My WASPy Mom

My Mom when she was a teen (in the plaid coat) off to go ice skating with friends

I've always thought of myself as an Italian-American even though, to be honest, I'm only half-Italian. My sister and brother are the same way-- not just in terms of being half-Italian, but also in thinking about themselves as being Italian. My father was full-blooded Italian. My Mom doesn't have a hint of Italian blood running through her veins. Her family is German and English.

I suppose my brother, sister, and I mostly identify with the Italian side of our family because, from a cultural point of view, it would have been impossible to resist: weekly Sunday dinners at my Italian grandparent's house, my Dad's family was larger (my paternal grandparents had 8 children, my maternal grandparents had 3), and they, my Dad's side of the family, all spoke Italian regularly.

I have to hand it to my Mom. When she married my Dad, she was suddenly thrust into (what must have been for her) a rather alien environment and a very different sort of family -- the food, the culture, the language, and more -- yet she managed to navigate those waters quite well.

Most everyone, the adults at least, all spoke Italian at those Sunday dinners at my grandparent's house (and at other events). My Mom wasn't alone in terms of being the only non-Italian at those gatherings. Two of my six aunts married men who weren't Italian. My uncle, my Dad's brother, also married a non-Italian.  My uncle's wife, my Aunt Edna, is a first-generation Polish-American. She speaks English and Polish and, after marrying my Uncle Sandy, she learned to speak Italian as well. Because of that, she seemed to fit in with the Italians much better than my Mom ever did. My Aunt Edna is 96 now and her daughter, my cousin Sandra, is her full-time caretaker.

I can still remember my Mom sitting there at those family gatherings with her expressions and body language plainly indicating she was not often sure what was going on around her or what people were saying. The other women, my grandmother and my aunts, didn't ever invite her to join in on the food preparations. She wasn't Italian after all. She was usually relegated to the clean-up crew. My Mom's name is Aileen. My grandmother, with her thick Italian accent, always called her what sounded like, Aye-lee-na.

As out of place as my Mom often felt -- and I know she often felt that way, like an outsider, because she's told me so -- I never heard her complain about it. She simply went with the flow. Coming from a WASPy background, that couldn't have been too easy for her. Her family was so much less loud. Less animated. Less emotional. Less in-your-face. My Dad's family could be overbearing at times, my Mom's family was not that way at all.  And that might also account for why I barely identify with the WASP side of my family. Sometimes, though, I think it was her family who gave me a better sense of cultural balance. And I appreciate that.