Crucial Choices

By Maria Prestinenzi

A STORY OF DEVASTING EMOTIONAL POWER THAT WILL GRIP YOU FROM BEGINNING TO END.

From a humble yet happy childhood in Italy, to moving across the water to Australia in the 1960's, then thrown into unexpected culture shock and racism, this young girl grows through constant upheavals as a woman determined.

She falls in love a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shawline Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781922850249

Maria Prestinenzi

Maria Prestinenzi was born in a small town in Italy.She migrated to Australia as a young teenager with her family and settled in Melbourne where she still lives surrounded by her immediate and extended family.She's passionate about the environment. She loves to go on long walks, commune with nature and do her daily Zumba class.She loves learning about different cultures and traditions and discovering new places.She has lived a colourful life, travelled extensively and met some amazing people.

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Crucial Choices © 2022 Maria Prestinenzi.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This is a work of nonfiction. The events and conversations in this book have been set down to the best of the author’s ability, although some names and details may have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

Printed in Australia

Cover design by Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd

Images in this book are the copyright of Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd

Illustrations within this book are the copyright of Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd

First Printing: October 2022

Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd

www.shawlinepublishing.com.au

Paperback ISBN 978-1-9228-5019-5

eBook ISBN 978-1-9228-5024-9

Maria Prestinenzi

Dedications

To my son and daughter whose welfare have always been my

greatest motivators and who have inspired me to chase my dreams

Acknowledgements

To my son and daughter. All my love and gratitude for their faith in me.

PART ONE

Humble beginnings

Chapter one

You could say I tasted the bitter bile of racism from the very beginning.

I was born in a small village a couple of hours’ drive from Naples. My father’s family owned a large farm and when mum and dad married, they went to live there with my grandmother and her two other sons and daughter; dad’s father having recently died.

My father was the oldest and expected to do most of the work with little recognition and gratitude and certainly no privileges, since it was his mother that controlled the finances and everything to do with the farm.

Zio Giovanni, the second son, was in the seminary studying to be a priest. The third son, Zio Antonio, was not interested or willing to help and the youngest sister, Zia Evelina was only 12 years old and too young to do so, although sometimes she felt so sorry for dad, she would do little jobs to ease his lot.

My father was the most handsome of the three brothers, tall and slender with brown hair, green eyes, a sensuous mouth and dreamy eyes; he had been a true heart slayer in his youth. He had had thirteen girlfriends before he fell in love with mum and asked her to marry him.

Zio Giovanni was also tall, slim, blond with blue eyes and could be described as handsome, were it not for the aquiline nose and piercing eyes.

Zia Evelina was quite a beauty. Very fair with blue eyes, she wore her wavy blond hair to shoulder length. She was slim yet curvaceous and always had a ready smile and a nice thing to say.

Zio Antonio was the shortest of the brothers, a little plumper with wavy brown hair. He also had an aquiline nose and brown eyes.

Mum grew up in a family of six children, but her father died of heart problems when she was only 12 years old, leaving his wife to raise the six children on her own, the youngest only two, with very few resources. Mum grew into a very attractive girl. Dark brown wavy hair, brown eyes, slender and of average height. She sported a proud bearing and attracted the attention of many young men in the village. She had no less than four marriage proposals by the young age of 17 when she finally accepted my father’s.

She took a great deal of pride keeping the house clean and orderly and once all the family went to bed every night; she stayed up and washed the floor, leaving it sparkling for the next day. During the day, she spent her time at the convent learning embroidery with the nuns.

She only ever went anywhere with a girlfriend or her brothers and grew up sheltered and naïve in the ways of the world, avoiding any kind of trouble, always thinking of her mum and not wanting to give her any added worries or cares.

As she grew up, she was constantly reminded she did not have a big dowry and needed to make a good marriage, settle down, have a family and keep herself pure, since that was her greatest asset.

Grandma sewed for people, made bread to sell and sold some of the oil from the olives she gathered from a small parcel of land that her father had given her. She was fairly well educated for those times and also very religious. In the evenings after dinner, she would gather her children around the fire and tell stories or fairy-tales, but not until they all recited the rosary with her. She was a shrewd woman and knew how to capture their curiosity and attention.

