The Importance of Being Italian

  IT WAS AN IMPORTANT decision, made in my youth during the search for my roots.  Then, as now, one hyphen was all I could bear, three were ludicrous and "American" alone was not descriptive enough.
  It was a decision that had nothing to do with percentages of blood.  That standard is meaningless in Italy, where bloods have been mixed freely by a turbulent history.  It had nothing to do with citizenship or loyalty to the United States, since nothing can shake that.
  Rather it had to do with how I chose to perceive myself and the heritage on which I elected to build.  Italian was the dominate force, what I decided to be above everything else.

  WHAT ABOUT YOU, my little Lotitos?  You have the name, my curly-headed boy, and I hope you will always keep it.  You too, my round, dark, lovely little girl born in Italy.  But now the name masks half a dozen bloods - the Irish, the Swiss, the Italian, and in your beautiful mother the French, the Syrian, the Slovak.
  So what are you?  Can you be all these things?  Children of the universe perhaps, citizens of the world, cosmopolitans.  Americans, of course, but what else?  Who else?
  I hope you will be Italian like your father  ("pover lui").
  Some of the best Italians have been English  (Byron and Shelley are good examples)  so you needn't worry about the problems of blood and birth.  What I am talking about is a state of mind, an attitude, an approach to life typically Italian, although others enjoy the blessings.

  ABOVE ALL ELSE to be Italian is to be passionate, to have fires burning in you under control.  Americans admire "cool" but believe me when I say that cool is overrated and frequently nothing more than a blank facade concealing stupidity, fear, indecision and impotence.  If you must be cool, use Machiavelli's hot Italian version.  But care.  Speak.  Act.
  Naturally, you must be bold.  Challenge the dreams that dance in your mind, not recklessly but with intelligence and skill.
  Emulate Garibaldi, Columbus and Fermi in this respect, but also the millions of unsung Italians who have traveled abroad as if to the moon in pursuit of a better life.  These your "nonni" have populated the earth.

  YOU NEED, OF COURSE to equip yourself with a complete set of emotions.  If you are Italian, you must master and use the nuance of every laugh - as your heart, mind and soul dictate - and every form of sigh.
  Weep when weeping helps (even you, manchild) and cry to heaven when all else fails.  Read Dante and you will understand.
  Be mafia-like in your loyalty and respect for parents, brothers and sisters, all family and friends.  No other people on earth cherish the concept of family more highly than we Italians, and you must fight to save this tradition from ruthless forces.  Your "uncles" Paul, Tony, Gerry, Dick and Walter will tell you what I mean, for I trust them with my life.
  Find your Bacchus, knowing he first was Greek, and thus the Italian zest for living.  After all is said and done, there is nothing like a good party, raucous and slightly out of control, and a fine meal with family and friends.  Dance the wine around the table.  Pass the "calamari."

  REACH INTO YOURSELVES for the creative forces you possess as surely as your eyes are brown.  Find the genes and genius that have given the world its finest art, its sweetest song, and its most cogent argument for being - and express them as best you can.  This will be hard work, this search for the Michaelangelo, the da Vinci, the Verdi, the Croce in yourselves.  But you must launch the presumptuous pursuit, not caring about a failure.
  As you proceed with all of this, you have an obligation to please the crowd.  They know that we are easy-going lovers, that we are capable of bragging, that we are actors on the stage.  Try to be modest as you manifest these clear superiorities, lest they stop believing.  Use D'Annuzio as your guide, and the Bewitching Eleonora Duse.
  I caution you, however, to set limits on these stereotypes.  Love only those worth loving.  Feign affection for no living thing.  Forgive the innocent and demand punishment for the guilty.  Let no man seriously call you any mean name, remembering your father's combative father in this regard.  He knew that lovers have honor, too.

  BUT I BECOME too sentimental now.  And so it's time to stop, short of that dangerous Italian brink between sentiment and melancholy.
  Please be careful on that edge.
  I hope this letter has been persuasive, that it has helped you to make the necessary choice.  Somehow we must keep what we are alive through the generations of love and marriage.
  Find yourselves and I believe you will find the Italian that should be in every man born mysteriously to this life.
                                                                                            Kisses, hugs, love,
                                                                                                                DAD