Thoughts on Teen Mothering-47 years later, 2022

Antonia Teresa Broccoli

Momma is the one

who gave

her entire youth. 

The one who was in love with her child in her dreams and aspirations: as a prologue to conception in her womb. 

Followed by years and years of living below the federal poverty levels

and being an outcast from

both sides of the family. 

Newborn-child abandoned by bio-father and paternal grandmother. 

Momma left as I was a teenager, pregnant and alone.

We were ‘one’ back then: baby and i against the world.  

I am sorry, I your dear mother (who gave you more than life and the breath you breath) 

Yes all these years of abandonment we blame on me; Momma.

But I will not allow myself to be left there. I will not claim that as my identity.

You were three years old, when I pushed my way out of my teen years. 

But I was the one determined to do it anyway. Without their help and without their support. 

It was my way of being emancipated from the violence of my father and to prove that I could be a woman and namely a better parent.

My intent was to do it my way; without the violence, without the broken bones,  without the lacerations,  without the head injuries. Without the rape and the without the sexual abuse and incest. 

I was the one who was going to prove through my love and behavior to my baby boy/child that he was lovable and wanted and cared for. 

What kind of teenage pregnant kid should be burdened with such a responsibility to change decades of trauma and abuse?

Still, I was so determined to. 

I was determined to raise and love you. I showered you with affection : without talking down to you, without emotional and mental criticism, without the shaming you as child. 

I was the one who is told you my son over and over again that it was okay to cry! 

that it was OK to be mad, that it was OK to have feelings even if you were a boy.

I was the one that was so loving and affectionate

I always held you my son and loved you. Suckled you my son at my breast even if it meant that I never slept for days and months and years on end.  

Your Momma, one who who was obsessed with being the first person and the first woman in her entire extended Italian working class family to complete a higher education because that’s what her grandparents told her. 

Because I am living my grandparents and parents dreams of coming to this country as immigrants so their children could have a better life and a chance for a good education. 

illiteracy dangling from their southern Italian peasant roots

working in the vegetable and vineyards fields all the while herding sheep.

I was obsessed with education when I couldn’t spell your second and third grade spelling words for your weekly Friday test. 

I knew I had to catch up with you. I knew I had to get further ahead of you so that I could prepare you for junior high & high school. 

So I could be the person who helped you with your homework and helped you with your book reports. 

Education became my obsession. 

Education is what took me away from you, so that we would have a better life. 

Even before my days at junior college I made sure that you had has access and knowledge of worldly history culture. 

Through music, through concerts through weekly and biweekly trips to the library and nightly bedtime stories.  My gifts to you my son.

©antonia teresa amore-broccoli