Forgiven: One Man's Journey from Self-Glorification to Sanctification (4 page)

How come growing up we don’t realize our families are dysfunctional? It’s not until later in life when we watch
Dr. Phil
, or
Jerry
Springer
for that matter, and say, “Hey, I know her . . . That’s my mother!” But, before I can get to the Fruitinator (that’s my nickname for my mother — a fruitcake who wore
Terminator
-style glasses for a short period because she thought she was going blind), I have to talk about the guy who created the Fruitinator, my grandfather, John Savarino.

As Italian as you can possibly get, my grandfather had a huge 12

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influence on me growing up, but not in a particularly good way. You see, even though it was the norm at that time, Granddad was a male chauvinistic oink. He had to be — he was Sicilian. With a pencil-thin moustache straight out of every gangster movie you ever saw, John J.

was, no doubt, a man’s man. If you’re an old-school Italian and you’re reading this, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The second my grandfather would walk in the door from work (he worked in the garment district in New York City), wearing his black fedora and carrying a worn
New York Daily News
under his arm, my grandmother, or “Nana,” would be there to wait on him hand, foot, arm, toe . . . you get the picture. If his black coffee wasn’t on the table at the exact moment he took his hat and coat off — there was going to be trouble. Man, this guy was my idol. After the black coffee came the wine, came the pasta, came the peaches with wine, and everybody was happy. The man was the boss and his wife took care of him —

the rules were real simple for Granddad, it was unspoken Italian
law
.

He was simply the king of his castle. This would have a huge influence on my adulthood. In many ways, I treated my wife Amy the same way. I was the boss, I took care of everything. As the great Ralph Kramden once said to his wife Alice, “I am the captain of this ship and you are nothing more than a lowly, third-class seaman.” Growing up, both Ralph Kramden and Archie Bunker were huge influences on me. The way they assumed the position of head of the household was nothing short of inspirational. In my teens I used to constantly tell my father, “If you were more like Ralph, or Archie, Mommy wouldn’t treat you the way she does!” The art of writing a television show could be found right there in these two sitcoms.
The
Honeymooners
and
All in the Family
were two of my early influences as far as comedy was concerned. Their dialogue, story lines and character development was ingenious. And, the acting wasn’t too shabby either. Jackie Gleason’s precision timing and Carroll O’Connor’s priceless facial expressions were near perfection. These two legends were clearly ahead of their time.

Getting back to my granddad, while he secured his spot at the 13

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head of the table, my father, Jim Russo, usually found his comfort zone somewhere underneath it. Why? He may have been too scared to come out, afraid that the Fruitinator was lurking somewhere in the surrounding area, clutching a list of things for him to do.

It’s just this simple — my mother dominated my father. I think the fact that my dad was five-eight and weighed 140 pounds soaking wet might have had something to do with it. Jim, as I playfully but respectfully called him, was petrified of the Fruitinator. And, what a nag — Mamma Mia! Jim do this, Jim do that — to this day, it’s Jim do something . . .
anything!
Before remote controls, my mother wouldn’t even get off the coach to change the channel — Jim had to do it! Man, this sad sack did everything — wash the floors, do the dishes, all “women’s” work — it drove me nuts.

But the truth is, he just did it so he wouldn’t have to hear her. No different than many husbands today. I mean, how many times do we do something just to get the wife off our back? But, regardless of his lack of chauvinism, I still greatly treasured my dad. He was such a hard worker, setting the standard for me as I got older. He worked for a government contractor that made parts for military equipment . . .

I think. I remember him working overtime every night to provide for me, Fruity and my sister, and I never heard him complain about it —

he just did it. Unfortunately, his hard work never got him very far. My dad was such a nice guy, people just took advantage of him. That’s the nature of the beast. Vince McMahon always used to tell me, “Pal, it’s the law of the jungle — eat, or be eaten!” Well, on more occasions than one my father was eaten alive. But he never cared — as long as he could play his softball on Sundays. Softball was his drug. A very religious man — even though it wouldn’t rub off on me, no matter how many times he would drag me to church — my father, a grown man, would literally go to church in his softball uniform before his game on Sundays. To this day he doesn’t miss a mass. But then again, is he really so religious, or is he just trying to get out of the house?

