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Oct. 27th, 2007 09:54 amThis Jus Sanguinis stuff is heavy.
On the back of this photograph, in my mother's elegant copperplate cursive, are the words "Ted, August 1950."
This is my father in the month of my conception. He would have been twenty, same age Max is now; my mother was sixteen. I suppose he was a handsome guy. Honestly, I can't tell. I loathe him so much that even when I'm staring at his picture all I see is a blank. I'm more interested in the backdrop – Jean DeSantis DiLucchio Fiore, my grandmother, owned a small orchard in back of her house. I'm assuming that means she was close enough to her Italian roots to want a traditional lifestyle close to growing things. She must have been the daughter of an immigrant.
But that information is useless to me -- Jus Sanguinis only applies to descent from the male line.
This picture's more interesting.
It's a picture of my father and my grandmother Jean. A first communion memento perhaps? He looks to be thirteen. Note the short pants, the garters, the strangely striped knee socks. My peasant grandmother's idea of high fashion no doubt. Note the expression on Teddy's face: some day I'm gonna make you suffer, old lady. And he did! Along with every other woman in his life.
The most interesting detail about this photograph from my perspective is that Jean isn't wearing a wedding ring. The photo was taken, then, some time between the time Daniel DiLucchio, Teddy's father, ran off and Jean remarried Nick Fiore. Divorce in those days was a terrible stigma. You see how she struggles to hold her chin high.
You see how he doesn't bother.
I have no pictures of Daniel DiLucchio, my grandfather.
My father was an Italian from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My mother was a Russian/German Jew from Brooklyn. They had nothing in common but they had everything in common: they each had a parent who'd run off, who'd deserted them, at a time this simply wasn't done.
Today I'm going to email Larry Di. I think Larry is my half-cousin. I think Larry's father was the offspring of one of Daniel DiLucchio's subsequent marriages. Larry's an interesting guy, an electrical engineer who lives on a Navajo reservation. Early in life he converted to Mormonism; recently, he was excommunicated for radical thinking. But when he was a member in good standing of the Latter Day Saints, he began researching genealogy so he could get those unrepentant peasant Catholics into heaven.
Why am I doing this? For my boys.
I don't know which way the wind is blowing but I want them to have options. And an EU dual citizenship would certainly give them that.
On the back of this photograph, in my mother's elegant copperplate cursive, are the words "Ted, August 1950."This is my father in the month of my conception. He would have been twenty, same age Max is now; my mother was sixteen. I suppose he was a handsome guy. Honestly, I can't tell. I loathe him so much that even when I'm staring at his picture all I see is a blank. I'm more interested in the backdrop – Jean DeSantis DiLucchio Fiore, my grandmother, owned a small orchard in back of her house. I'm assuming that means she was close enough to her Italian roots to want a traditional lifestyle close to growing things. She must have been the daughter of an immigrant.
But that information is useless to me -- Jus Sanguinis only applies to descent from the male line.
This picture's more interesting.
It's a picture of my father and my grandmother Jean. A first communion memento perhaps? He looks to be thirteen. Note the short pants, the garters, the strangely striped knee socks. My peasant grandmother's idea of high fashion no doubt. Note the expression on Teddy's face: some day I'm gonna make you suffer, old lady. And he did! Along with every other woman in his life.
The most interesting detail about this photograph from my perspective is that Jean isn't wearing a wedding ring. The photo was taken, then, some time between the time Daniel DiLucchio, Teddy's father, ran off and Jean remarried Nick Fiore. Divorce in those days was a terrible stigma. You see how she struggles to hold her chin high.
You see how he doesn't bother.
I have no pictures of Daniel DiLucchio, my grandfather.
My father was an Italian from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My mother was a Russian/German Jew from Brooklyn. They had nothing in common but they had everything in common: they each had a parent who'd run off, who'd deserted them, at a time this simply wasn't done.
Today I'm going to email Larry Di. I think Larry is my half-cousin. I think Larry's father was the offspring of one of Daniel DiLucchio's subsequent marriages. Larry's an interesting guy, an electrical engineer who lives on a Navajo reservation. Early in life he converted to Mormonism; recently, he was excommunicated for radical thinking. But when he was a member in good standing of the Latter Day Saints, he began researching genealogy so he could get those unrepentant peasant Catholics into heaven.
Why am I doing this? For my boys.
I don't know which way the wind is blowing but I want them to have options. And an EU dual citizenship would certainly give them that.
