Personal Narrative

Good Essays

My life began in Manhattan, New York in January of the year 1977. I was born to a 21 year old Irish American mother, Catherine Cunningham, and a 60 year old Sicilian American father, Anthony Perniciaro. My parents came from very different backgrounds. My mother’s family was relatively wealthy and affluent. My father was born and raised in Brooklyn. His parents were extremely poor immigrants that were seriously affected by the Great Depression. My father was a bricklayer and an artist when he met my mother, who was just starting her life, being only a few years out of high school.
My mother had become the first female union bricklayer in New York and worked alongside my father before I was born. According to my father, some union members and/or …show more content…

My youngest sister, Celina, was born during this time, though I don’t remember where we were living at the time. We lived in a rented house, which was somewhat rare for fulltime residents. Single mothers were even rarer. Little Compton is a beautiful, rural New England town near the Atlantic coast. Its residents, at the time, were a mix of old English families that had been there for generations, more recent people of Portuguese descent, wealthy retirees, and summering tourist types.
We lived about a mile away from the beach and lived across the street from a 200 year old farm, and open space. The farm was owned and operated by my best friend’s parents. My friend Wesley and I would play in barns, fields, and woods. Some of my fondest memories come from the times I’ve spent in Little Compton, though I always kind of felt like an outsider there to some degree. It was a very safe community with a somewhat liberal population, but also had a heavy puritanical influence dating back to colonial …show more content…

I was riding my bike alone not far from our apartment, when a group of kids stopped me. One of them asked if they could try my bike out. I was a nice small town boy, so I agreed without hesitation. They proceeded to run off with my bike and I chased them as best as I could. I returned home and told my mom what happened, and she called the police. This was my first lesson in how cruel people can be, and that I also couldn’t depend on the police for help.
We moved back to Little Compton after a year. My mom rented another house down the street from our previous residence. It’s during this time that we started staying with my dad in Pueblo for the summer. This was partly because we had to vacate our house because the owners returned during the summer. I didn’t have a lot of physical contact with my father previously. We were happy to see him, but my sisters and I hated Pueblo. It was hot and dirty compared to our coastal home. We didn’t have any friends that were our age

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Personal Narrative