I know if I don’t capture the feelings now, I still might be able to later — but they will never feel as they do now.
Today. My last day of work. That elevator — the sound made me want to cry.
A hot day, not too different from today. 23 years ago.
5th Floor, Building 2 — right outside my door was the elevator bank. Mary Susie Conti — the woman I was replacing — was loading up my head with all that I needed to learn.
I was paying rapt attention, but every so often I sussed out the environment. It felt so different to be in an office in the middle of the day instead of home with my two small children, who were now 45 minutes away in a new daycare. Every time I thought of them, my heart hurt just a bit, and I had to intentionally put it out of my mind.
The feel of the air with the open window (at a time when we were allowed to open windows — now I can’t imagine), the humidity in the office, and the sound of the elevator’s electronic voice blathering all day:
“Fifth Floor Going Down… Fifth Floor Going Up.”
Over the next few days and weeks, I slightly startled the 50 or so times a day I heard that electronic voice announcing the floor it landed on and which direction it was going.
Eventually, it became background noise and I didn’t hear it at all. But when I did tune in, no matter the day or time of year, I was transported back to being 26 years old and learning my new job from Mary Susie Conti.
For the past 8+ years, I haven’t come into the office much. I was on a reasonable accommodation and working from home long before COVID. But I have to say — it always felt like home when I did go in.
I honestly believe one of the reasons I got the job is because of that “home”-like feeling.
When I interviewed for that first job, I went through a series of interviews back to back. Martha Shea was the first person who interviewed me.
Right off the bat, she made it known that if I didn’t pass her muster, the two doctors I would soon interview with would take her consideration into account.
She also made sure to tell me she was prior military and instantly started off by asking about my own military experience.
I was slightly intimidated, but something about her already felt familiar. She was my kind of people — I could tell.
I don’t even know how I wasn’t prepared for the question: “Why do you want to work here?”
I mean — for heaven’s sake — if a person can’t answer that, they shouldn’t get the job!
Martha asked me that question and my truly unprepared, but terribly raw response — when I looked around — was:
“Because it feels like home.”
Martha cracked a genuine smile and asked me why.
I looked around, asking myself the same thing to understand why I had that feeling.
I saw the government-issued 3-month calendar, where you save paper with the months on both sides. The chairs. The carpet. The signage. The halls. The overhead pages. Men with military regalia ambling down the hall. The feeling I always got crossing from a state line onto federal property.
So that is what I said. I first pointed to the calendar on the wall, then the chairs. I mentioned something that was broken in a corner and talked about how it all felt familiar.
I didn’t think about puffing everyone up with “helping veterans,” giving back, stories of grandfathers who fought in wars — or all the other things I subsequently heard over the years when I eventually became the interviewer.
My answer was candid and from the heart.
If my interview were a cartoon, Martha would have started off in a knight’s costume — complete with armor — to intimidate me. Then it would have fallen off, and you would have seen her heart literally melting.
She proudly walked me down the hall to the person who would eventually become my first supervisor at the VA.
With a hand on my shoulder, she introduced me in a way that made it clear she liked me and wanted to take me under her wing.
I already felt protected — and that I was with my people.
Today, I drove into for the last time.
The sunrise down the street from me. A new dawn to a brand new type of day for me.
I saw people parking, taking out their bags and lunches, putting on badges. These people were donned in suits, scrubs, lab coats — and everything in between.
I vividly remembered those early days of parking in that same lot. The uniforms, cars and smells were so unfamiliar at the time. Now they are all second nature. All these years I have been taking the same steps into the same building and heading to the elevators —
“1st Floor, going up.”
Today, I ran into one of my coworkers walking into the building.
We got on the elevator together, and I heard that same electronic voice, unchanged in all these years.
I asked him about his two young girls. He filled me in and then asked how old my children were now.
28 and 26. My youngest is now as old as I was when I first started working there.
I worked there for their entire lives. In some ways, I missed their lives because of that place.
I don’t know who I am without it.
Some people would say I worked there a lifetime (23 years).
Others, who have 40, 45 years in the government, would still consider me a newbie.
It’s all relative. But for me — between the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs — it’s been my whole life.
I had jobs in different buildings and offices. Not too many were close to an elevator bank.
Today, as I left, it was:
“7th Floor, going down.”
It felt like:
“Esterina, now going down and out — into the wider world.”
I sat in the parking lot for a long time. I read the cards I was given, sitting in my car with the air conditioning blasting.
I felt nostalgic — but very excited.
Driving away was the hardest part. No tears, but a large lump in my throat.
A piece of my heart will always be there — in those buildings, carpets, walls, files.
And just like that — “7th Floor Going Down” — one chapter closes, and another begins.
Flashback to March 4, 1997—North Shore University Hospital in Long Island.
I wake up (or think I do) in a recovery ward. Everything is a blur. Voices are talking around me—about something… me? There is one voice I recognize.
“Mag her.”
Mag her?
I realize the “her” is me. The voice is Dr. Seaman, my OB/GYN.