Zio Pietro, mum’s oldest brother, as soon as he could, joined the Carabinieri, a branch of the Italian Army, so he could send some money home to provide for his family and ease the pressure on grandma.

Despite all this, they were all very affectionate and laughed and joked with each other and even when they argued and fought among themselves; they did not hold a grudge, but quickly forgave one another and had a very good relationship. Each boy grew up to be quite successful in his own way.

Dad’s parents were very strict, and the whole family had a very different dynamic. They tended to be more secretive, rather uncommunicative, became quite aggressive when they argued and when they fought, they would go weeks without speaking to one another. His mother especially, would give them the cold shoulder if they disobeyed and disagreed with her wishes. My father learned these ways of communicating himself and used them with mum or us.

Life was very difficult for both my parents when they went to live on the farm. Soon after I was born, dad decided to move up to the north of Italy, where he had fought as a partisan in the second world war, and where he had made some very good friends. He left mum and me behind until he could make arrangements for us to join him.

His mother blamed my mum for his leaving, although she was to blame for not being firm enough in gaining her other sons’ cooperation with all the work, and not giving my father the respect and independence he deserved. Mum suffered terribly at her hands in those months.

A few months later, when I was 14 months old, he organised for mum and me to join him. It was when we left and went to live in a little village in the north of Italy that mum and dad really started their life together.

Dad was very well liked because of his loyalty and efforts in the partisan movement during the war and mum, a young bride at only 20 years of age, soon became adjusted to the more open and free way people lived there. A refreshing change to the much stricter and more old-fashioned way of living she was used to in her home town.

She soon learned to speak the northern dialect and the proper Italian to suit each situation, made some good friends, learned to ride a bicycle and enjoyed her new way of life. Dad had found a job managing a farm where he was paid a retainer, given a free farmhouse and a percentage of the profit.

My memories of this small village are vague, since at the age of four, we eventually left and went to live in a bigger town called Fiorinda in the same province. We moved to an apartment next door to the new place of employment my father had found.

In Cassena, I remember rollicking in the grass, chasing ducklings and turkeys and a big bull frog at the bottom of the stairs that led to the downstairs cellar. But one memory is still very vivid in my mind, the bitter taste of the first encounter of many that I had with racism.

I would have been around four and mum and I went to visit a friend of hers. She lived in a rambling old farm house which had a large kitchen. The aroma of fresh coffee permeated the room and she welcomed us warmly.

She had just finished making fresh pasta, and on top of her table there was a large wooden board she had used to make it on. On top of this, lay a small broom to brush the board when she finished.

I was fascinated by the little broom and could not resist taking it and trying it out on the floor. As soon as I did, my mum’s friend got quite angry and said, Put that down, you dirty little Neapolitan.

My mum told me to sit in a corner and not touch anything and we soon went home. Little as I was though, I just knew what the woman had said was not right. From that day on, if ever my mum mentioned going to visit her, I would throw a tantrum and refuse to go.

In Italy, there’s always been a friction between north and south, each thinking themselves better than the other and ever ready to put one another down. In the north, life was freer, especially for girls, who were expected to have a good social life, with romance before marriage and an education or a job.

In the south, girls were kept to a stricter moral code, expected to be more homely, without much contact with the opposite sex until marriage and then expected to live life only for the family.

At that time, many families migrated from the south to the north but brought with them all their customs and ways, which caused suspicion and distrust on both sides.

Chapter two

Life was not necessarily easy for mum and dad even up north, because my mother’s mother, a widow with another four boys to settle, and few means to do so, asked for mum’s help in finding jobs for her boys. At one time or another, we had at least one or two uncles living with us, but apart from the occasional drama, we were a reasonably happy family.

Mum and dad started with absolutely nothing. Their first shopping expedition was to buy three plates, three forks, three spoons, three knives and two pots; but eventually they bought some good quality furniture, a TV when not many people had one yet, and all the creature comforts we could possibly need.

One by one, all mum’s brothers came north, married and had families and we loved them dearly. Eventually, her sister came too and all of mum’s extended family were living close to us.

