She was the oldest of three girls born right before WW1. A very smart kid, she excelled in grade school right through high school. Great with numbers, she was a natural to become an accountant. No way. Her father needed her to get to work and earn money to help the family. This was the height of the Great Depression and though he had a better job than most men at that time, money was money. One never had enough during those terrible times. She was the oldest and that was that. She would go to business school to learn how to type fast and take dictation. No college for her.

She met the ‘ love of her life’ a few years out of school. He was handsome and broke. An only child, he had to drop out of Brooklyn College ( a tough school to get into at that time) and work. His dad was a machinist who got blacklisted from his craft due to participating in one too many labor strikes in NYC. His mom had to find factory work, and she got her son a job as well. They lived on banana or broccoli rabe sandwiches for quite some time. His dad couldn’t even qualify for relief, as they called unemployment and welfare in those days. They dated for seven years as marriage was put off due to financial insecurity.

To make matters worse, on December 1st 1940 her fiancé’s dad blew his brains out in the bathtub. She had to wait a bit longer for the healing to slow a bit, and finally she married her A-L as she called him. When they returned from their long awaited honeymoon his mother was ready to live with them. Her new husband had informed her of this before the wedding ceremony. His dad, before taking his own life, made sure to have his son promise that, if anything happened to him, his mother would not be left alone… ever. The two women seemed to be competing for his attention, and this led to many fights between the ‘Mrs. Farruggios’.

As time went on the couple decided to finally have a child. She carried the baby for the whole term until complications set in. The child was born dead… just like that. Something went off in her psyche and she never really recovered. In those days working class people did not go for therapy, so she had to ‘ Tough it out’ any way she could. Three years later a second child was born, another son. She became obsessed with making sure the boy was well taken care of… too much it seemed. Then, three years later another son was born, and she really over protected him as well.

It took her many years, when finally going back to work when the boys were older, to climb the ladder of employment success. Starting out as a clerk in an insurance company she excelled enough to finally become an assistant underwriter. The increased pay helped she and her longshoreman husband to afford a nice apartment for the family. Still battling with her mother in law ( who lived to be 92) and her husband, she settled into a routine that was never what she had dreamed, but… who can?

It took this writer most of my adult life to finally understand this woman. My psychoanalyst revealed that my mom was a flawed product of her environment. Perhaps more like a child emotionally, my mom meant well… just could not get there enough. Sad.

PA Farruggio
Mothers Day, 2025