As my mind slowly clears, I remember: I had a scheduled cesarean section. I was conscious during the procedure, my then-husband by my side, as our firstborn son Thomas—breech—was brought into the world.
More than 22 years later, I still don’t know how aware I truly was in those moments. What I do remember is my blood pressure spiking and being in the high-risk maternity ward, hearing that phrase—“Mag her.”
The “mag” was magnesium. To this day, I don’t know why. But I do remember what was on the TV.
Days of Our Lives.
Kristin DiMera had just had a baby too.
In my foggy state, I was oddly captivated. I wanted to see my son. I remember a brief moment of him on my chest, flashes of a camera, and then he was gone. I was in pain. And the show became a strange, steady distraction.
A week or so later, home with a newborn, exhausted and in pain, the TV was on again. The same characters. The same storyline.
My husband went to change the channel, but I stopped him.
I wanted to see what happened next.
And that’s where it began—my quiet, unexpected relationship with Days of Our Lives.
Over the years, it stayed with me.
When Thomas was little, I’d watch on days off while working as a cook in the Coast Guard. Later, as a military wife and reservist, I’d put both kids down for naps, make popcorn, pour a Diet Coke over ice, and settle in.
In 2002, when I started working full time, I moved to VCR tapes. Later, DVR. Now, streaming. The format changed, but the habit remained.
Sometimes I watched daily. Sometimes weeks went by. But it was always there when I needed it.
The characters became familiar—almost like extended family.
The Hortons, Bradys, DiMeras.
The town square, the Brady Pub, the traditions, the chaos. The comfort.
Yes, there were the ridiculous storylines—possession, comas, people returning from the dead. But woven in were real things: loss, addiction, depression, relationships, identity.
And strangely, it helped.
At different points in my life, the show mirrored something I was going through.
When Jack and Jennifer were getting divorced, I was too. I remember feeling like a failure. Then one night, I turned on an episode and saw their storyline unfolding the same way. It felt… oddly comforting.
Years later, after a difficult stretch with my own mental health, I returned to the show to find a character struggling in a similar way. Again, it helped.
When addiction, illness, or loss showed up on screen, I didn’t feel so alone in my own experiences.
It’s easy to dismiss soaps as melodramatic—and they are. That’s part of their charm.
But beneath that, there’s something else.
They tell stories about being human—messy, imperfect, resilient.
And sometimes, seeing that reflected back—even in a fictional town like Salem—can be grounding.
A few days ago, the show jumped ahead by a full year. Curious, I looked it up and learned there’s uncertainty about its future.
It made me pause.
Because while the show has changed over the years—and so have I—it has been a quiet thread through so many seasons of my life.
I don’t watch it the same way anymore.
But I still understand what it gave me.
Familiarity. Distraction. Comfort. Perspective.
Like sands through the hourglass… so are the days of our lives.
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“To the outside world, we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time.” – Clara Ortega
Is this true for everyone? I used to think it was, but I’m not so sure. It’s true for me. I’m close with both of my brothers. My brother Mario is only 20 months my junior, but only a calendar year apart; so it put us a year apart in school growing up. My brother Frankie is 4 years and 5 months younger than me. As I said, I’m close with both of my brothers; but my relationship with Mario is something that I don’t even have words for. Mario and Frankie… It’s Franceso really. Francesco Camillo. Mario Anthony, and I’m Esterina Francesca. We are true guineas. My father is straight off the boat from Italy; 1970 at 20 years old. My mother’s entire lineage is Italian. We are 100% Italian and have the insanely authentic names to show for it.
At 20 months old I don’t have any single memories of a time before Mario. My mother used to tell me stories about how I was excited about her big belly and understand kind of, but not quite that I would have a brother or sister. She and my aunt Fran told me about how I wouldn’t speak to my parents once he came home until not long after I observed a diaper change and asked “what’s that?” pointing to the difference I noticed about our bodies at not yet 2 years old. These are memories I don’t have but heard them enough that I feel like I do.
Memories I do remember are of us playing together in our house on 64th street in Brooklyn… or is it E. 64th, 63rd? I don’t know. My aunt Fran would know. Or my dad when he isn’t drinking (which isn’t often). None-the-less I do remember Mario there. I have a few memories of our first home at my grandmother’s famous house where all 3 of her kids lived on different floors on Ocean Avenue. Mario was there, but I seem to remember him asleep or in the background somewhere while my parents, aunt, and grandmother played cards until the wee hours of the morning with gin & tonics about. I hung around tugging at the group and kept myself busy with the joker card and the dog. We were either in my folk’s basement apartment or my grandmother’s first floor jaunt. The 64th St. flat is where I have my earliest memories of Mario being mobile and us talking and playing together. It was a small place, but we had an imagination. I remember waking him up out of his sleep in the mornings to play. My dad will still talk of the time period where Mario hadn’t spoken at some ridiculously late age, but he talked to me. I don’t know if I just interpreted things for him and he signed, or if he was actually speaking; I only remember I knew what he wanted to say and translated it to my parents for him. He’d nod enthusiastically.
