I left Pennsylvania for Los Angeles on a sunny early October day in 1981. It took us four days to cross the country with my clothes, toiletries, and Schwinn bike hanging off the back of the trunk. My dad’s light green 1971 Chevy Impala with snow tires and 100,000 miles on it made it effortlessly. Eight months later, my mom and dad flew out for their first visit to Los Angeles.
Their trip was partly to visit me, my Italian parents’ youngest daughter, who dared to leave Western Pennsylvania for a chance at a different life. Weeks before I was to leave, I witnessed Mom mopping the kitchen floor, crying and saying, “Why you gadda move a so damn a far away? Why can’t you be like a your brothers anna stay here and get a married? Your father was gonna build you a nice a lilla house right beside ours, so you could a be close. You’re my lilla gal a — you can’t a leave!”
I knew there was no way I was going to win this fight, so I said the words she’d wanted to hear for a decade: “But Ma, if I move to Los Angeles, you can visit and finally be on ‘The Price Is Right’!”
It was as if the tears immediately reversed course. She stopped mopping, looked up at me, beaming, and said, “Really Franzy, you ting I have a chance?”
