"Some people say I done alright for a girl"

It’s Groundhog Day, otherwise known, at least to me, as my Cali-versary, the anniversary of the day I first rolled into California, in 1982. I’ve written about this in previous posts, as well as a book called Leaving, but it’s a date I still acknowledge with wonder and pride. I was a desperado, it’s true, and perhaps desperation is not as admirable as courage, but in retrospect, it was a pretty gutsy journey. I was driving the infamous ‘73 Buick I’d acquired in Phoenix, an avocado green vessel with a tattered vinyl roof and a nonworking gas gauge that made it impossible to tell how near I was to empty. My worldly possessions were stuffed into big plastic trash bags, and my plan was very sketchy, mostly depending on the kindness of friends for lodging and the hope that my master’s degree in public administration might suggest that I was a worthy candidate for a real job someplace. I set up appointments from phone booths (remember those?) and hoped that I would look suitably professional in my cheap navy blue suit, despite the fact that my nails were chewed down to the cuticles and my overall demeanor might best be described as haunted.

But maybe not. People keep telling me that memory is fiction, and this whole story––my life’s defining migration––might be a great accumulation of misremembered details and inventions. I know I wasn’t much of a hit in Arizona, but that turned out for the best. California shimmered to the West, the place of dreams, always, and it was a patchy landing, but some folks were kind and tolerant, and I will never forget that. One day, I noticed an ad in the paper for a position in Orange County that sounded similar to what I used to do back east. I was interviewed and hired, and by April I was an employed person with a furnished apartment and a telephone. Everyone back home felt abandoned and angry, but a different kind of life opened up for me, and I remained. To borrow Melanie’s line (and may she rest in peace) “Some people say I done alright for a girl.”

I’ve been thinking about migrations and abandonments this week because of a flurry of emails from siblings about our family. The conversation was prompted by one of those Ancestry notifications about a cousin you didn’t know you had. This one had an ornate Italian surname and a New York base, but initially offered no evidence of actual connection. That’s when my brother stepped in. He’s an astoundingly meticulous researcher and has long had an interest in our genealogy, probably because he grew up lonesome, and aching with the lack of family. Long story, and this might be its own separate blog post, but as clues accumulated, we did in fact see how this cousin was related to us, and oh, the tales that tumbled forth! I was surprised at how many little anecdotes I began to remember from my childhood. There was also an extravaganza of magnificent names: Assunta, Saverio, Arcangelo, Raffaele, Ermando, Filomena, Traiano, Miranda, Angelina, Clementina, Antoinetta (Aunt Nettie), and numerous Roses, just to list a few— immigrants, first and second-generation, successfully assimilated into a New York blue collar world with big post-church family meals and predictable itineraries, some of them still living out this script.

It struck me anew that my own father had stepped away from the traditional Italian culture and constraints with aspirations of a different kind of life. So many big family gatherings missed forever, so much strife to be navigated solo. Freed of the extended family ties, we also forfeit the comfort and security. Things didn’t work out for my dear father as he had hoped, although I believe he would have loved the life I found, a generation later, and perhaps there is some solace in that. Anyway, it was interesting to be immersed in this stuff, and ironic that it came flooding in when I was at the cusp of celebrating my own anniversary of leaving and arriving.

I read someplace that Groundhog Day was first celebrated on February 2, 1887, but it has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candelmas, and even before that, in Celtic traditions celebrating the halfway point between winter and spring. I could not have chosen a better date to have entered my new state. It is a bridge of a day, a crossing, a time of transition and light, when days are subtly growing longer and we look to the future with hope.

Forty-two years later I thank the girl with the chewed-up nails and trash bags in her car for being brave, and I am grateful to anyone who was kind, and for all the forces of heaven and chance that aligned in my favor. Outside my window now, post-rain enchantment reigns: everything green and sparkling. Inside, there’s a cup of strong coffee at my elbow, and my true blue companion is eating his cereal, and I am inexplicably very near to tears. I done alright.