As toddlers we played behind a little desk, pretending the little piece of wood horizontally holding the two ends together was a steering wheel and we were driving. We played board games and “read” books. My dad worked and my mom was home when we were young. Aside from my dancing school lessons and our cousins, before I started school we didn’t play with other children much, and my mom was always busy cleaning or painting ceramics or something. There were no computers and like 1 hour of children’s tv on in the morning. Mario and I were mostly all we had for entertainment.
I do remember when my mother was pregnant with Frankie. I remember understanding that the belly meant a baby. This was a period in life before sonograms and no one knew what they were having before the baby popped out (can one even fathom such a thing???). I do remember really really really hoping for a baby sister. I don’t remember count-downs or anything. I do remember playing in the backroom of my grandmother’s store (Dinettes R Us) on Coney Island Avenue with my brother Mario under a desk when the phone rang and my grandmother answered. I can still hear her famous NY accent as loud as one could possibly talk without screaming “Hallo?!”. I think Mario & I were playing cards. I remember wondering if the call was about the baby and wishing, wishing, wishing it was a girl. My grandmother walked to the backroom and said “Your mother had the baby… it’s a boy!” I was happy, so happy. Mostly because my grandmother was so happy; and I didn’t care anymore that it was not a baby sister. Mario didn’t seem to pick up on this too much. He feigned joy (likely because I was joyous) and just continued to play.
If this were a play, the next act up was Mario & I in our apartment with my aunt Fran waiting for my parents to come home with Frankie. There was some red rocking apple toy I picked out for this new brother somewhere at our apartment on that 64th Street that I knew was a baby toy but I was playing with it anyway. The moment came when Mario and I were called out to the terrace overlooking the street because my parents were home. We ran out to the terrace and saw the car pull up in the front of the house. My dad was driving and my mom was in the front seat holding the new baby.
We were both too young to feel jealous over this new character in our lives. It just seemed very normal. I remember Frankie sitting in a car seat type of item while my mother was busy in the kitchen or something (though we didn’t have car seats back then… it was 1980). Mario and I would try to make Frankie laugh (which he did) then we’d make a “boo” face to scare him and started laughing when he cried; which only made him laugh too. The earliest lessons of lovingly teasing I suppose. Frankie always had a few years behind us and was always either following us around or trying to swindle us in playing a game with him. There were plenty of memories all 3 of us playing; but many more memories I can remember of just Mario and I while Frankie was sleeping or engrossed in something a little too juvenile for us. We played made up games like the “Pink pink coolie”, barbies that went nuts and threw themselves down the stairs in the apartment we ended up at over “Dinettes R Us” on Coney Island Avenue, or just playing in our yard of the building – Uno, the kiddie pool, catching lightening bugs, laughing…. We made up plays and songs for our parents with our cousins and our parent’s friend’s kids. Through elementary school we had the same teachers and laughed about their funny sayings or sang ridiculous songs we both knew. When we realized something annoyed my mom like the abominable song our music teacher made up and taught the kids (“Hello, hello, I like to say hello”) we’d tag team with one another and get a kick out of seeing my mom so aggravated. We fought too. Don’t get me wrong. I remember us blaming each other for stuff (well… me blaming him mostly). We hit each other. We were mad often for all of 5 minutes while we got separated and sent to our rooms until we were laughing about something outside or something one of us pointed out in the house. Mario was my companion. My very first best friend.
With my cousins Anthony & Camille
The first real memories of bonding with Mario were on Coney Island Avenue. We had a very small apartment. My bedroom was the first of three that were adjoined, meaning you had to pass through mine to get to my parent’s room. And then pass through my parent’s room to get to Mario and Frankie’s shared room. We moved to Long Island in 1988 a few days before my 12th birthday. I remember the apartment being torn apart for quite sometime with packing and whatnot before the move. I don’t know how or why, but for some reason Mario and I ended up needing to sleep in my room in a double bed for some time. The first night I remember us talking into the wee hours started with Mario tossing and turning. I was in 5th grade and he was in 4th. I asked him what was the matter and in completely different words he confessed he was stressed because he wasn’t good at anything. I felt so bad that he was upset and tried to think of things he was good at to help him feel better because I knew his worries were ridiculous. I came up with several that he shot down with some excuse. Until I remembered reading his papers that he wrote for Saint Brendan’s Elementary school classes. I told him with complete genuine enthusiasm that I thought he was good at writing… and suddenly he quieted to think this over and completely agreed. “I am pretty good at writing aren’t I?”. “Yes you are”. We talked for a little bit about the things I remembered reading and I could tell he started to feel really good about himself. We talked much longer about his talent of writing . He ended up going to sleep happy. I remember the next day him referencing the conversation. I felt so good about helping him feel confident.
