When we arrived in Chicago at our third story walk-up, the first person I met was Andy. He had an English accent, a bit of (probably well-earned) confidence about his ability to charm others and a phone available for me to call Wally, the building engineer I needed to meet to let us in the building. This happened in the days before everyone had their own cellies, and well before I had given in to getting one for myself. Not long afterwards, I met Amy, whose assertive opinions, pet boa constrictors and bold honesty gave me a bit of pause and a similar dose of curiosity.
I had heard from Andy that Amy ran an Indonesian import business and was on a buying venture. Andy was a pilot and they had met in Indonesia. They eventually married. When she returned, it was a hot August rainy day in 1992 and I knocked on their door once again to use their phone (mine had not yet been installed). Amy was sitting on her sofa at noon drinking a gin and tonic, watching her son Tyler and wondering what to give him for lunch. She offered me a drink that I could not refuse, only partly because of her Italian ways of persuading others, but because that would be my first choice of mixed drink.
My daughters were upstairs, and soon afterwards, Amy and I ordered pizza delivery. Tyler and Steffie, who were the same age spent hours together reading encyclopedias, playing games and entertaining each other the way that third graders do. Amanda and Amy became fast friends because Amy is a beader, jewelry maker, free-spirited hippie and artisan who genuinely enjoyed Amanda's company and like-minded curiosities. Almost eighteen years have passed and the Amorosos became the family we needed eight states away from our own.
Amy has a way of collecting people and making sure they know she cares. She is staunchly loyal, her house is always full of somebody she has "adopted," and her continuous oral communication includes advice, jokes, critiques, playful banter, insistent commands, all peppered with a the color of a sailor's vocabulary and simultaneous laughter that make her quintessentially Amy. She seems to dance through life, reaching heights of hysteria, happiness and frustration in equal measure. She has little regard for whether you are an adult or a child in her home; I mean this in a positive way. All are held to the same standards and "wrath" she brings upon them while loving and hugging them without judgement. She is obsessive compulsive in her kitchen whether cooking or cleaning.
Her petite frame, exotic beauty, long wavy hair and light-footed steps make her seem twenty years younger than her forty-three years, yet she has probably lived the experience of someone twice her age. Amy doesn't cruise through life; she MAKES life lively, exciting, warm, homegrown, opinionated, non-traditional and rooted in her Italian upbringing in a manner that I think emulates the father of hers, Lou, that I never had the good fortune to meet. She has traveled more places in her lifetime than most foreign correspondents, often with her children in tow, having worked miraculous "deals" for flights and lodging in ways that only such a seasoned traveler would be able to pull off.
Amy is well-read, worldly, spontaneous and rigid at the same time. I have never met anyone like her and doubt I ever will again. And I have never felt so openly, heartily, lovingly welcomed into the family fold of anyone's except the one in which I grew up. It is difficult to say all that Amy and the extensions of her persistence have meant to me and my daughters. There is Andy, who has been a surrogate uncle to my girls, a best buddy and joking partner to me and a presence in all things Amoroso. He and Amy celebrated my successful dissertation defense in 1993 with me in their rented clapboard two-flat with the multi-colored rooms. Andy and I sat in a large bamboo chair with a round, black duckcloth pillow and I laughed harder that night than I think I have ever laughed. Amy danced and swirled around the room while I processed what I had just completed.
Before that, we had joined families for spaghetti dinners and "Manwiches," which Amanda thought were hilarious. There was a night when my good friend Jen came out to Chicago from Salt Lake to help me unload boxes into our new place. She got caught after a shower in only a towel by Amy and her sister Lisa, who also lived downstairs when they came in for something. Neither blinked, but Jen was shy and mortified until she had plied herself with enough liquor to keep us all in stitches with stories of her trials at dating Mormon men. Since then, she has come out happily as lesbian.
Amy and I went on a shopping trip up Clark Street to the hispanic part of town where resale shops have now been replaced by convenience or cheap furniture stores. I don't remember if I found anything, but Amy bought a retro green hanging lamp and a black wrought iron gothic cabinet to display her treasures with. Andy was unhappy with the weight of the item and refused to haul it upstairs, but ever resourceful, Amy found a couple guys on the street willing to do it for a few dollars. I think she remembers that day, however, solely by the Judds music cassette I had not yet managed to replace. Having listened to it through several states, the girls and I knew all the lyrics and Amy jumped in to sing along with us, laughing hysterically about it.
