Saturday, August 2nd.

ADDIE

When Margo, my big sister, was fourteen, she caught our father having an affair with my mother. She used to tell me how shocking it was, even if our father was a good-looking Italian man that had women walking through his restaurant doors in hoards, the question of his faithfulness would never have been called into question.

That was until Margo, who had never even held hands with a boy, walked into the storeroom to collect a pizza sauce and saw her father's pants around his ankles and a woman's legs around his waist.

He brought great shame on the Bianchi name and as I was told, he was given an earful from my Nonna who was appalled at his actions. She never accepted my mother who, while from Italian descent, was born and raised in America. She didn't like to cook, she was career focused, she didn't want a lot of children. This didn't sit right with Nonna, as if the fact that she was a mistress wasn't bad enough, she didn't equate to a good Italian housewife either. But she was beautiful, elegant, dazzling in diamonds and wealth. And she had a good heart, she was kind and welcoming.

Dad left Sicily with my mom, both heading back to her home in California and six months later, Margo was sent to live with them as her own mother fell deep into drugs and alcohol. A year and a half later, I was born. As I grew older, I asked Margo how she wasn't so angry and frustrated with my mother for tearing her family apart. All she ever said was that her father was happier than he had ever been and there were probably things that went on that she didn't understand because of her age.

Margo was like that. She tended not to dwell on circumstantial matters. She couldn't change the relationship that her dad had with my mom. So, she embraced it and she embraced me.