I AM WOMAN: Hear My Gentle Roar

By Anna Gatta

I Am Woman is a book about the many struggles women encounter that are not always spoken about (i.e., betrayal, abortion, illness, humiliation, abuse, failure, and success). Although a work of fiction, I Am Woman is based on a culmination of life events that touches on a number of issues whether personal or perceived. It is peppered with a little humor while it depicts various incidences that occurred in a multiethnic neighborhood in days gone by.

Anna is a young Catholic woman growing up in an Italian American household in the '50s and '60s. From child to businesswoman, she is confronted with a decision that would forever affect her life. Would love or conscience prevail? I Am Woman will touch all women in one way or another, I am certain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662471636

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I AM WOMAN

Hear My Gentle Roar

Anna Gatta

Copyright © 2022 Anna Gatta

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-6624-7162-9 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-7163-6 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Teen Years

Early Years

School Years

Growing Up

High School

The Sixties

Friends

Marriage

Expecting

Loneliness

Age of Aquarius

Lost

Abandonment

Confusion

Revelation

Discovery

Emotions

Confrontation

The Awakening

Confidence

Reconciliation

Rebuild

New Venture

The Agreement

Finishing Touches

The Debut

Getting Established

Long Hours

The Encounter

Questions

Feelings

Affirmation

Unity

Holiday Surprise

Conscience

Decision

Goodbye

Location, Location, Location

Tenacity

Illness

Future Dreams

Adaptation

Acceptance

The Reset

No More

Vows

The New Normal

Chapter 2020

This book is dedicated to the victims of COVID-19 and their families.

For everyone, 2020 was a trying year. The COVID-19 pandemic has swept all over the world. Friends and families were distanced from one another. Grandparents were kept away from their grandchildren for fear of being exposed. Parents were forced to miss work as schools were closed, and children were learning virtually online. Face masks and social distancing had all become an everyday ritual. The entire world was topsy-turvy.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to my family for their support through this process. I couldn’t have accomplished this without them.

Prologue

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Anna. Happy birthday to you. Tanti auguri a te. Where did the time go? Seventy. It seems like only yesterday that I was in high school. As I listened and observed all the faces surrounding me, it occurred to me that I was celebrating with family and friends whom I’ve known most of my adult life. These were people I had shared many of my life’s events. Memories of the past swirled through my head. As my grandchildren cheered as I blew out the candles, I couldn’t help thinking how blessed I was, a husband of fifty years, two successful sons, caring daughters-in-law, and five beautiful and healthy grandchildren.

Chapter 1

Teen Years

FIRST CAR Chevrolet Corvair

I’ve been trying to get to you for a long time, the Soul Survivors blared on the radio. I was driving my first car, a red Chevy Corvair, down Roosevelt Boulevard. It was 1967, and all was great in my life. At seventeen, with my junior prom coming up in a few weeks, things couldn’t be better. Well, I guess life could have been easier. I was the oldest of two girls (by nine years) in an all-Italian, Catholic household. This not only meant that I had most of the responsibilities, but I was also the trial run for parenting a teenage girl with lots of American teenage boys around. In my family, there was a clear distinction between Italian boys and American boys. The Italian boys were the ones who showed up unexpectedly at the doorstep and thought it was okay to ask your dad for your hand in marriage even though you had never laid eyes on them. (After this had happened several times, it became customary for me to run to my bedroom and lock the door until my father would very graciously tell them that I was too young and still had to finish school.) The so-called American boys were the ones who didn’t speak or understand a lick of Italian and ate gravy (spaghetti sauce) out of a jar, and according to my parents, all of whom had one sole purpose in life, and that was to get me pregnant. The main goal of most, if not all, Italian parents was to get their child to marry within their nationality. Going out with an American boy was a whole new ball game, or should I say, trying to even get my parents to entertain the thought of allowing one to phone me was next to impossible. Of course, this goes with the territory of being Italian.

Early Years

MILK DELIVERY at your front door

I was born Anna Antonella Ponti, in the fall of 1950, in a small mountainous village in the south of Italy. The third child after two miscarriages, my mother named me Anna after St. Anna, the patron saint of mothers. My mother and father married at a very young age; my mother was eighteen years old, and my father was twenty-one. My parents both came from families who made a living from farming land. Their dream was to make a better life for themselves and their child by coming to America, the land of opportunity. In those days, it wasn’t easy to gain entry into the United States. It was a long, tedious, and expensive process. My mother, Caterina, immigrated to America first. She was the child of a United States citizen, which afforded her the opportunity of entering the country without the complicated dragged-out process of filing the immigration documents necessary to enter the US at that time. My father, Salvatore, and I were left behind in the trusting hands of my maternal grandmother. The plan was that my mother would enter the US and file the necessary