Family Storytelling

     

    Once upon a time, in the kingdom of St. Clair Shores, there was a humble pink bricked castle. There in the two bedroom castle, was a master suit for the king and queen Salvatore and Jean, and another room for five children, one of them being my mother. For some unexplained reason all of the villagers tended to be Italian or Sicilian and everyone was on a family name basis. 

    The children grew up and left to go on their own ventures, all of them grew very successful becoming electricians and carpenters, but not for my mother. After the endless hours at the kingdom’s finest Taco Bell my mother was the first woman in her family to go to college.

    Before the king and queen both passed their enlarged family would always go to church on Sundays and afterwards go back to a new and bigger Castle to come up with a meal to feed the family of now forty-five. 

    I am so privileged enough to never wait for a holiday to hear the tales if anything I might have done better without hearing the legends of the Puglise family. My uncle Joe makes his own wine and I always wonder what he puts in it that makes the family get so loud. And it starts at the age of thirteen, you are granted into the club to finally sit at a table and drink wine. For the rest of young peasants, they eat on the ground. And if you complain they’ll tell of the times all five of them shared a single bedroom.  

    I notice the impact of my mother’s childhood on my whole life everyday. How loud I am. How I live in a small house when we could live in a bigger house if wanted. How I work 50 hours a week in the summer and 30 during the school year. How not only can I cook and clean but I can cut grass, weed, and garden for my acre backyard. How much I should give and volunteer when someone like myself is so blessed to have so much. And finally, how important God and family are. 

The point of unnecessarily screaming these stories is to make the children’s generation strong just like their parents, making so much off of so little. 

  

We started a walk for my grandma who passed because of ALS and we raise money every year in her honor. For perspective this is a small portion of the family. 

Here's me, my first cousins, and their kids. 

My grandpa and grandma during christmas.

My mother working hard in college. She now has a masters and is both a market researcher and project manager for Crains Detroit.

Me and the fam at church with the pope, no biggie. 

My mother, aunt, and grandma. Probably the strongest women I know. 

The king and queen that started it all.