Faithbook: Our Story, Our Song

I was born a twin, and I always thought that was the greatest thing in the world. From the very beginning, I had someone who understood me, walked like me, thought like me, and always had my back. My sister Nancy and I were as close as two people could be. People said we were identical twins, but I never quite believed that. We looked alike when we were little, but as we grew up, we began to look more like sisters than identical twins. We grew up in Weymouth, Massachusetts, on a piece of land where my father grew vegetables. We had goats and chickens, and life felt full of simple joys. Our neighborhood was a mix of old Yankees, Lithuanians, Irish, and Syrian families. Everyone got along. But when my parents separated and my mother moved us to Quincy, everything changed. Suddenly, we weren’t welcome anymore—because we were Italians. When we went to knock on doors and ask if friends could come out to play, their parents would say, “Oh no, she’s sick today.” We didn’t understand why we we...

I grew up in Hingham, Massachusetts, about twenty miles south of Boston, just a mile from the Atlantic Ocean. I was born and raised on a small farm—just a few acres—but it was full of life. We had chickens, pigs, goats, and sheep. I remember plowing the garden with horses before we ever had a tractor. Everything we did was by hand—just like the Amish people. We didn’t have chainsaws or power tools, just axes and two-man saws. We worked hard, but we also grew everything we ate. The only thing we had to buy was milk because we didn’t have a cow. That’s the kind of life I had as a boy—simple, tough, but good. My father came from Italy, and my mother was born in Massachusetts, though she was also of Italian descent. We were a close family. My earliest memories are of playing with things you don’t see today—pedal cars, bicycles, little scooters. I loved anything that had wheels or made noise. By the time I was twelve, I was already driving around on homemade tractors made from old trucks....