The Naked Truth: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewife of New Jersey--In Her Own Words (3 page)

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” I would often dream as a young child, and my dreams were vivid images of what I had hoped my life would actually be like growing up. I would dream that I was the belle of the ball, even royalty. In some of my dreams, I was surrounded by vast orchards chock-full of beautiful apples, grapes, and berries. The aromas I imagined were so pure, I thought they smelled the way heaven would. I played in green fields and ran free in these dreams. I skipped without a care in the world as the warm breezes blew through my hair. I was surrounded by family, and nobody seemed to ever have to work or worry. We ate amazing home-cooked meals and we all laughed, and I was an important part of that big, loving family. I would sit on my grandfather’s lap and everyone would cherish and fawn over me. Everyone in these dreams didn’t have distinct faces, but they always had bright smiles that were big, wide, and full of life. I was the only one in my dreams who had an actual face.

I would have these dreams almost every night. I suppose a lot of them were based on wishful thinking and my longing for the elements of a normal life that I missed out on as a kid,
and every morning I was snapped back to my harsh reality. In my dreams I would be fed fresh fruit and expensive gourmet chocolates. In reality, for dinner, I would get frozen peas and a hockey puck for a hamburger that I would feed to the dog under the table. In my dreams I had a canopy bed. In reality my family moved around a lot, and in the less-than-humble homes I occupied as a child, rats were actually running around where I slept.

When I was thirteen years old, my mother told me more details surrounding my birth. She said that when she was at the hospital to pick me up and bring me home soon after I was born, she saw a young woman who was speaking Italian whom she believed to be my mother. Through the process of elimination she believes that it was, in fact, her. They passed each other in the hallway of the hospital and made eye contact. My mother looked curiously at my birth mother, who was being pushed in a wheelchair by an Italian woman who was thought to be my aunt. My aunt was tall, dark, and beautiful and was wearing her wedding band, which wasn’t just any wedding band—it was covered in diamonds. My mother was extremely pretty, small-boned, and with a clear complexion and really long, curly hair.

I’ve been told I look exactly like my mother. I would joke and say, “Exactly
how
do I look like my mother?” I have never really thought I was attractive. I have always had a nice physique, but I’ve never liked my face. Maybe it’s just hard for me to look in the mirror.

When you have been abused, as I was during my childhood,
it’s hard to see yourself as the person whom everyone else sees on the surface. I thought it was best not to look in the mirror because of the reflection I saw from being abused. Despite it not being your fault, you feel guilty and dirty because of these painful and traumatic experiences. If someone liked something about me physically, I would immediately alter it. For instance, I had really long, curly hair just like my birth mother’s. If someone liked my long hair, when I found this out, I went to a barbershop and got a boy’s haircut because I didn’t want anyone to look at me admiringly anymore. At forty-seven years old, when I look in the mirror, I see a much stronger woman than I have ever before seen. However, even now, I still don’t see what the men who have loved me have seen in me. Maybe it’s because I doubt whether they’ve actually seen my beauty on the inside. Or maybe I pushed them away before they were able to see it. I have a history of leaving men quickly because I am scared that when they get too close, they might actually get to know the real me. In hindsight, I think that’s exactly what I wanted.

I believe that being given away by my mother at birth created a major sense of rejection that I have tried to overcome my entire life. Rejection can be a quick and simple act by one person to another, but reclaiming oneself after that rejection can be as daunting as climbing the world’s highest mountain. To go through life is difficult in itself. But wondering about one’s creation is serious grounds for insecurity and makes it more difficult to trust and love. However, it has been, and will continue to be, a journey that I will embrace and grow from.

The questions that run through the mind of a child who has been given up are many:
Who are my real parents? What are my roots? Where was I actually conceived?
The depth of insecurity that can result from this can only be imagined by most people. But I have known and lived with that insecurity every day of my life. My mother decided to give me away. She didn’t want me. Even if she did want me, my grandfather took control and forced this young, weak woman to abandon me. The bottom line is that my whole family—my flesh and blood—did not want to include me in their lives. I think that this severe rejection made me easy prey for people in my life.

I have spent much of my life tapping into my own senses to try to discover some answers. I certainly had my share of childhood questions, and the answers weren’t easy to come by. I had to dig in deep and try to piece together my story for myself as I daily learned more about who I was.

Some of the finer things in life that I now appreciate appear to have no connection whatsoever to any conscious experience I had during my childhood with my adoptive parents. My knowledge and appreciation of fine china, beautiful crystal, and the game of baccarat don’t reflect any exposure to these that I had during my young life. I must have perceived these things when I was in the womb and exposed to my birth mother’s upscale Italian family.

Flying in an airplane was another oddly familiar experience for me. I knew that first-class passengers boarded the plane before the other people even though I had never flown on an
airplane before. Did it happen in this life when I was in my mother’s womb flying to the United States for the first time? Or did it perhaps occur in another life? My friends have told me that they believe that all of this relates to some kind of special insight I have into the past. But I prefer to believe that it directly relates to my experiences as an unborn child in my mother’s womb.