I remember being in up to 6th grade and laughing into the wee hours of the morning in that same apartment with Mario. My mother screaming from the next room “Get to sleep!!!”. We’d quiet for a few minutes until one of us said something so funny that we couldn’t help but bust out. My mother would march in and turn on the lights ranting and raving. God knows this only made us super serious until the lights turned off and we’d giggle quietly again. Not being able to help busting out into serious laughter again a few minutes later.
Mario was always hilariously funny. Even then. In a very Jerry Seinfeld way long before Seinfeld hit the scenes. He has ALWAYS had a knack for pointing out the very mundane and seeing how ridiculous it was. We were just silly kids in elementary school. Being only a year apart in a small school that had only one class per grade, we knew all the same people. “Why do we always have to say Michael so & so?” (I’d actually write the last name if I could remember it)… “Why do we not call him Michael or Mike? No one would know who he is by those names”. Silly stuff, but it was just so stinking TRUE, and he seemed to have an ability to pick up on truisms that no one else noticed and point them out in a comical way.
“We know one another’s faults, virtues, catastrophes, mortifications, triumphs, rivalries, desires, and how long we can each hang by our hands to a bar. We have been banded together under pack codes and tribal laws.” – Rose Macaulay
Our family is nuts. Certifiably nuts. I know everyone says that about their family, but mine really is. The stories we can tell are practically unreal, but the crazy part is that they are not. Crazy people attract crazy circumstances, which makes crazy experiences followed by crazy stories. As they happened in my life and I had to go to school or work and told people, they wouldn’t believe the things that happened. I mean they did, but were shocked. Each story just also happened to be funny. When you step back and don’t take anything too seriously; it’s all just life and life is fun and funny! My brothers and I always made it funny. As things happened we laughed at it. We all ended up picking up that Seinfeld kind of attitude where we took the daily experience and pointed out the insanity of it all. Only we had really insane things happen that were kind of out of the ordinary daily experience that made it all the more funnier. The danger in that though is that you become immune to crazy and fail to realize when lines are crossed and accept things as normal that most people just wouldn’t. My grandmother was funny and always laughing. My aunt Fran was a hilarious cynic without ever trying to be. My dad had a funny work experience on the job as a painter almost every day and would relive it around the table over dinner laughing so hard he could barely breath. He’d start coughing from laughing, and we’d all be laughing too before the punch line even came because well… laughing is contagious. My mother didn’t laugh as much as the rest of us did, but she did have a comical side to her when she let it out. More like my aunt, hilarious cynicalness just randomly thrown out when you least expected it. She’d be annoyed when we laughed about it too, which only made it funnier.
I really remember Mario and I sitting around and bonding many warm summer evenings until literally the sun rose after we moved to Long Island until our later teenage years. At that time I had my own room and Mario and Frankie shared a room. During the summers we’d play Nintendo or Monopoly or Uno all night. It would start out with some friends, Frankie, and our neighbor Andy around sunset. Eventually everyone would go home or turn in; but we played and played long after the gang retired and my folks went to bed because they had work the next day. I remember countless nights sitting on my bed laughing about our family members, mainly my grandmother and the craziness of our dysfunctional parents. We’d point out things we’d notice and hypothesize about why they were like they were and how insane it all seemed.
At least once or twice a month one of us would inevitably knock on the other’s door, usually in the evening during homework and ask if the other wanted to talk. The answer was always yes. The intention never started with a talk that would last for hours, but it always did. We talked when we were upset, or worried, or just wanted to laugh, or reminisce about the past. We certainly shared secrets. We shared a paper route when we were in junior high into high school for a few years. With our money we’d shop and often find a sweatshirt or Z.Cavarricci’s neither of us could afford on our own but both liked and decided to share since we were about the same size at the time.
“Siblings are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring, quite often the hard way.” – Pamela Dugdale
My father tried and miserably failed at teaching us how to speak Italian from the time we were little. He’d try to lure us in with fun games and piggy-back or airplane rides for each word we remembered. It worked a few days back-to-back but then we’d just lose interest. In junior high when it was time to pick a language Mario and I chose Italian and learned some through school. We immediately started calling each other Fratello and Sorella and still do until this day. Sometimes it’s shortened to “fratel” or “sorel”. We would use the little language we knew as a way to talk in front of others who we didn’t want to understand us, like some neighbors that were annoying us, or little Frankie who we likely wanted to get something out of.
Frankie was always a little hustler. He loved his eggs and tuna fish sandwiches. He’d make a delicious lunch and have it all out on the table and offer it to Mario and I. When we’d say yes he’d ask us for a fee. I swear on purpose he would go to TJ’s hero shop (most famous in town, dare I say Long Island) and come back with a beautiful piping hot hero and sit down and talk non-stop about how unbelievably tastey it was. Then he’d try to convince me and Mario that we’d like one too – here… smell it. “I’ll ride my bike to go buy one for an extra fee for the inconvenience”. We’d always cave. He was always willing to jump up for extra cash, but try to get him to do his chores and help us while my mom was working… forget it. We’d fight with him and bother my mom at work. She’d tell us to work it out and hang up the phone in a huff. Work it out meant some kind of fight with no one winning and everyone losing. Early lessons on how that gets you nowhere.
