Being the first born in an Italian family was such a wonderful start. I was the first everything; child, grandchild, great grandchild. You get the point. I was born in Buffalo in an area called the Kensington Village Apartments in the winter of 1972.

The story goes, my dad was on the sofa watching TV while my mother paced around the apartment yelling at him that it was time to go. By the time my father took her seriously, he had to drive their Volkswagen Beetle into the courtyard through the snowpack so my mother could get in. By the time they got to the hospital, my mother was in full blow labor, and I was born while he was still filling out the paperwork.

After that we loved downstairs from my great grandmother, and I remember holding her little hands while she marched me to mass in her black dress, shoes and purse, that were held together by masking tape. When I was around 3, my parents bought their first house and my dad started working for the Buffalo Bills.

The next few years were wonderful in our little country house on 5 acres. I would spend hours playing in the yard out back in the creek and swinging on the swings with the 2 girls next door to see who could swing the highest. We also had my great grandparents there a great deal of the time.

I remember sitting on my great=grandfather’s lap on the front porch where he taught me how to look at the trees and tell if rain was coming. I was terrified of thunderstorms, but he sat me on his knee and held me tight while we watched the storm roll in and he taught me how to count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder to tell how far away the storm was.

We had a wonderful few years there until my dad took a salesman job for a corporation in Rochester. Our stint in Rochester was just long for his training until they gave him a territory. We relocated to a small town in central Pennsylvania, as it was the center of his territory. We lived in a small duplex apartment in Bethlehem, PA until we moved to Saucon Valley, which was right between Hellertown and Bethlehem. At first it was a very hard move, but Pennsylvania turned out to be a wonderful place to grow up.I had 2 little boys that fought over me in kindergarten, Kevin and Steven. Kevin won and he was my “boyfriend” until I moved away in the seventh grade. He was my first boyfriend, first date, and first kiss, albeit on the cheek in my parent’s garage. My brother and I, and the neighborhood, kids would ride our bikes through the neighborhood until the lights came on. Other days we would just venture on foot into the farmer’s fields and play among the stalks of corn. One time we got caught by the farmer while he was up in his helicopter and he chased us out of the fields. My one friend wasn’t fast enough and got shot in the ass with salt pellets. The rest of us just hid in the woods crying with laughter, but boy did we all get in trouble when we got home. As I got a little older, my mom we take us into Hellertown, and I would take my younger brother to the Olympic sized swimming pool. Every kid in town would be there. It was a blast. We would bring our boom boxes and sit under the tree and watch our friends take turns on the diving boards. Lord only knows where my little brother was. Still can’t believe to this day, my mother would let me take my 7 YO little brother to the pool alone, but that was the 70s for you. We did have 2 short moves. We moved to a beautiful older home on the Saddle River in New Jersey. The 10 months we spent there were wonderful. We had a rope swing in the front yard and a playground right on the river. I had a beautiful bedroom in the third floor attic overlooking the river. I used to sit in the window and pretend i was a fairy princess. My parents were having some issues and me moved back into the town in Hellertown. We spent the next 6 months in a duplex about a block away from the pharmacy my mom worked at. Hellertown took small town to another level. I spend Friday nights hanging out in the town center, which just consisted of cross streets with a pizzaria, a deli, a church, and the city commerce building which hoursed all municpalities, jail, and teh Sherriffs office upstairs. We would hang out on the benches out front and when it was 9 p,m. the Sheriff would open the window and yell, it’s time to go home kids. That is the last summer where I remember feeling happy and free.