Buon Giorno! (Word Pubished)

Even today I much enjoy saying my Father's name in my version of an Italian accent.

Geosepe Antonio Cardella, it was Joseph Anthony Cardella. (I even use my hands as I say it.)

Being Italian had style and flair, like a Connie Francis song.

A large patio table found a home in our covered patio area and was often covered with a red-and-white check tablecloth. Ambience was easy. Half burnt candles were stuck into wine bottles - Italian is attitude and lots of good food. 

Pasta dishes galore, red and white
check tablecloths, Italian food - we
couldn't get enough of it.

Southern California's lovely climate made dining outside a common activity. The porch's location on the other side of the kitchen screen door made it effortless. A swimming pool 50 feet away made it alluring.

Home-made pizza, pasta of all kinds, lasagne, and of course bread. OMG, bread! And Parmesan. And more Parmesan!

There was much good about it to me.

Buon giorno! (Good morning!)
Buon pomeriggio! (Good afternoon!)
Buona sera! (Good evening!)

But truth is, I don't know if my Father was Italian. Knowledge of his ancestry is hidden, tucked away in a records file, unavailable to me, somewhere in downtown Chicago. 

My only evidence of my Daddy's birth/heredity, starts and ends with an adoption announcement in a Chicago newspaper. It stated Carmen Geosepe Anthony Cardella and Luci Salvatore Cardella adopted Joseph Anthony, age two into their family. That evidence was barely 2" of an old, yellowed, scissored, newspaper clipping, pasted in an equally old, thin, photo album.

So, my Italian Father was adopted and as was customary in our home, there was little discussion of it. He lived a kinna' anonymous, low key life. An honorable one, he worked hard, was the best Dad he could be, not perfect, low profile. As his only daughter, naturally athletic like him, I got the best of him, was a 'Daddy's girl,' and I was fully aware of that. 

My Dad was not Italian or maybe he was, I don't know.

I wish I knew more.

It seems lovely when people celebrate traditions. My Father actually had just a few and he honored them in his quiet, limited way. He deserved more.

Adoption records were sealed in those days. Almost like nonexistent.  

My Father was adopted by very traditional, old-school as well as older in age, Italian parents. Their age, clothes, lifestyle was difficult and awkward, for my Father. These adoptive parents were also obese. 

My Daddy was naturally fit and athletic, so he drew his life that way and hit the streets with a basketball. It was as natural as breathing.


Facts about his birth were almost an unknown, his adoptive family it is known was an uncomfortable influence in many ways. Ponderings over family genetics versus societal influences is debated by the best of the world's trained brains, but I find myself debating them in my own head.

To be written:

'Nature versus nurture,' refers

The phrase nature and nurture relates to the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities ("nature" in the sense of nativism or innatism) as compared to an individual's personal experiences ("nurture" in the sense of empiricism or behaviorism) in causing individual differences, especially in behavioral traits.

The view that humans acquire all or almost all their behavioral traits from "nurture" was termed tabula rasa ("blank slate") by John Locke in 1690. A "blank slate view" in human developmental psychology assuming that human behavioral traits develop almost exclusively from environmental influences, was widely held during much of the 20th century (sometimes termed "blank-slatism"). The debate between "blank-slate" denial of the influence of heritability, and the view admitting both environmental and heritable traits, has often been cast in terms of nature versus nurture. These two conflicting approaches to human development were at the core of an ideological dispute over research agendas during the later half of the 20th century. As both "nature" and "nurture" factors were found to contribute substantially, often in an extricable manner, such views were seen as naive or outdated by most scholars of human development by the 2000s

In their 2014 survey of scientists, many respondents wrote that the dichotomy of nature versus nurture has outlived its usefulness, and should be retired. The reason is that in many fields of research, close feedback loops have been found in which "nature" and "nurture" influence one another constantly (as in self-domestication), while in other fields, the dividing line between an inherited and an acquired trait becomes unclear (as in the field of epigenetics^[7] or in fetal development

My Father was a handsome, responsible man, a veteran of the Korean war. My Mother was lovely and evidently landed on the earth forever-independent.

It was after my parents were married that my Mother taught my Father how to drive a car, which may explain why, later, as a family, when we went places, my Mother always drove. It worked out well for me. Bestest personal memories include long drives home from family get togethers, me in my Daddy's lap, falling asleep in his arms (seat belts didn't exist yet).