This picture just cracks me up. We look so Miami vice. This was in 1988 or 1989, in Ocean City, MD I believe
When I started to drive since Mario and I were close in age we had a similar yet not exclusively similar circle of friends. We were even friends with another brother and sister (the Bottegos) that we hung out with on a regular basis. We didn’t hang out all the time together with our companions, but often enough to have a lot of memories. We’d all hop into my car and go out to eat at an all you can eat buffet, or just walk around Port Jefferson or go to the beach, the pool hall, the movies or a long drive to nowhere. I would pick Mario’s girlfriend up in the morning before school. It definitely wasn’t all peaches and roses. I remember a lot of fights too. Often with our friends present rolling their eyes and trying not to take sides. I remember one particular day rowing a boat down Carmen’s river through South Haven park with my boyfriend and Mario’s girlfriend. None of us were particularly good at rowing, especially coordinating 4 people; but somehow Mario & I ended up in a ridiculously loud argument in the middle of nowhere in a place that made it impossible to storm off. So we had to sit in that rowboat fuming. No such thing as silent fuming in my family though! There was the very memorable night after going to the Ponderosa that Mario threw up in the back of my car on the way home. I was so mad at him. We got home and our friends helped us clean up while we laughed about how silly we all were for stuffing ourselves, reliving the experience as if it were some long lost memory. Once we took some friends through Brooklyn to show them where we used to live and even visited “the little old man” [we called him] at the deli my mom always had us walk to on the next block on Coney Island Avenue to buy cigarettes and a loaf of Italian bread. We went to NY city on the train with a mutual moocher friend that brought no money and split paying for him. And there was the infamously still one of the hottest days of my life when we decided in the height of summer to pack as many people in my car as possible and go to Great Adventure (Six Flags) in NJ and stop by the drive through safari on the way in. Windows were required to remain close (there was seriously no choice unless you wanted a safari animal in the car) and I had no air conditioning. Haha! Then fighting of course on the way home when I got lost, looking at the large oversized Rand McNally map and arguing about the right way back home.
Mario, Frankie and I had so many famous sayings that caught on with our parents, our aunt Fran and our neighbors and friends. We single handedly started most of them. We were that loud Italian family on the corner with cars on the lawn, some project always going on. Composting right next to the driveway when no one else even knew what that was. The summer would mean the pool was open and late into the evening you’d hear screaming and splashing; fighting and laughing. Tomatoes, basil, parsley, eggplant and zucchini plants perpetually in the garden tucked away in the corner. The ragged pets that ran free through the neighborhood, chickens running around the lawn. The grandmother who would visit with a Mercedes and mow the lawn in her high heels. My mom’s picture plastered all over town as one of the town realtor’s. Us randomly hauling out a refrigerator that may have been tossed over in a fit of anger, carrying out bags of trash in quiet fear or laughing like the serious buffoons that we were. Somehow in some unspoken way we knew just what stories were ok to tell and which were too outlandish. “Your father painted the outside of the wrong HOUSE one bleary eyed morning?” “A grandmother said that?” (one is the legendarily golden ‘p’ story for anyone who knows it). “Your mother indignantly came home from work and buried that cat in two minutes flat before getting back in the car to go back to work?” As my brothers and I randomly remember these experiences and sayings as adults, we text each other to see who else remembers. It often begets a series of hilarious texts and long lost memories. There are too many to write or remember. We also had a series of pets (all who ran away from the nut house). Here are some recent texts between Mario and I just a few weeks ago while I was in Copenhagen:
As crazy, yet scary, and albeit fun my house was growing up, I knew I had to get out to be able to get along in life without being reliant on the lunacy; so I joined the military and left the summer I graduated high school. Not long after Mario sent me a story he needed to write for his 12th grade English class. I don’t remember what the prompt was, but I do remember much of the story. He wrote about how much he missed his sister. Just me barging in to take his clothes, the sound of the “schk, schk, schk” of the pump of my hairspray. How he couldn’t move a thing in my room without me getting up to put it exactly the way it was. He wrote how he didn’t think he would, but he missed all that.
Shortly after I left I got married to my first husband, and just 6 months later got pregnant with Tommy. Then 2 years following Tommy I had Gabby. A year later little Frankie popped on the scene. Mario had Maria 9 years later so she is a little bit behind our 3, but we did good living far apart, keeping in touch and making sure to get to the main events in our kid’s lives. We are not a part of each other’s families like my aunt Fran and grandmother were to us. That makes me sad but we live so much further apart.
