My Dad, the Mafia Don…’t

[Originally posted to FB on June 16, 2013]

I’m a 37 years old, 100% Italian-American, who grew up in West Philly and Upper Darby, and to this day, I have childhood friends that will swear my father is part of the mafia.

Almost every day growing up, my house would smell delicious. Mom or grand-mom would have something stewing on the stove. And in this household, the gravy is called gravy. Not sauce, not marinara. Gravy! Capicé? Well after school my Medigan friends would sometimes come over and be mesmerized by the smell of this alien deliciousness. Usually, with our parents permission, they’d get to stay for dinner. If so, then that’s when they’d get to meet my dad.

I’ve never really bragged or told my friends what my dad did, unless they asked. I would just say he had a normal office job, just like any normal dad. Now the funny part is, my dad has the Italian Don look. He’s partially bald, walks with a slight limp disguised as a strut, and he never really smiles. Ok, almost never. Well when dad goes to work, he’d wear a suit and tie. He looked sharp. Borderline funeral director. Sometimes in the winter, he’d wear a long trench coat and a dress hat.

It seemed like my friends were always eating over for dinner when he’d wear this getup. And as we knew dad would be walking in from work any minute, after his long drive from North Jersey back to his home in the Philadelphia suburbs, we would start sitting down at the table to wait for his arrival. We could see the front door from the dinning room table, where we were sitting. Right on the mark, the front screen door would open and a large, scary, silhouette would appear beyond the drapes. It almost looked like the shadow of a private eye, like in those oldie-time movies, lurking behind the door.

As it was his shadow they saw first, my friend’s eyes would widen in anticipation for the main door to open. But why? It couldn’t have been from anything I said or told them. Now years later, I think it may have been the disinformation their parents fed them about their new dago neighbors.

The door opens. My dad hangs his coat and hat, kisses his beautiful wife, greets the rest of the family, and gives a smileless nod to the new kid at his table. As soon as he sat down we would say grace and begin to enjoy his hard earned meal with little, if any interruption from him. Though my brothers and I wouldn’t allow for a silent setting. But dad never asked for silence. He was right where he wanted to and loved to be. Home with his family.

Usually the following day, without fail, the friend who was just over for dinner would make it a point to say how scary my dad was. Followed by a repertoire of mob and mafia related questions I could never really rebut or refute. They would paint their own scary perception of my father, and I’d just let them. And in the later years, for the new friends meeting dad, there would always be the inevitable Tony Soprano comparisons. And his working in North Jersey never helped my arguments.

Never in my life did I believe my father was in the mafia. He nor my mother ever spoke of it or even mentioned its existence to us. Hell, we weren’t even allowed to have water pistols or cap guns as children. My dad was against it, and we understood his position about it without even knowing why. Though that never stopped us from yucking it up with our friend’s toy guns when we would hang out at their house and had the chance. Then as we grew older, we learned on our own about The Godfather, Good Fellas and the rest of those Italian mafia based films that everyone knows and loves today. And then I got it. I figured out why my friends were scared shitless. They thought my family was just like those “families”. Without a single piece of proof, their assumptions were fact to them.

What they don’t know is that my father is a teddy bear. He wouldn’t hurt a fly on the wall. Actually, scratch that, he’s pretty damn accurate with a flyswatter. But he wouldn’t harm a hair on anyone’s head, bald or not. That’s what he set out to teach his 3 boys. More than a mafia family, he wanted an American family. And in order to achieve this, his actions were his lessons. He taught my brothers and I to respect one another (though we made him work for this one), be chivalrous with women, and be responsible for yourself and your actions. But I’ll never tell my friends this, because where’s the fun in that?

Dad, I love you and everything you’ve taught me. And when you are smiling, it’s brighter than the sun. I believe we became the men you set out to create. And to be honest, you did one helluva job.

Happy Father’s Day. Love,

Chris