Then there are Lisa and Phil, whom I cannot quite think of separately, though Lisa may dislike reading that. Lisa is Amy's faithful sister, companion and near opposite. She, too has been a loyal and welcoming member of the Amoroso bunch. She lived with Amy, Andy and Tyler downstairs on Forest Avenue, and I met her in the same orbit of time. Lisa is practical, a planner, loving, sensible, solid and relatively uncomplicated. She is beautiful, petite, playful, clever, almost organized, well-informed and has a great sense of humor. She shares her sister's ability to empathize when I've needed a friend, and has different tastes in entertainment than Amy, but if Amy "collects" people to her center, Lisa "centers" everybody around her.
I have had great times with Lisa in her own terms. She makes me laugh, gives me sound advice, but usually only if I ask for it. We have similar professional lives, and I have shared the experiences of taking line-dancing classes with her (where we were the only two pupils until eighty year-old Barbara joined us about three weeks late, slightly annoying Lisa as she flailed around the room, missing nearly all of cowboy Bernie's instructions). I have gone with Lisa and Phil to dinner, plays, barbecues and met them unexpectedly at Amy's house or looked for them at Amy's blast of an annual Christmas party. I could not miss Lisa the first time she wore her black glitter, eight inch platform boots or the second time, when she wore them with her wedding dress (that still fits). I also could not miss her generosity when she loaned her home to me for a barbeque to welcome my daughters home the first time they had both been in town at the same time for years.
Phil is Lisa's husband now, but was her boyfriend with the long ponytail in 1992. About fifteen years ago, he traded that look in for the slightly graying cut of a responsible father of two children. Phil likes music, Monty Python, Harry Potter and music, aspiring someday when he retires to be in a barbershop quartet. He has cooked me dinner, brownies, barbecued and initiated "pestopalooza" in collaboration with Amy when the year's pesto crops are cheap and everybody chips in with labor and/or a few dollars for the best pesto this side of the Atlantic Ocean. I had a tank-shirt that said "Amore" I would wear to that occasion to show my respect for the dedication and love with which friends and family would gather to have an old fashioned harvest season celebration.
Laney is Amy and Lisa's mother, my party companion, who used to bring Grandma Alice to many occasions until she grew too weak to come. I loved Grandma Alice because I would sit across from her while others were busy serving food or clearing plates. She wouldn't say much, but I waited for her bits of wit that she spoke like darts, always with the wisdom of a woman in her eighties. We had nice conversations and I always enjoyed her commentary on the family dynamics going on around her. I miss her presence at the Amoroso gatherings, but will never forget her.
Laney and I became friends over the years through her daughters' gatherings and our mutual presence. She cooks up an excellent Thanksgiving dinner, great crab dip, Italian meatballs and lobster bisque. She can tell a story with every possible detail and is well loved by all her grandchildren. She has the chubbiest cat I have ever seen and a lovely home where she used to cater to Grandma Alice's late in life needs. The funniest thing about Laney and me is that I have not attended one of Amy's Christmas parties in the last several years where someone has not mistaken me for Laney. I take it as a compliment because she is a beautiful woman. However, I hesitate to fully embrace the compliment because I am ten years her junior. I have been asked on more occasions than I can count if I am Amy and Lisa's mother. It makes me laugh and I have said more than once to Laney that it's a good thing; I can do whatever I want at a party and everyone will think it's her:)
I could say so much more about this family, but if I write about each individual event or how much it meant to me, I will end up with a short novel. So I am resigned to writing a list of things the Amoroso's have done with and for me and my daughters, all of which are acts of kindness that have inspired me to love them all. Eighteen years is a long time.
Amy and Lisa keep my secrets but probably share them with each other and possibly their husbands.
Amy and Lisa have both listened to me when I have been down or worried about something.
This family has included my family in multiple holiday celebrations when I or my daughters and I would have been alone, unable to get to California.
Andy took me to emergency when I sprained an ankle.
Andy set me up with Greek Yanni.
Lisa met me in emergency when a doctor thought I might need a spinal tap.
Amy took me to the doctor the day I was diagnosed with diabetes.
