This is an excerpt from a project I wrote for my Honors 203 course about the modern self and what defines a human being as an individual. I focused my project on my mother because she has made incredible life sacrifices for the betterment of our family and I look up to her in every way that is possible.
My mother likes to talk about meeting my father as if they lived in separate countries, not separate counties. Although she makes it seem like they lived worlds apart, in reality, they were only separated by the Hudson River.
On May 8th, 1982, my dad lived in Westchester County, working as a landscaper with his friend, Ken. Ken played baseball for a team across the river and was invited to a big party in Rockland at his teammate Robby’s house. My dad didn’t want to go because he was fairly shy, but Ken was insistent.
My mom’s brother Vinny was Robby’s roommate at the time and invited her to the party. She claims there were two hundred people there, all of whom she knew, except for my dad. She looked at him from across the yard and immediately wanted to meet him. Naturally, pulling off of her Italian heritage, she began to talk to him about food.
Gina: Those are my mom’s sausage and peppers you’re eating.
Peter: Oh.
They went to the front yard to sit on the lawn and immediately started talking. They talked about everything in the world; they just couldn’t stop. Finally, when there was a break in the conversation, he kissed her.
It was the best kiss in the world. She can still close her eyes and imagine just how wonderful it was. She knew when he kissed her that it was the best kiss anyone could ever have. She knew she was in love with him.
Two days later, my mom turned twenty. She only had one birthday present in mind, and she got it. He called.
My parents have been together since that day in 1982, battling through many struggles, including deaths of siblings, sickness in our family and moving across the country twice.
For my project, I chose to explore how our relocation from New York to Idaho, in 1994, helped shape my mother into the person she is today. The move solidified her role in life, leading her on a journey to define her modern self.
Although it’s irrelevant, my mother always starts her story the same way: “We were watching Seinfeld when the phone rang.” It was February 1994 and she was four months pregnant with my brother, Jonathan. We were living in a small, “sweet” apartment complex in Orange County, New York. She was relaxing by helping two-year old me assemble a “Fifty States!” puzzle while, of course, watching Seinfeld, the weekly sitcom she “lived for.” This was our typical nighttime routine.
My father answered the phone. He was thirty and working as a senior graphic designer for a dinnerware company called Dansk based out of Westchester. It was a steady job, but without much progression. He had begun sending out his resume earlier that year, partly for curiosity and partly because Dansk was thinking about relocating to New Jersey, which was much too far away from “the family.”
The family is my mother’s side, a close bunch, raised in an Italian home based largely on talking loudly and food. My mother was the only girl out of seven children and the second youngest, which always insured she would be looked after by virtually everyone. That didn’t change after she got married. Almost every day, she would make the thirty-minute drive to her parent’s house before work, just to say a quick hello. It’s unlikely that there went more than two days in the first two years of my infancy that I did not see my maternal grandparents. If I wasn’t with my grandparents, then I was with one of my uncles, all of whom lived within a half-hour radius. Basically, everyone was close, everyone knew everything about the others, and, most importantly, no one ever left New York.
Because of this, my father exclusively sent his resumes to companies in New York; anything else seemed like a waste of time. The only company he contacted that was not placed within the confines of the New York boundaries was Coldwater Creek, a woman’s apparel company searching for an art director. It was located in Sandpoint, Idaho.
For years, my father wanted to progress from senior designer to art director, which is a difficult transition within the field. He was curious as to what art directors would get paid on the west coast, so, in a researching state of mind, he gave his resume to my mom to mail to Idaho the next day.
She threw it in the back of her car and completely forgot about it.
Two weeks later, my mom was helping me out of my car seat when she noticed the big envelope stuck in between the seat and door. Ideally, we happened to be at the post office. She picked it up, smoothed out the crinkles, and let me throw it into the out-of-state mail slot.
That was the moment our lives changed forever.
Our condo was cute, but it was very small, and while my dad talked on the phone, my mom grew increasingly annoyed as she struggled to hear Seinfeld.
“Peter,” she said. “Who is on the phone that is so important you can’t leave the room during Seinfeld?”
“That company in Idaho,” he replied.
Suddenly, my mother was a lot more interested in my “Fifty States!” puzzle. We had completed it by that time and she scoured the middle states, looking confused that she couldn’t find Idaho in the middle of the country. Her expression increasingly went from interest to complete panic as her hand traveled from right to left across the puzzle. When she finally hit Idaho and realized exactly how far west it was, she jumped up started doing the universal “no” signal: shaking her head and repeatedly miming that she was slitting her throat.
Three months later, in May 1994, we were residents of Sandpoint, Idaho.
Our move to Idaho defined my mother’s sense of self as a caregiver rather than a provider. In New York, both of my parents had been providers: my father with his job at Dansk and my mother doing various jobs like office work and retail. When we moved, he became our sole financial provider whereas my mom now focused on raising a family. Essentially, she gave up her extended family, education, and everything she’d ever known, yet she also was able to act on dreams she didn’t even realize she had.
“Moving to Idaho is not something I wanted to do,” she said. “But, it was something I had to do. It didn’t matter if it was right for me; all that mattered was if it was the right decision for our family. And, it was. Peter and I have had to make sacrifices to make our relationship work. That was my sacrifice. It was also the beginning of my own adventure. Part of me always wanted to get up and go and just start new. I never thought I would have the courage to actually do it.”
By separating herself from New York for the first time in thirty years, my mother was finally able to define herself as an individual. My mother was able to raise us as she saw fit, rather than depending on the opinions and influences of others.
“Living in Idaho was a much simpler way of raising my children,” my mother said. “It gave me more confidence in my decisions as a mother.”
This confidence shows how my mother’s move to Idaho helped develop her modern self. She became much more secure within herself and the decisions she had to make. Before, she had a support system at the tip of her fingers. Now, with my father traveling often for work, she had to rely on herself to make the correct decisions at a moment’s notice. Life in Idaho was different than life in New York: there were no traditions to follow, no set extended family rules that could not be broken. She embraced the difference and took the opportunity to raise me and my brothers according to her own moral instruction. It's an accomplishment my mother is proud of because she realizes how much she grew as a person in the years after the move.
“Everything on the east coast is set within tradition,” she said. “People there do things a certain way because their parents did it that way and their parents’ parents did it the same way. It’s an ongoing cycle that I thought I was going to be part of, but when I left, I felt free. I felt like I was finally able to start my own journey. I was able to be me.”
When I interviewed my mother for this project, I was finally able to appreciate the sacrifices that she made for my life to be better. By becoming independent and defining her own self, she paved the road for my brothers and I to do the same. My mother’s confidence has allowed us to feel confident ourselves in taking up new opportunities and realizing that we can go wherever we want to. I hadn’t realized it until this project, but if my parents had stayed in New York their whole lives, it’s likely that my brothers and I never would not have left either. We would have raised our children within the same set structures and the pattern would never be broken. Now, because of my mother's brave actions, we too have the chance to truly define our own modern selves.