Happy Birthday to the Man Who Made Us “Normal”

OK, maybe normal is a stretch. But God knows my dad was a grounding force in our house and that was what we needed.

People who are grounding forces in our lives don’t always get books written about them because they’re not generally causing a stir, or “Making a show,” as my father put it.

Nope. My dad got up every morning around six am, dressed for work, had a little breakfast (courtesy of the woman who did make the show) and left to go lay brick and block.

When I was small and he got home, I’d run to him and hug his pant leg (as far as I could reach when I was five). His clothes had the sweet smell of brick dust and the mortar he worked with every day. That was the smell of dad.

He had a few thoughts on getting ahead:

Keep your nose to the grindstone.

Do your best.

Keep going, you’ll make it.

Work harder than anyone else and you’ll get ahead.

What did you accomplish today?

That last one used to really tick my mom off because she always had a hot meal ready for him and did her best to keep the house clean and her kids safe. “I hate it wenna he says a dat, as if I don’t do anyting alla day.”

He felt you could accomplish anything you set your mind to if you just kept at it. That was his mindset when he built our house, he just kept at it, brick by brick.

Fun and vacation were not words he uttered very often, if at all. We didn’t go on vacations because summer was when the weather was good and you could work almost everyday. This man got us up at 4 a.m. on Sundays to attend 5 a.m. mass so he could work without missing going to church.

After I moved to California and he visited to escape the cold, one of the first things he said was, “Wow, if we had lived here I could have worked all year round.” He had a bit of regret on his face for a minute, lamenting landing in wintery western Pennsylvania, but as quickly as it came, it went. There was no dwelling on what might have been because he didn’t think it did a person any good.

As I heard Ted Lasso say a few weeks ago, “There’s a reason the rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield.”

Dad was quiet, but loved baiting my mom. To her credit, she usually laughed along with him, knowing she was an easy mark. Below is a photo of her in a fur coat he bought her. She’s coming down the basement stairs wearing it and he looks like he’s pretending she’s a bear coming at him, which I am sure she didn’t find as funny as we did, but she took it in stride.

He was honest to his core and did his best to get his kids the education we needed on his bricklayer’s pay. He showed us that hard work was how you got ahead.

When he finally retired in his 70s, he focused on the house and his garden, never letting a day go by when he didn’t accomplish something.

He was kind and quiet. He allowed himself to relax and read the paper on Sundays (when he wasn’t working) and in the evenings he used to let me style his hair in my little kid way, combing it up down and every which way just for a laugh.

So many people, when they think of Italian men, think of those “badda bing” kind of guys. He showed my brothers how to be men without any of that bluster. And he showed me and my sister what a good man and a good husband should be.

Today would have been my father’s 111th birthday. I’ll happily drink a toast to the man who grounded us and did his best to make us “normal,” or at least tried to. God bless you Dad.