My father, with his older brother and sister, finding joy
in front of their "Charlie Brown Christmas tree"
“What the son wishes to forget, the grandson wishes to remember.”
~ Marcus Lee Hansen
I am a third-generation Duosiciliano (Southern Italian) American. My forebears—hailing from Campania, Sicilia, and Lucania—arrived at Ellis Island around the turn of the twentieth century. God only knows what hardships they endured. My parents and grandparents were mostly tight-lipped about their struggles and would probably bristle at me for airing our “dirty laundry.”
Yet a few stories slipped out, revealing just how poor they were—and how much our lot has changed, though not always in ways that brought greater happiness. My father once told me how, as a boy, he ran home from school, excited to show his mother a ballpoint pen.
“We were poor and didn’t know it,” he would say, “because everyone around us was poor too.” Then, with a sigh, he would add: “We had nothing, but we were happy; today we have everything and we’re miserable.”
He and his brothers would race to snatch up bits of coal falling from passing horse-drawn carts before other neighborhood kids could. In winter, they would wrap heated bricks from the potbelly stove in newspaper and tuck them under the blankets to stay warm.
One memory, though, haunted him his whole life. On his birthday, my grandmother took him to the local ravioleria for lunch. They could only afford three ravioli. His five siblings and my grandfather stayed home—just as he would always stay home on their birthdays. While sitting at the counter, my grandmother asked if she could have one of the ravioli. He refused. She said nothing and quietly watched him eat.
That moment's shame never left him. In many ways, he spent the rest of his life trying to make up for it—being generous almost to a fault, determined that no one under his care would go without. My grandparents lived with us until they passed, their presence a daily reminder of sacrifice and love.
Whenever I think of these stories, I feel grateful to have had such a loving family who passed down their traditions, even when they had so little. Nothing was ever promised to them—or to me. Maybe that’s why I find it hard to understand the sense of entitlement in many young people today.
It was less than seventy years ago. And judging by the way the economy is heading, and the decline of community, we will face hard times again—but this time without the close-knit families and strong communities that once helped people through hardship. In a low-trust society, dependent on an increasingly inept, corrupt, and overreaching nanny-state, survival may not be so easy.
The stories my father carried—and the silence kept by my grandparents—are not just fragments of the past. They serve as reminders that strength doesn't come from comfort, but from sacrifice. When tough times return, as they surely will, then perhaps what the son wanted to forget is exactly what the grandson needs to remember: that surviving is only possible when families and communities stand together in love, memory, and faith.
~ Giovanni di Napoli, October 1st, Feast of St. Remigius
