My Mom, Her Fiancé, And How She Met Her Husband

Podcast

I am going to tell you all a story about my mom, Anna Maria Isabella Theresa Gallo. Even though her life is full of meaningful, sometimes, historical events, like my birth, I chose the following story because it sums up what kind of person my mom really is. But, the only way I can tell you this particular story is if I first give you all a summary of who my Mom’s family are and what they are like.

My mom’s father, my grandpa, first came to America during World War II. He was part of the Italian Merchant Marines, when one day the ship he was on docked in NY harbor. After leaving the ship to explore New York he realized he never wanted to go back to Italy again. He never stepped back on that ship and soon found himself an illegal immigrant living in a strange new world. Eventually he found a Sicilian wife and they settled down in the Bronx. They had two children, the older one, Anna, my mom, while the younger one, Ralph, was my Uncle. Eventually they moved to Oakland Gardens, Queens. My mom and uncle always like to tell stories about how old fashioned my grandpa was. I do not know how true they are, all I know is that even if half of the stories are true I would never trade my parents for him. My grandpa had narrow views on marriage. According to them many of the backwards things he believed was that women should not go to college and that they were actually inferior to men.

By the time my mom was a senior at Cardozo High School it started to look like she would be the first person to graduate in her family. My grandpa wanted my uncle to continue his education after high school, but that dream was crushed when my uncle was expelled from school during his sophomore year. Every time I ask about how my uncle got expelled I get a different answer. These answers range from selling drugs to being involved in a race riot.

By the time my mom graduated high school in 1973, it looked as though her future was set in stone. She was attending Queens Community College and was only nineteen years old when a young man named Joseph Deluvio asked her to marry him. This man is not my father and my mom never married him. This man, my mom’s first fiancé was in line to own a pizzeria that his father owned, and according to my mom, his family was already well off. She even hinted to me that some of the money did not come from the pizza. My mom does not remember much from those lost years, but what she does remember is what happened afterwards.

During her junior year of college she dropped out so that she could plan her wedding. But, by the summer of that year my mom realized she did not want to marry this man. After her fiancé caught my mom in a “lie” she decided that she could not marry a man that checked up on her and worried about “things that were so petty.” She broke off the plans for the wedding and for the next six months spent her time in Europe in order to find herself. She told me that she learned two things during her time in Europe, “life is for the living,” and “Americans have better bathrooms, but Europeans have better chocolate.”

When she came back to America she moved out of her parents house and bought an apartment in Astoria. Back then Astoria was a cheap neighborhood, but it was not cheap enough for my mom to afford. Her ex-fiancé, in an act of goodwill helped my mother make her first steps on her own. She started to work for Morgan Stanley as an Administrative Assistant in order to make ends meet, and in the next year or two was back at school. She reenrolled at Hunter and worked nights to pay for the tuition.  My mom told me why she did not ask her father for the tuition, “I was on my own,” she said, “And it’s not like he cared about my education… He even had the nerve to ask me once why I was even going to college.” One year after reenrolling my mom became the first person in her family to graduate from college.

With no guidance counselor, precedence, or encouragement, my mom decided that a Bachelors degree was not good enough for what she wanted to be, it was then that she decided to get her Masters degree in Social Work at NYU. Even back then the price of admission to NYU would give people heart attacks. What was my mom thinking when she decided to take out large student loans and work long nights for a social work degree, a degree, considered by many to have no monetary value? The answer is that my mom wanted to be a psychotherapist and she was not going to let money get in her way. Even though a PhD. in Psychology was also an option, my mom decided that it was better for her to become a psychotherapist, and getting a Masters in social work would be the most economical and fastest way to start her career. Even though Psychologists get paid more my mom just wanted to treat and help people.

It was during her time in graduate school that she met my dad, who was a younger graduate student studying social work at Columbia. But, that is the beginning of another part of my mom’s life, something that would not fit into this essay and will have to be told on another day.