Another important part of my heritage that I think I picked up prior to my birth is Italian food. I can be in another room, smell an Italian dish cooking in the kitchen, and know precisely what is being prepared. Is this a coincidence? My answer is no. I believe that all of my knowledge of and appreciation for Italian food can be traced back to my Sicilian roots and the place where I was conceived. I was never formally taught how to cook Italian food. Yet today I know how to prepare sophisticated dishes without using any written recipes and instinctively know how to season the foods correctly as well.

The cliché is that Italians like to cook, eat, and reproduce. It’s not surprising that those are among my favorite pastimes. (My mood and the company I am with determines where each item falls on my list.) I crave Italian food all the time. I imagine that I love to eat the things my birth mother ate when she was pregnant. Today, my daughters crave the same Italian foods that I ate when I was pregnant. I believe the child in her womb takes on his or her mother’s tastes.

This may sound a little off-the-wall, but I think I absorbed my religious beliefs as well while in my mother’s womb. I am
close to my priest, Father Michael Lombardo of Our Lady of Consolation in Wayne, New Jersey, and consider my relationship with him special. I see Father Michael once a week. I have gone to church consistently throughout my life. My one stipulation to my parents as I grew up was that I had to be raised Catholic, even though I was living in a Protestant home. Luckily, I had friends who were Catholic, so I would go to mass with them and their families. I think my own children knew they were Catholic as soon as they were born. I blessed my belly all the time when I was pregnant.

When your family is a mystery that you wish to unravel and you desire answers to what might have been, you connect with your inner soul and senses more than other people usually do. You want to know where you came from. You want to find out how and why you think and feel the way you do. The questions of that journey don’t stop there. It often takes years of denial before you have the strength to face certain problems, so you can’t expect to resolve them overnight. At forty-seven years of age, I am still continuing to piece together my past and remain committed to my voyage of self-discovery. To learn is to live.

As a child, I spent every day of my life wondering if my birth mother would eventually contact me. Was she investigating
my
whereabouts and trying to seek me out? One thing’s for certain:
I was constantly thinking about
her.
Was she thinking about me? Only she could answer that for sure, but as a mother, I know the deep emotional and spiritual connection that evolves from carrying a child. I can’t imagine what it would be like to never be in contact with one of my daughters, so I doubt my mother just gave me up and forgot about me completely. But again, I may never know.

After my birth, I’m not sure exactly what happened to my mother next, except that she went back to Italy with my aunt. Over the years, friends have offered their assistance to help investigate her whereabouts for me. From what I have been told, my birth mother eventually settled right here in America. Further inquiries revealed that she eventually got married and that I’m now the oldest of six children. I know that if I chose to meet my mother and her new family, there would be extremely complicated issues and risks. For one thing, I’d be coming forward completely from left field as the oldest of all her children. Do I really want to alter my siblings’ image of their mother by revealing that she gave birth to an illegitimate child? After forty-seven years have gone by, how does a sister announce to a brother she has never known, “Listen, I’m sorry to tell you this, but you weren’t the first child born to our mother. I was.” I’ve never wanted to destroy someone else’s family unit, a group of innocent people who know nothing about me.

I convinced myself that my mom probably didn’t come find me because she’d moved on and it would hurt her new family.
Or maybe they all did actually know about me but I was part of such a hurtful memory from the past that my mother was forbidden by her current husband to acknowledge it. Or maybe she just didn’t care anymore. Of course, it could be a combination of all three. Or I could be completely wrong about all of these possibilities. One thing’s for sure: I am quite curious.

Abortion was not an option for my birth mother for religious reasons, so her only choice was to eventually give me up for adoption. I admire her strength for coming all the way to the United States from Italy, giving birth to me, then walking away and believing that I would have a better life.

If my birth mother decided to come forward, I would like to speak with her. I’d like to find out why she never tried to find me after all these years. I would also like her to meet my children. I’d even like her to cook a meal with my daughters and me. It doesn’t sound as if I’m asking for much, does it? Just an experience like what every daughter probably has with her mother. As a mom, I cook with my daughters often, and it’s always time well spent together—we share ideas and thoughts and talk about our lives and dreams. We make dishes together from start to finish, enjoy our accomplishments, and savor the taste of food cooked with love. I realize that this might sound simple, but I think these moments are extremely important to our development as women.

I’ve spent a good part of my life wondering what the conversation would be like between my birth mother and me if we ever met one-on-one. All she would have to do is look
me in the eye and say, “I’m sorry.” It seems like such a simple gesture. I would just want her to say something that would make me truly believe in my heart and soul that she feels bad that I had to go through even a minute of what I endured during my childhood. Once my birth mother offered me a heartfelt apology, I wouldn’t discuss the subject with her again. Not ever again.

STOLEN FLOWER