A European trait, could be Italian or not, may have evidenced itself in my Daddy. He often rode a bicycle. He rode a bicycle with a crate he'd affixed to it and would often pick up fresh bread and especially Sunday mornings, pastries for our family. It was a nice treat to wake up to.

When the Cardella grandparents died there was definitely Chicago Cardella money to go after and very purposely my Southern California parents chose to not pursue a dime. There was a crack in the family dynamics, that is, the heirs, my Father and his sister. Once and only once my Mother shared about this with me, that my Daddy's sister (also adopted) had raised concerns because we'd moved to California, I guess inferring that they'd seemingly abandoned my Grandparents. They had no desire to combat things in probate court.

There wasn't much talk about these issues in our suburban, cul-de-sac home. My Mother didn't talk alot; my Daddy rarely did. You lived in the house, you got along. And, okay, it worked for me. I was Joe's talented, athletic, platinum blonde haired daughter. It worked for me.

Being Joe's Daughter (Word Published)

My Dad continued to dribble a basketball down the street in Southern California, and like magic, boys in the neighborhood would yell at their parents, “I'm going with Joe down to the school.” They'd follow him like a pied piper to the local junior high.

I would have played with them and kicked some boy butt back then, but the basketball was too big for my 7-year old, slender girl hands, which annoyed me. Never one to pout, I rode off by myself on my hot pink Schwinn Sting Ray bicycle all over the school grounds. My Daddy was playing pick up basketball and I was daydreaming of my world and how its splendors laid out. Confidence abounded. And a cute smile. (Again, I inherited it!)

I thought my handsome Father looked like movie star.

I may have been irrelevant for real basketball, but my Father enjoyed having me on his team for pool basketball. He'd made a cool poolside basketball hoop by pouring concrete in a wood box as a base for the hoop. It was about 3' high, sitting between the shallow end and deep end. Our family's version of swimming pool basketball was gangsta.' I fit right in, I was always the smallest and usually the only girl.

Author Patricia Loya at age 52
sitting in a horse water trough

I was 8, scrappy and strong in the water. I took hits and came back hard and crushed everyone. I was my Father's kid in the pool. I'd quietly lurk swimming around and grab the ball from unsuspecting strong boys, young men and Dads alike, only to tuck it in my left arm and forcefully use my right arm and legs to swim down deep to the bottom. No one knowing where it was. I submerged where I could shoot the ball to my Dad, for the point. Yeah, he didn't mind. Smile, all these years later.

I swam uncountable miles, doing freestyle, backstroke (my favorite) and breast stroke laps in our pool. I hated the butterfly but did it. I swam deep, low, skimming the pool bottom, touching the drain, the lights. I broke a tooth in that pool doing somersaults in the shallow end, too close to the concrete steps, and and hit them. Bring it on, baby.

My Father Joseph Cardella gave me the gift of spending many, many nights sitting in a patio chair beside the pool teaching me how to dive on our springboard diving board. Big dives. Back dive, inward, reverse, twist, forward somersaults, tuck, back somersaults, tuck, pike.

He drank Pabst beer, Schlitz beer on quiet Southern California nights, beside the lovely ambiance of a beautifully lit pool, a daughter on a diving board with a lot of spring. I thought I was a diving diva. At least I knew my Dad thought so.

I had swimmers' legs. My thighs and calves had nice sweet muscles. I was voted prettiest legs at my junior high, which I attribute to swimming specifically and in general athletics, all stuff from my Dad.

My only athletic-related memory I have of my Mother, my independent, artistic, bohemian Mother, is from a story my dear Aunt Jinny shared with me, some fifteen years after my Mother had died. My Uncle Ev, my Mother's only brother, and my Aunt Jinny, my Mother's Sister-in-Law from Illinois were visiting my husband and I in Silverado, California. They were kindly sharing stories about my Mother - who I still missed much. My Aunt Jinny said that once when my Mother came and watched me swim in a competition, my Mother told her, “That may have been Joe's daughter down there in that pool, but the girl wearing the big hoop earrings while she swam, was my daughter.” I love that story.

Smile. Yeah. Feel good stuff.