Mom's Birthday 2020

Today is my mother's birthday. Mom, to put it succinctly, is a legend. She grew up in the Bronx, born right before the outbreak of WW2. She grew up frugally, in an age of wartime austerity, and quickly learned that the most valuable possession one could earn was an education. She was a stickler for academic pursuits, but in other matters she wasn't an authoritarian... for instance, she wasn't a believer in curfews, averring that a kid who'd get into trouble at midnight would get into trouble at eight o'clock. Besides, she knew all of our friends, often playing host to them, so she had a trust for us youths. It's tough to maintain good grades, her number one priority, when one is conducting a crime spree.

Oddly enough, she had a reputation as a hardass disciplinarian, but most of that reputation was due to the fact that she had high standards, and she modeled them. For us, there was a high degree of buy-in. so there was no need for punishment of any kind. There has never been hypocrisy in Mom, and she inculcated in us her values, not only stated by lived. We knew what was expected of us, and we held up our end of the bargain.

Growing up in the Bronx, Mom was exposed to a diverse population, and prejudice was abhorrent to her. Her loathing of bigotry was put to the test while my father was stationed in Fort Gordon, Georgia, in the late 60s, and they invited an African-American officer in my father's unit to Thanksgiving dinner. A Mississippi born man, he was shy about attending a social event in a White household, but Mom and Dad insisted that he came, even berating a White Southerner who told them, "we don't do that sort of thing down here", telling him that he would have to be the one who left. Mom never lost that commitment to hospitality to all persons of goodwill, years later this was made apparent in public at my brother Vincenzo's West Point graduation, when a Nigerian classmate, who was a regular visitor to our house, ran up to Mom, picked her up, and shouted, "Mama, I've done it!" Over the years, over a thousand young men and women called her Mama. The door was always open to all comers... even if nobody was home, a lot of them knew which rock the spare key was hidden under. There were days when we would return home from work, and there would already be a crowd.

I will forever be grateful to Mom for her love, support, and values. While we weren't exactly rolling in cash, there were always plenty of books in the house and there was money for extracurricular activities. My friend two-meter Peter used to joke about the high-octane college stickers on the somewhat beat-up station wagon being a perfect distillation of my family. Yeah, Mom was all about the intangibles: values, knowledge, community. She still is, and so are my siblings and, I hope, myself. For this, I will be eternally grateful.