How my mother came to be her.

My mother was raised in the 30's and they were pretty damn poor; but oddly enough they had so much money compared to my fathers side of the family.  Her mother was the "typical' Italian Catholic lady and my grandfather was from what I've been told a very "typical" Italian Catholic gentleman.

And from what I've been told a "typical" Italian husband would throw his plate of dinner against the wall if it wasn't up to his standards, or at least my grandfather did.  When I first heard about this I laughed because I could just imagine what would happen if my father had tried to do that.  Picture this:  The plate goes flying across the room and hits the wall and my father is close behind the plate starting to clean it up.  "Hey Baby, when I get this cleaned up could you bring me to the hospital because it has this strange twitch and I think a doctor needs to see it...before I go to work tomorrow with you and the table saw.   Please?"

He also had a problem with girlfriends; from what I was told he had a lot of them and my grandmother would find out about them.  I don't know how long this went on but they were married for over 20 years at least.

And then my Italian Catholic grandparents got a divorce in the 50's.  How often did that happen?  My grandfather remarried and then after decades with this lady he got divorced again.  From what I heard this 80 something year old man had more girlfriends than his wife could handle.  After the divorce he moved in with my parents and proceeded to take the dog out for walks.  A black Afgan, aka the chick magnet.  An 83 year old guy going to bridge games to flirt with the ladies.  That's where he died from a heart attack, I bet he died happy flirting with those ladies.

Once my grandparents got divorced my grandmother kept her married name and from what I could infer she also kept the in-laws.  She went to their reunions and they loved her, didn't really care if he showed or not.

My grandmother was the matriarch of her side of the family as well as her ex husbands side and everyone treated her with respect.  At the only family reunion I went to she would just sit in the shade and everyone would bring everything to her.  I cracked a joke how they treated her like a mobster godfather and she "tsk'd" and said "Don't talk to those boys, they're not people you talk to."  Rumour is that some of my distant cousins are connected but I don't believe it.  At least not until I see better suits at the family reunions.