Hmmm.

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As much as I respected my father as a man, I swore to never grow up like him. Yes, I would adopt his work ethic, but no, I wasn’t going to get walked on. He was just too good a man for that. A lot of my rebelliousness is a tribute to my father. I stood up for myself because on many occasions, he hadn’t. But again — it all goes back to looking into that mirror. Today, at 73 years old, my father can proudly look into that glass and know that he didn’t screw anybody. He was a proud man who worked hard — no shortcuts, no backstabbing.

Today I can clearly understand that his heart was as pure as they come. They just don’t make them like him anymore.

But, my mother. . . .

My mother, her real name is Theresa, made up for my father’s apathy — she wouldn’t take anything from anybody. She was so much like her old man, John J. If you crossed her you were done. My mother has held grudges that still go on to this day — and now she’s over 70!

Now that’s a real Italian. Screw me once — shame on you, screw me twice . . .
forget it — you’ll never get the chance to screw me twice!

I am so much like my mom in that respect. I just hate being dicked around. My philosophy has always been that nobody should take anything from anybody — not even the boss. And I lived my life that way. I strongly felt that we were all in this together — no one person is better than the next. However, if there was such thing as a boss —

the Fruitinator was clearly one of them.

While I was growing up, my mother didn’t just wear the pants in the family, she wore the socks, the shoes, the Guinea-tee, the whole outfit! I never asked my father for anything, I always went to my mother. If I wanted money, permission, the car — she had sovereign authority. She was also the disciplinarian, she was the law of the house and she laid it down with vigor. While I was under his roof, I don’t remember my father ever laying a hand on me — except that one time. . . .

• • •

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Okay, once me and my friend Mike got my father a bit anguished. You see, Jim didn’t have much, but he had his lawn — my father cherished his lawn, if you saw Danny Aiello in
29th Street
you know what I’m talking about. He’d cut it, rake it, trim it, thatch it, water it, watch it

— it was his Garden of Eden. In other words: The Lawn Was Off-Limits! Well, kids being kids — we insisted on playing on his
Field of
Dreams
on those occasions when he left it unguarded. On this particular day, soccer was our game of choice. So there was me and Mike kicking the soccer ball about on Jim’s glorious carpet. Little did we know that Jim was crouched down in hiding on the other side of the backyard gate, just waiting to see if any trespassers would violate his oasis of green. Just as I yelled, “He shoots — he scores!” with a lion’s roar Jim leapt from his crouch and came after us with his sterling-silver grass clippers.

Mike and I — we were outta there Road Runner style! We’d never seen Jim like this — the small, gentle, quiet man transformed into Leatherface right before our very eyes! In our haste to get away, we left behind the poor, innocent, black-and-white checkered ball. What a mistake! In a frenzy, Jim, unable to catch the younger, agile kids, got to the soccer ball instead. In Jason Voorhees fashion, Jim firmly put the innocent ball between his legs and with precision stabbed it repeatedly with the clippers. Not believing what we were seeing, Mike and I carefully wandered back into the scene. Jim looked back and gave us a look that was half Nicholson in
The Shining
and half Riff Raff in
Underdog
. Now, in all his glory, I looked my father in the eye and said innocently, “Dad . . . that’s Mike’s ball.” All of a sudden there was another transformation — this time from the out-of-control Incredible Hulk to the quiet, meek and weak Bruce Banner. Not knowing what to do or say, I mean the soccer ball lay dead in front of him — Jim slumped his shoulders and did what he always did —

apologized. He then went quietly back into the house, the grass clippers tucked gently between his legs.

• • •

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Apart from that incident, Gentle Jim was such a laid back kinda guy.

In many ways, he was a saint. To this day he has one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever seen. . . . Wait a minute, let me back up for a second. . . .