The first uncle that came to join us was Zio Francesco. As my uncle, he was very affectionate. He would buy me presents even when he did not have much money, and play with me. He was very good looking, of medium height with jet black hair, piercing dark eyes, a slim figure and a certain bearing that commanded attention.

At the time he joined us, we were still living on the farm and he thought it was beneath us, so he made it a point to find my father a job in Fiorinda and go to live in town.

He was very ambitious, with big dreams. Only twenty, he had been learning the trade from a master tailor in the village and two more tailors in the city, but already had his own ideas about fashion and often found himself at odds with his teachers.

He lived with us only a short while, paying no board, often arguing with my father and sometimes my mum. He was very difficult to please. His shirts had to be perfectly ironed and he complained if the food was not to his taste.

One day dad got so angry at his lack of gratitude and appreciation that he threw an axe at him. So Zio Francesco set about finding his own accommodation. It was at this time he met the woman of his dreams.

Soon after he came up north, he went to the bar and met Violetta, a sixteen-year-old, very pretty girl working there. He was immediately attracted and started paying attention to her.

When her father found out, he was alarmed. He did not trust southerners and one day went up to him, grabbed him by the tie and asked him what his intentions were.

My uncle, who was by then in love with Violetta, told him his intentions were honourable and he wanted to marry her. And so, with hardly a lira between them, they got married. Mum made a lunch to celebrate the wedding and dad gave them a present of one night in a hotel.

Violetta was from a poor family and could not afford a fancy wedding dress. They married in early spring; the weather was still quite cool, so she wore a simple white woollen dress which flowed to mid-calf and a light blue coat. Zio Francesco wore a suit he had made himself.

Zio Francesco was consumed with ideas of becoming a great tailor. He found a job and bought a car. After a while, he had a disagreement with his employer and decided to work for himself. He started making samples and driving the two odd hours to Milan to sell them to the stores.

He established his own distinctive style, with an elegant cut and it proved to be popular. As time went by, he started employing people to work for him and he moved to a bigger home.

No sooner did he make a small step forward, then he focused on getting bigger orders, buying new sewing machines and improving his business.

He would come to visit mum and spend his time sharing his goals and dreams and although she could not share his vision, she always listened.

Sometimes he would be so strapped for money he had to ask mum and dad for a loan to pay some bills, which he repaid as soon as he could. Eventually, he built a reputation for making suits of quality and class and the time came when they were sold world-wide.

The king of Spain flew him to his home to be measured and suited in his distinctive style.

The second uncle that came to live with us was my father’s youngest brother, Zio Antonio.

He was a jolly man, also quite good-looking, slightly shorter than Zio Francesco, who took great pride in his appearance and always sang while shaving and getting dressed in the morning.

When I think of him, I always remember the strains of Quella la or Nazzarella the Neapolitan songs in vogue then. Zio Antonio lived with us for a relatively short time because soon after he came, he met Zia Concetta.

She was a beautiful Sicilian girl. She had come up north with her sister and her sister’s new husband, whose family lived in the area. He had come from Australia to get married to her sister.

As soon as my uncle saw Zia Concetta, he was captivated by this short, slender girl. She had abundant curly raven black hair, dreamy, secretive eyes and carried herself in a haughty manner.

By the time her sister’s honeymoon was over, my uncle was head over heels in love with Concetta and decided to go and visit her family in Sicily and ask for her hand. They became engaged, but she made it clear to him she wanted to go and live in Australia where her sister would be living and they eventually left for Melbourne.

Zio Pietro, mum’s oldest brother, lived in Cortona, an hour’s drive from us. When he came to visit, the whole house resounded with joy. Mum would take hours preparing delicious meals and we would have to be on our best behaviour.

Mum was forever in his debt because he helped the family and had provided her with a small dowry for her wedding. He married a beautiful woman from Tuscany whom he had met while she was recovering in hospital and he was on duty keeping guard on a prisoner there.

They were engaged for fourteen years, because he wanted to make a career as a Carabiniere and he was required to stay single for a long period of time.

They married on a sunny, warm summer day. Only mum and dad were invited and I was quite upset when I was told I could not attend. I took refuge under my lilac tree, which was in full bloom and the sweet scent made me forget my anger.

My parents left early for Cortona and mum