If you are able to enjoy the company of your parents as they age; if you can remember them as they were, and appreciate them as they are; if you are as lucky as I am to have a mother and father who will never give up giving to their children until they have taken their last breathe, than this is your story as much as it is mine.
I do not lay claim to a childhood that was any more or less perfect than that of anyone else. My life has certainly not been lived without fault, a condition that is mainly a direct result of my own personal decisions. In all honesty, I can say that any real goodness in me was instilled by my parents and the sterling examples of strength of character, work ethic and consideration for others that they set for me as a child. Life wasn’t all Ozzie and Harriet-like, but I lay claim to nearly the next best thing; two honest, intelligent, loving and supportive parents. Everyone should be so lucky.
Quite the ladies’ man in his youth, my father fell hard for the pretty, conservative college graduate and W.A.V.E. officer. “I made him work pretty hard back then,” my mother recalls, a bit coquettishly. “The Dutch in me, you know.” Hard to say who worked who harder for what in that early relationship, as four months later they were married on August 26th, 1944, the day after the Allies liberated Paris. It was probably the last time my father insisted on anything - except wearing socks, perhaps, or more specifically his lack thereof.
For my parents, service to community and family always took precedent over casual entertainment, and education was without question a priority over mindless, leisure activities. I was twenty five years old before I took a vacation that didn’t involve a museum or a national park, never realizing there were alternatives.
Whistling away down in his workshop, the sounds of my father, working away, floated through the yard and through the house and all was right with our world. Whatever was broken he would fix; what wasn’t broken he was sure to adapt, alter, modify or reuse in some shape or form . Thrift was not just an ingrained habit, it was a necessity.
Overall, we didn’t have a lot of fancy toys but we had plenty to keep us busy. My parents always saw to that. Dare a child whine “I’m bored!” to Peggy or Carlo, the same stock answer would always follow. “Find something to do.” My parents wasted nothing, including time, and expected no less from their children.
The basic formula for discipline in our household combined healthy fear with a good dose of respect. If my father ruled with fear, my mother did so with the fear of disappointment.
Emotional displays were limited in the busy household that was my childhood; after all, who had time for such nonsense, as my mother may have phased it? Yet if there is one singular thing in this life of which I can be sure, it is that my parents always loved us all, heart and soul.