A FRIEND told me a memorable story yesterday.
One of her Italian relatives who lived and worked as a teacher in Philadelphia as a young woman in the 1970s went home to visit her parents, who had never joined others in moving to this country from Italy.
She met a man there and they decided to marry.
He came to visit her in this country first and while he was here, he gave her one condition of their marriage: They would never live in America!
Why? He said all people do here is work and that he couldn’t possibly live in a place where you had to call your cousin to arrange to go to his house for dinner, instead of just dropping in.
It’s a great myth that all immigrants, or potential immigrants, have considered America the land of plenty. Some have seen it as a land of rootless isolation and Puritanical industriousness.
The couple made a new life in Italy and never regretted it.