Amy sat with me through an outpatient surgery and had the good sense to keep me at her house by drying my yoga pants for hours, that is only after supplying my surgeon with her good "pre-surgical" medical advice for him. She kept me busy practicing my Spanis language skills before surgery so I wouldn't get too anxious.
Laney invited me to Great Wolf Lodge to spend a weekend with her, Carmen, Claire, Sarah, Nate and Lisa.
Phil showed up for an oboe concert on my behalf so that Steffie would have someone in her audience.
Phil and Lisa went through college application decisions with Steffie when she was trying to decide.
Amy took Amanda in for two weeks when she was a teenager to give us both a break from strain.
Amy and Andy went to see Amanda in a play at Chicago Academy for the Arts.
Amy went to Amanda's high school graduation and dinner afterwards.
Amy, Lisa and Laney came to Steffie's high school graduation party.
Lisa and Phil took me to a beautiful dinner with Walt and Lois.
Amy, Andy, Claire, Sarah and Laney flew to California for Stephanie and Ryan's wedding.
Amy and I went to the Wild Hare to get our reggae dance on.
They ALL ask me how my lovelife is when I see them.
They are ALL honest with me when they think something is wrong with/for me.
They have given me the beautiful gift of knowing and loving their children as I would my own nieces and nephew. Beautiful and smart Claire, bubbly, talented and flirty little Sarah, bossy, beautiful and sharp little Carmen (Frito to me), and chess-playing, fast moving, bosom loving Nate. I could say a bunch more about these kids, too.
I have probably missed some things here, but I hope you get the point. I am lucky, grateful, amused, happy, blessed and in awe of this family's generosity toward me and my daughters.
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Ventures into virtual land
I admit I am a techno dinosaur. My laptop is slow and low on memory space. Maybe these first two lines parallel mid-life. Both of my daughters have recently married in the last two years. I am at odds with myself and contented at the same time. Is that possible? I began this blog in a technology boot camp that was our faculty retreat just days before the halls of our new building were filled with cute boots that college girls wear and the sounds of cellular equipment dinging, vibrating and rapping. Within the span of two years, I turned fifty, traveled to Africa, accepted a position as Associate Dean of a brand new School of Communication that had long roots in a small department I have been part of for eighteen years at an institution I love. I became a grandmother of a little girl, deployed thirty five students to mentor young girls, women and migrants from faraway places out of one of my classes, and traveled to two different states to stand in my role as proud mother of the bride. Alone. Their weddings were as perfect as my daughters are different. I cried unbridled tears at the ceremony where I felt like I was revisiting my former life with their father's family and loving them all, healing from an ancient divorce and regretting the unfinished business I have with the bride. The second ceremony signaled a "coming out" of shyness I had never seen in my younger daughter. I have not been successful in love, though I have loved and been loved; yet both of these beautiful young women, my daughters appear to have found their life's mates. I wish I could take credit for that, but I have no idea if any is mine and am grateful for their good judgement. My insides moved at the second wedding from fatigue, joy, a sense of completion, and overwhelming sentimentality at the simultaneous sight of watching my eldest nurse her baby, worry about a baby girl's fusses while cutting new teeth, and my youngest's embracing of her big, beautiful day that she had worked months to deploy with a budget spreadsheet, delegation of roles to aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and her truest friends. I spent that day in two places very far away from each other--ecstasy and longing. I celebrated a beautiful couple's joy, likeness, practicality and sense of humor, watched my parents who are in their seventies dance for perhaps the first time in fifteen years. They came alive as if they had not suffered the loss of many dear friends over the past few years; they looked young and as I remember them loving each other in sweet and funny ways throughout my growing years.I felt the loss of my importance in each daughter's life as I watched my eldest fulfill her role as wife and mother, nursing her baby girl, feeling those early pangs of watching your daughter suffer, even if only from cutting new teeth. I felt like a woman cutting new teeth in suffrage and liberation at once. I was far away from my home in Chicago and close to the home of all that I knew as a child and young mother stranded between the whole of what I thought I might do with my life's future over five decades. I have failed miserably in some things and reached heights I never knew I was capable of. I finished a book manuscript over the summer that took me eleven years to write through the trials of tenure, raising teenage daughters and managing parts of my life that always seemed like bikes and ropes and water and steam that I tried to hold onto, but could never fully grasp.
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