First Comes Love; Then Comes Marriage; Then Comes… {Tuesdays with Tina, Part 21}

Tuesdays with Tina is where I chronicle my Italian mother’s story, from being born in a bomb shelter in World War 2, to meeting and marrying my US Navy father. It is an unlikely love story that has lasted almost 50 years. If you missed any part of the story, you can catch up here.Me: What happened when you got back from your honeymoon? Did you go live in the house near Zia Anna? Was that your first house?

Tina: Yes, that was our first house. We already had it ready for us.

Me: So no one was living there before? Daddy was already living there?

Tina: Yes, just a few days, a week before. We had the furniture all set up.

Me: Did you continue working?

Tina: No. I quit working before I got married. We got married in December and in January we discovered that I was expecting YOU!

Me: Was it an easy pregnancy? Did you have morning sickness?

Tina: Just for three months I had a little bit of nausea. It was kind of strange. Every time I opened the refrigerator, to me it had a very bad smell. There was nothing there but that’s how it was to me. And it was the same way with the second pregnancy. So I was sure that I was expecting another girl. Oh, and I had a lot of saliva! So much that I had to spit it out. So weird! I couldn’t swallow it all the time. It wasn’t all the time. But every so often, I would have so much saliva in my mouth that I just had to spit it out. If I did swallow it, it felt heavy in my stomach. I liked coffee! I would even eat some coffee beans. I’ve always liked to eat coffee beans but with the pregnancy, I liked it even more. I remember that we were at our house in Poggioreale when I started having some pains. It was in the afternoon and I had made pasta with potatoes. I called Anna, my sister-in-law, and told her that I wasn’t feeling well, that I was having some pain. I think my water had broken too. Your father took me to the American hospital at Agnano. I didn’t understand much English, it was my first pregnancy. I really didn’t know what was going on!

Me: Your first year of marriage, how did you communicate?

Tina: I did go to school for four months when I was pregnant with you. We understood some… I don’t really have a lot of memories from this time. Just a few times when we would do things with my parents, or my brother and his wife. Anna and I were always together because the men would go to work.

Me: How far was nonna from you all?

Tina: You had to cross the whole city. She was in the center and we were in the suburbs, near the cemetery. It was very close to Daddy’s work.

Hugh: You could see the gate from where we lived.

Me: We are talking about Capodicchino not Agnano, right?

Tina: Right. Your father worked at Capodicchino [the airport]. Agnano is where the hospital, the commissary and other shops were.

Hugh: It was farther to go to the commissary than it was to go to Tina’s mom’s house.

Tina: My mother’s house was in the center of the city, so it wasn’t that far. But Agnano was on the other side.

Me: And there was no Tangenziale [beltway] back then, right?

Tina: No, no. You had to cross the whole city. But you have to also realize that there were fewer cars then too. There was much less traffic. People used trams and other public transportation.

Hugh: It was easy to get around in a car.

Tina: In the 70s they started building the Tangenziale. I remember it was 500 lire and everyone complained about paying that kind of money.

Hugh: There were a few years where nobody used it. It was too expensive.

Tina: As traffic increased then people started using it out of necessity. But the fact that it was so expensive kept people away. One thousand lire a day, round trip, was good money back then! People didn’t make that kind of money.

Hugh: With time, not only did the traffic increase but people started making a little more money too so the convenience drove people to use it.

Me: When did they drop it? Because it’s free now, right?

Hugh and Tina: No, no! It’s not free!

Tina: In fact, Naples is the only Tangenziale in all of Italy where you still pay. It was supposed to have a toll up until they recouped their money but not only did they recoup their money, this Tangenziale was purchased by Benetton. It’s no longer 500 lire; now it’s one euro. So it’s gone up! But a lot of people use it because the traffic is so intense, so congested.

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