I talked to both of my brothers often in our adult years so far. Frankie not as much these days but always Mario. We have bouts of where we’ll connect more regularly than others, but we always know we can pick up the phone to chat. That happens often enough and the conversation is never short or lacking incredible depth. I’ll often call him when I’m fuming about something because not only do I know he’ll understand and express empathy at my utter frustration, but I’m 100% confident I’ll get off the phone laughing and feeling better. We are still shaping each other’s lives. Sharing new experiences, songs, books, and philosophies. We’ll get off the phone and download or Google something the other one told us about, and talk about it next time. I feel like we can open each other’s eyes to new things easier than my eyes are opened to things other people tell me because not only do I trust Mario, I know he is so much like me that if he believes something or likes something, it’s worth the exploration because in all likelihood I would appreciate it as well. We still spend countless hours talking, laughing, and commiserating about politics, the amped up news, family members, the ex’s in our lives, my dad, and the memories of “mommy & grandma”. We have long deep philosophical conversations that leave me in another state of understanding the world and seeing things in lights I would have never glanced at before.
“We are not only our brother’s keeper; in countless large and small ways, we are our brother’s maker.” – Bonaro Overstreet
My siblings shaped my life. I now know I’m lucky to be close with them. Not everyone is this close with their kin, my own children included. Not everyone makes it to adulthood with their siblings or long into life like my own cousin Anthony who passed away at the age of 17 when my cousin Camille and I were only 16. I understand and appreciate that any day anything can happen to anyone of us, so I want to stop and appreciate the relationship I have had with my brothers and honor it in a special way.
I was there for both of my brother’s whole lives and they mostly for mine. They knew me back when as an equal, having similar experiences as I did; learning the same life lessons and teaching one another about life in various ways. Inevitably we shaped one another’s personalities and the way we see the world. It’s a beautiful thing and I’m forever grateful for it.
Us three crazy DeGrazia kids as adults
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I am walking our dog Koji. It is the first day this summer when I am out in the early morning and the air actually feels cold. I think about how it always feels this way at this time of year. Each summer there is a specific day where I wake up and it’s a bit chilly, unlike the day just before. I recall the first time I had this realization just 13 years earlier. Tears fill my eyes, a lump fills my throat.
That day was August 26, 2002. Until that day in since Tommy (my oldest son) was 15 months old I had been a stay-at-home mom for the most part. I was in college and I worked part-time at A&P and was in the U.S.C.G Reserves, but only opposite my ex-husband’s shifts. At that time Tommy was 5 and his sister Gabby was 3. It was my first day of work at what I considered at the time a “real” full-time job. It was also Tommy’s first day of kindergarten. When my alarm went off that morning the sad realization that I had to get out of bed before my body or the kids woke me up was startling. My initial gut reaction was that it would only be for today, but it quickly sunk in that this would be the sensation I would have every morning going forward. Ugh. I wasn’t quite ready to go into the work force. My then husband and I were really struggling to make ends meet since he got out of the military just a few months earlier. My working full time was a necessity for us. I felt extremely tired. I distinctly remember when I walked from the bedroom to the bathroom that morning that it felt cold. It was so very unlike the warm summer mornings I had been used to, even just the day before.
I begrudgingly waited for the shower water to warm before heading in. I wasn’t sure how the new morning routine would work, how long it would take to get ready, and get the kids dressed and fed before dropping them off at their new daycare. I was a bit worried. Nervous butterflies. My husband went to work hours earlier for his own shift, and I was left to get the kids ready for this first day of something new for all of us alone. I dressed and woke the kids. They too were not used to being woken up. And by golly – it was just chilly in the air. Somehow I don’t remember much about the morning or how I got them situated or where they thought they would be going; but I do remember being cold when we first got in the car, and driving over to Buttons & Bows daycare in Naugatuck. They weren’t nervous or excited or sad – they just were. It was me who had those feelings. Overall I was sad. Today was Tommy’s first day of kindergarten, and neither I nor his father would be there to witness this very special occasion. The bus would come pick him up and cart him off to school with the other children whose parents worked.
Somehow the sadness quickly passed as I started the drive to the new job, trying to navigate unfamiliar roads with a print out of map quest directions in hand. More nervous butterflies. Where to park? Wow, there are so many people who work here walking into the building! Will I find the right room in this massive hospital I was entering? Am I really qualified for this job?
Somehow I made it to the correct room to start a two-day orientation. Everything was new and unfamiliar. I was almost in a trance, there was too much to take in and it wasn’t all quite registering. Sounds, lights, colors, smells. The VA Hospital felt like the military somehow. Familiar, but not quite. At certain parts of the day I thought about being home with the kids and how much fun we had that summer. Then I thought about them at Buttons & Bows, and how they must feel similar to me. I felt sort of guilty for some reason. Lunch time came and I went outside. What struck me the most was that it was hot! I had to take off the sweater I put on at the last minute that morning. I ate my lunch in the warm sun, alone and nervous. I didn’t define myself as someone who worked outside the home. I felt like an impostor. I checked my two day old cell phone that I had just gotten from Cellular One that previous Saturday. No one called. That must mean the kids are doing well. I went back inside and finished up the day.
When I got home that evening the kids had already been picked up and were settled in at home. They were beaming about their day. They were OK! Tommy told us as much as he could in 5-year old vocabulary about school. I was sorry I missed it but glad to know that they were happy. I wasn’t as excited about my day as they were, but it was a success. I came to the sad realization that as they were going to get older I would be missing many other things in their lives. This is a normal and expected part of children growing up, but worse for parents who work.
