Okay, first I want to welcome you to my blog.  I have never "blogged" before...With that being said... I will share my life stories with you (the person or persons reading this).  If anything I hope it gives you a chuckle or at least a snicker.....

In my head I feel like, maybe, this is my “Notebook”... only my love story is with my whole family and one day, my husband will read it to me to help me remember my life with him and my family, or ......maybe like everything else he will think it is one of the kids notebooks with old school work and throw it out….the later seems more likely. Nonetheless, I do love telling my (our) stories…..so here goes....


I will start with a little background, I am second in a line of four children, my father was Italian first generation and my mother was Italian and Polish and English....she now tells us that we may be Jewish or Chinese, pretty sure we are not, but once you hear some of the stories about my dear mother, you will understand how she could think that....I am going with Italian, Polish, English...I grew up outside of the City of Chicago and had a very lively childhood, peppered with lots of love, I was lucky.  I only later in life realized just how lucky...anyway my mother was an Artist and father a Printer by day and Musician by night, he played the Accordion and loved jazz.  He was a musician in the time when people would hire live entertainment for weddings, and other events. He loved music, he was a busy man.  As a child I remember my father sitting on the edge of his Accordion case ( which looks something like a large suitcase) playing his accordion and he would  play and my sisters and brother and I would dance.  This was a not just on special occasions, we danced regularly, whenever there was time, we thought everyone did that....my father would play with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and be tapping his toe to the music.  He would get a far off look in his eye and we new he would play until we were too tired to dance or Mom would call us to come and eat. 

When I was about 12 years old our family moved to the suburbs of Chicago.  It was okay for me, there were a lot of kids in our neighborhood but the families there were a little different.  In our old  neighborhood, we would be out on summer nights until it got dark and all the neighbors would be outside old and young, the whole neighborhood would seem to open and close at the same time for everyone. 

At our new place, it seemed that only the kids were out.. no parents and certainly not any grandparents.  It was a little odd but we adjusted.  My father started working nights once we moved there so it was nice for us because my mom was a homemaker and we could all go to beach when my father worked nights and we were on summer break from school.  We would of course bring the grill to the beach so that we could heat up the water for the spaghetti pot and then have pasta.....that's right pasta... and good old Italian bread..my father would set up his hammock, take a nap and we would all play at the beach.  We honestly thought that was what everyone ate at the beach.....anyway we would swim and my father taught us all to float, he was not a swimmer and neither was my mother...my dad was in the Army, and they taught him to float...he was proud of that and he taught us....we were a bunch of floaters.  He would throw us around in the water and even sometimes let us stand on his shoulders and jump, however, it was really hard to do, because he would cover himself in Vaseline so that he would not get burned....it made for a very slippery surface,  you can imagine. Once we were all fed, tired and dad rested we would head home and he would go off to work.  It was a once a week summer ritual.  We loved it!

Once summer was over.....