Okay, he had a huge heart when it came to
kindness
, but he was the cheapest human being you ever met. Let me put it to you this way —

Gentle Jim used to wash his car with kerosene, in order to save on the Turtle Wax. He was just so cheap — he never went into his pocket for anything. I remember him telling me the same story every Christmas from the time I was five until I was 25: “When I was little and we had no money, the only thing I got for Christmas was a cowboy suit

— and I was happy.” I remember thinking, year after year, “What does that have to do with my drum set, or my Nintendo, or my stereo?”

But the truth is my father really had no money to spend because my mother always took it from him. Jim would come home from work every Thursday and just hand his paycheck over to Terrible Terry (my mother’s second pet name). She paid the bills, bought the groceries and basically spent the rest of it. My father actually used to have to keep a miniature, plastic piggy bank full of quarters in case of an emergency — and I’m not kidding. Yes, Rin-Tin Terry (yet another pet name) was the banker and the law. But if you’re the law, you must mete out some form of discipline. How Terry kept me in line was unique. First, she would scream at the top of her lungs, then follow that up with idle threats and the famous, “I feel my blood pressure going up!” From there, my mother would do something that, I must admit, I never saw any of the other mothers do. She would place her hand — usually her right one — into her mouth and bite it as hard as she could.

She claimed it was an Italian thing — but I never saw anybody, or anything ever act in that manner before or since. Not even in cartoons had I seen such a bizarre ritual, you’d think that
Ren & Stimpy
might have tried it once — but, never. I mean, my mother would leave her own teeth marks on her own hand. Is that normal? I remember one time when me and my friend Richie Misbach got my 17

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mother so riled up that she went through the screaming, the blood-pressure bit, the hand-biting — and our sides were splitting with laughter. At that point, she grabbed a belt and viciously whipped Richie and I after she had trapped us between my bed and an adjacent wall. We were laughing so hard we didn’t even feel the pain. But, that was just my mother — always a flair for the dramatic, forever with teeth marks in her hand.

Now I fully understand that the family was dysfunctional. Back then, you just lived with it — there were no counselors to go to. And, what proud Italian would go to a counselor anyway. No, it was much better to settle your differences by screaming from room to room and biting your own hands. Dr. Phil would have had a picnic with this unruly crew. Its only saving grace was the backbone that held the family together with spit, glue and farina pie — my grandmother, Anna Savarino.

Man, I loved Nana. An extremely religious woman (she even let Jehovah’s Witnesses into the house), she was my everything. The kindest, sweetest, caring, gentlest woman you would ever know, she cushioned the chaos of the thunderous hailstorm. Just picture it —

there was the Fruitinator biting her hand in the kitchen, my Grandfather demanding something in the dining room, my father hiding out, watching a game in the den — and my older sister probably somewhere on the phone talking to her six-foot-eight boyfriend otherwise known as the Goon (that’s a story for another time). But nothing fazed Nana, she would maintain control as the rigatoni boiled and the homemade sauce simmered. She was Edith Bunker, Andy Griffith’s Aunt Bee, Mother Teresa and your kindergarten teacher all rolled into one. She would affectionately call me her “doll baby onion pie,” which for some strange reason meant the world to me. She was the family rock — the most strong-willed female I ever knew.

Without warning, my grandmother passed away from a heart attack when I was 18 years old; she was only in her 60s. The world as I knew it was never the same. The family as I knew it would also never be the same. I was raised on the ritual of going to my grandparents 18

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every Sunday for some form of macaroni (after Jim’s Sunday morning doubleheader, of course). Though we yelled and screamed and my mother did some occasional hand-biting, that house on 21 Poplar Street in West Hempstead, New York, was filled with the warmest love I had ever known. That’s the way it is in an Italian family. The yelling never superseded the love . . . never. But with the death of Nana came the death of tradition. Day by day, week by week, month by month, the family grew further apart. The glue jar was empty. Society and our culture were pulling us apart, and there was no farina pie at the end of the day to bring us back together. Years later, John J. would die alone in a nursing home. The stubborn, bull-headed Italian man never overcame the death of his wife. At the end of the day, Archie couldn’t survive without Edith.