The next day I woke up and it was cold again. And by the time I left work in the late afternoon it was downright hot [again]. It was the same the next day, and the day after. Until the crisp autumn days began to swallow up some of the heat, and when I left work those afternoons there was a chill in the air. And so it goes, the seasons change. The winter came and I had to really bundle the kids up in the morning. Just a few short months later when the snow melted and there were signs of spring, my car felt surprisingly warm in the afternoons. Eventually the mornings warmed up too. Before I knew it, it was late August again and I remembered the previous year’s sensation when I experienced the first of the cool mornings and hot afternoons. A year went by in a flash. Then so did two years, then three, and now 13.
Today, 13 years later, this first cool morning air following the humid summer mornings is all too familiar. This particular morning I am filled with an unbelievable sadness. I blink back the tears as Koji happily pulls me along on his leash. I inhale deeply trying not to cry, becoming slightly distracted from my own thoughts in an attempt to make smoke rings like I’ve seen pictures of American Indians doing with the condensation of my breath. I notice the heat from Koji’s breath too. Tomorrow we will be bringing Tommy up to college in Maine. His entire school career had come and gone in the blink of an eye. A few months ago our families came from New York and North Carolina for his high school graduation. Cards from relatives near and far poured in. It was our mailbox that had the graduation balloon. It was hot out. It seemed like there would be so much time before he had to leave for school 3 months later. And here we were. Tomorrow was the day.
Hints of light are coming through the sky as Koji and I walk the streets of our familiar neighborhood. I reflect back on the past 13 years. They went by so quickly. When I first started working I imagined I would only do so until my ex and I got back on our feet. I really wanted to be home with the kids. That first winter started the many years of snow-fretting that parents who do not work outside of the home likely do not realize. Which parent would stay home when both school and daycare closed? I had to use my vacation days when it was my turn, which diminished time with the kids in the warm months when they were home with little to do. I did however cherish those early snow days. I would make hot chocolate with marshmallows and graham crackers with peanut butter for breakfast. They would squeal with excitement about this special snowy day treat. Years later when the kids were teenagers and there was a snow day, and my now husband and I went to work since they were old enough to stay home; it was Tommy who would wake up and prepare this same treat for his sister and two younger step-brothers.
After the first year passed of my being in the workforce full time, my now ex almost went back into the military. Even with both of us working full time and me keeping my old part time job at A&P, we were still struggling to make ends meet. We were all prepared to make the entrance back into military life. I was kind of excited. I would be able to stay home again and pretty much wherever we got stationed, the location would be a new area to explore. The kids were a bit nervous about this change, but I don’t think they fully understood it. Just before we had to make the final commitment, I got a promotion at work that resolved all our financial problems. We thought long and hard about whether to take the plunge and stay in the civilian world, or head back to the military family life we were used to. My ex wasn’t crazy about going back in and here was out opportunity to make it in the “real” world. I quit the job at A&P and only worked at the VA. The kids were ecstatic. I was a little disappointed, but trucked on.
Just a year later my ex got a new job and huge raise. We were at last not only financially free, but had breathing room. For the first time when I went grocery shopping I didn’t have my eyes on sale items only. When the kids asked for a cereal off the shelf, I was able to say yes. It felt great!
For a short period of two years time while I went back to school to get my MBA, I cut my hours back and had Thursdays off. The kids ended up loving Thursdays. I did too. I would wake up before dark and get a start on my schoolwork. The kids were able to sleep in a little, and when they woke up I would always make them a special breakfast since the other days of the week were rushed. I would then lovingly get them off to school on the bus in front of our condo instead of dropping them off at daycare or with a neighbor. I would go back to my studies, usually taking a break at lunch to walk by the pond down the street and then heading home to whip up a batch of some sort of homemade dessert. The kids usually knew I would have some treat after school waiting for them. They would come off the bus with big happy smiles on their faces while I waited at the door, excited to see me- but also looking past me to see what kind of goody awaited them inside. They’d drop their backpacks and sit at the table with their after school snack and a glass of milk. We would talk about the day and then split up again until dinner time. If it was warm enough they would go out to play with the other neighborhood kids.
I had many different daycare arrangements while the kids were in their early elementary years. Friends and neighbors, different daycare locations, odd shifts with their father watching them for partial or full days. It was a constant struggle worrying if their dad would be late, the sitter or their children would be sick, or the daycare would be closed.
When Tommy was in 4th grade I finished my MBA and was promoted to a new job. I had mixed feelings about it because it meant I had to go back to work full time. I really felt bored in the position I had and was ready for a change. Accepting the new position meant more money and less boredom, but the trade off was that I had less time to be a mom. The choice wasn’t easy. The kids were rather proud of me and were only slightly disappointed that I would no longer be home Thursdays. We had enough money to buy a house and move the kids to a town with a good school system, and into a neighborhood where they could ride their bicycles in the street. Tommy was at the end of 5th grade when we moved to Cheshire. He was excited while Gabby was very hesitant. I had no reservations about moving and continuing to work at this point. It was 2008. I did worry about how we would manage when the kids were teenagers and could get into trouble after school with a lack of after school care as my catch net, but there would be time for that.
