoming more prosperous. My parents hadn’t been married a year yet, and here I was already making my appearance.

The first child and grandson, I was new royalty, and these were happy times. The American Dream was being formed right in our household. An occasion to celebrate.

It was a time of celebration that was short lived. My uncle passed away only months after I was born, leaving a gaping hole in our family, and my grandparents wracked with grief and despair.

They had nothing now but the pain, and their adopted country soon followed suit. The year got no easier with America’s deepening involvement in Vietnam, escalation of racial tension in the south, and the final blow – the assassination of the President.

In the working class neighborhood where my family lived, the same shock was felt everywhere when hearing of the nature of Kennedy’s death. They had heard it on radio, read it in a special afternoon edition of the hometown newspaper.

If you were able to afford a television, you watched as Walter Cronkite gave you the timeline of events, wiping his eyes because he knew a promising young life had been cut short. The axis of history had been moved.

The Promise

Today, fifty years later, I find it hard to believe that my grandparents gave the President’s killing more than a brief thought. A life they held close, their Anthony, had already been cut short. There was no grief left to offer the Kennedys, or our country. They couldn’t have cared.

As my cousin said to me in a phone conversation, “It took them a really long time to get over it”. If they did at all.

1963 was my year, my beginning.

The year that began with much promise on a winter’s night took a turn down a wrong highway and could not turn back.

Our nation, with that promise of hopes and dreams to be fulfilled, became a bleak and bitter landscape. In Washington. In Dallas. On the edge of my town, in a house on a corner lot where my grandparents lived, there was sadness.

Fifty years later, there is remembrance. Our country was changed, our lives were altered. The promise was taken away, and we can never know what might have been.

We can only remember.

What Inspires Me: One Relentless Man

On a cool summer evening in the late 1930s, my Grandmother stood on a neighborhood sidewalk, talking in Italian to a friend that lived on the same street. In the middle of conversation, the friend noticed a man walking up the sidewalk.

“Here comes your husband,” she said. My Grandmother replied that it couldn’t be him, that she didn’t recognize the silhouetted figure. A stunning moment later, she realized it was him, although she couldn’t see his face. The man she married was covered in soot and grime from a new job at the railroad yard, one of the first he held in a steadfast pursuit of their version of the American Dream.

Coming to America was just the first step at the bottom of the hill. He was relentless in his ascent up the mountain of that dream.

That dream must have looked impossible to a man whose English was rough, and came to the USA with primarily physical skills.

His was the story of thousands of Italians who emigrated to these shores, to the land of hope and dreams for sons and daughters to follow.

Joe DiMaggio turned to baseball because he hated the lingering smell of dead fish that stained his father’s fishing boat. Rocky Marciano ran straight into a boxing ring, to avoid the factory life that crippled his father into a shell of his former self.

My Grandfather’s family came from the unforgiving terrain of Southern Italy, for just a chance to chase something better.

His relentless nature proved to make a modestly successful immigrant life, and paved the way for the generations after him. We enjoy what we have now in part from the fruits of his labors.

He had to continue to be relentless with sadness and grief as a life companion. He lost a brother in our country’s Great War, a brother fighting for the nation he had just begun to call “home.” Fighting for the freedom we enjoy and take for granted in modern America.

He had to continue to be relentless after the death of a son who was barely a teenager in the early ’60s. His attempted therapy to make his sadness go away was cleaning the floors of the restaurant that would support our family. My cousin’s description of his demeanor was that of “a rock,” steadfast in the face of the worst tragedy.

He was relentless with old age and declining health, still coming to the restaurant although he, at times, had to drag one of his legs across the floor while walking. He never complained of physical pain or ailments. It was hard, maybe impossible, to know if he was feeling under the weather. There were no clues.

I make it a common practice that whenever I think I have a “problem,” I think of what my Grandfather had to go through. His courage and relentless nature are traits that are hard to replicate, deemed unnecessary in our society, concerned with comfort and convenience.

I can only admire, and myself barely scratch the surface of, the relentlessness ingrained into the hearts and will of the immigrants that dug through the mud and built the foundation of our lives.

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How to Harness the Power of Summer: Falling Off the Grid

Many of you that commented on the last post may have noticed it took a painfully long time for me to respond to those comments. It wasn’t because of a sudden surge of laziness or arrogance – I appreciate every comment I receive, whether I respond or not, and think they equal internet gold.

The reason is I simply fell off the grid – and I have nothing to blame but this beautiful season they call summer and the equally important summer vacation. There was no checking of blog stats, no Facebook or email notifications. For the better part of two full weeks.

The obvious thing to do is when traveling, leave the technology at home. The kids did have their iPods with them to entertain during rainy periods – and there were a few of those. But my wife and I left the laptop at the house – and if you read the last post, you probably figured out we don’t own an iPad or a smartphone. This sets us up to enjoy important vacation activities.

Our most anticipated summer activity is the trip to Cape Cod, to enjoy the Atlantic Ocean and its breathtaking views. We usually splurge on this trip, renting a loft room at a hotel facing the ocean, just a few steps from a beautiful beach. We are all about being beach bums here, so we spend a lot of time sitting on/ walking down the shoreline and jetties. We also do our fair share of dinners out, drives for ice cream, and a round or two of mini-golf. Total relaxation.

Whenever we cross the Bourne Bridge to head to the highway and leave the Cape, it is always with a heavy heart. It’s our favorite getaway destination, bar none. This year, we stopped at home to refresh our suitcase, and we were gone again. Many of our summer weekends are spent boating and swimming in Lake George, and we are fortunate that my wife’s parents have a house nearby that makes for a very short trip to the lake. Total relaxation mode is still in high gear here, as the boat is anchored in the warm bays of the lake for the kids to swim, kayak, and snorkel.

Done on the lake, we’ll head back to the house we call “camp” and spread out on the spacious front porch for cocktail hour. Accompanied by fine hors d’oeuvres, drinks will be had and dinner preparations made. From the comfort of Adirondack chairs, I may spy my daughter on her iPod, and feel a slight twinge of internet deprivation.

“I could be missing important information!”, I’ll think to myself. Thankfully, the feeling lasts only a few seconds and I’m back to sipping vodka.

Another favorite summer pastime is attending rock concerts in Saratoga Springs. Thanks to a good friend, we were able to see Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers from 5^th row seats to initially start the vacation. Of course, high technology was prevalent at the show, with the majority of people in front of us using their phones to take photos of the band…and themselves. My “dumb phone”, which takes 1890’s quality photos, stayed right in my pocket. Had no choice but to simply enjoy the music and watch a band whose talents have been honed razor sharp over the last 35 plus years.

Actually watching the band play their entire set without taking a single photograph with your phone is a very old-school way to enjoy a concert. Very few people do it that way.

Yup, we were this close. Thanks to my friend Jeff for the primo seats!

I know it sounds like the above was enough to fill vacation time, but I enjoyed yet more low tech, high touch activities. I played golf with my Dad and his friends in a country club setting, read a couple of chapters in a book (yup, I turned pages on an actual book), and cast a fishing line into a river a few times as well.

A summer vacation like this one reminds me of the summers of past, free from school. Outdoor activities were the norm and the only “high technology” that was enjoyed was falling asleep to the television, being too exhausted to watch. Or spinning albums on my stereo turntable long into a warm, breezy night.

It also brings back memories of my grandparents. Television was their technology of choice. Or perhaps an old transistor radio, its sound echoing to the back yard patio, among the fruit trees and grape vines.

Twitter, Facebook, and email fade into the distance. The summer sunset, my family on our deck, and the rising of the moon are all important in the seasons of here and now, and those that we may be privileged enough to have in the future.

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