Only there wasn’t. In the blink of an eye the years flew by. My ex and I started having marital problems before we moved to Cheshire and they did not resolve themselves. My efforts were spent working to save a failing marriage, then a divorce, new relationship/home/step-kids; working on helping the kids and pets adjust while trying to nurture a new partnership; all of which moved incredibly quickly. At one point I attempted to apply for one day of telework per week. For two weeks while the paperwork was being routed Gabby would excitedly ask me every day if I heard anything back. Tommy was a little too old at the time to care and was indifferent. When I did find out that my request was denied, Gabby put on a brave face and said it will be alright. I myself felt hardened somehow.
Another blink of an eye and I was suddenly teaching Tommy to drive. He got his license, then a job of his own. Before I knew it he was taking SATs and his high school was having student-parent sessions about the college application process. Another promotion opportunity came up when Tommy just started his senior year. I wondered if trying to learn a new job would be too difficult in my increasingly complex home. It was Tommy’s senior year, we just got a new puppy, we were having problems with my husband’s ex, and my own children were having issues with their father. Again I felt a bit bored in my current position and it was a toss up between money and learning versus focused home time and boredom. I took the job.
A whirlwind of college visits ensued and then the application process seemed to be over in a heartbeat. Tommy always wanted a puppy and took the brunt of the responsibility for training, feeding, and walking the dog. The holidays came and went. Tommy found out he got accepted into all the school he applied for. My husband and I went on the acceptance visits circuit. There were suddenly senior pictures & events all around, and then the culmination of the graduation. Now here we are. I don’t know how it happened, but my little boy grew up and was about to move away. Until a few days ago I thought I would be fine, but now that this change is staring me in the face I’m completely broken up. I will be one of those parents who cries and hyperventilates the whole way back home from the college drop off.
I am rounding the corner with Koji back toward my house. In another minute I’ll be inside on one of the last mornings that will feel normal. Of all the firsts and celebrations that make the fanfare throughout the years like first birthdays and other milestone birthdays, first day of school, communion, end of sport seasons, concerts, start of high school, graduation etc; the most transitional moment happens very quietly. There are no family and friends visiting and celebrating or handing out presents or money. Hardly any of our family even knows which day Tommy is leaving. It will be a quiet drop off. Just me, his sister and his step-dad. His dad moved away and is living in Massachusetts, treating tomorrow like any other day. My friends and the people I work with hardly have a clue that my heart is breaking. I knew back in 2002 that I would miss many things throughout the years. Only I did not know at the time how quickly it would go. In these years Tommy learned to read, ride a bike and navigate peer pressure. He went through puberty, had his first kiss, first girlfriend, first heartbreak. We had normal teenage ups and downs without too much drama. Now he was a grown man. This all happened in front of my eyes while I spent these precious years in the workforce.
We are just feet away from my house now. Koji doesn’t want to go back in and very deliberately sniffs the grass across the street. I pause and let him, looking over at my warmly lit home while I shiver in this cold August morning. That same lump fills my throat. I worked for 13 years and let his life pass. Would it have been any different if I stayed home? Did I have a choice? Does it matter? Will Tommy or Gabby ever understand how much they mean to me? I feel the need to let people know how emotionally challenging it is to be a working mom. It can only be worse for a single parent. Most workplaces including my own are not very flexible and do not allow compressed, flex or telework schedules. Would the world be a different place if the organizations understood the challenges faced by single parents or two adults in that work outside the home? All I can do now is go back inside, put on a brave persona, take my little boy to college tomorrow and continue on knowing that I did the best I could. It will warm up and be hot this afternoon. The mornings going forward will be cooler, and soon the days will as well. The seasons will go on and life will continue.
“Come on Koji-poo” I say. Koji looks up at me, I give him a slight tug on his leash, and we head back inside ready to tackle another day.
Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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Frankie was always a little hustler. He loved his eggs and tuna fish sandwiches. He’d make a delicious lunch and have it all out on the table and offer it to Mario and I. When we’d say yes he’d ask us for a fee. I swear on purpose he would go to TJ’s hero shop (most famous in town, dare I say Long Island) and come back with a beautiful piping hot hero and sit down and talk non-stop about how unbelievably tastey it was. Then he’d try to convince me and Mario that we’d like one too – here… smell it. “I’ll ride my bike to go buy one for an extra fee for the inconvenience”. We’d always cave. He was always willing to jump up for extra cash, but try to get him to do his chores and help us while my mom was working… forget it. We’d fight with him and bother my mom at work. She’d tell us to work it out and hang up the phone in a huff. Work it out meant some kind of fight with no one winning and everyone losing. Early lessons on how that gets you nowhere.
