"I left Pennsylvania for Los Angeles on a sunny early October day in 1981. It took us four days to cross the country with my clothes, toiletries, and Schwinn bike hanging off the back of the trunk. My dad's light green 1971 Chevy Impala with snow tires and 100,000 miles on it made it effortlessly. Eight months later, my mom and dad flew out for their first visit to Los Angeles."
"Weeks before I was to leave, I witnessed Mom mopping the kitchen floor, crying and saying, "Why you gadda move a so damn a far away? Why can't you be like a your brothers anna stay here and get a married? Your father was gonna build you a nice a lilla house right beside ours, so you could a be close. You're my lilla gal a - you can't a leave!""
"So, their trip was also to see if a dream could come true. For years, my mother talked about wanting to be a contestant on The Price Is Right. It may have started as a last grasp at the fame she dreamed of as a young woman when everyone told her she resembled silent film star Pola Negri. Or maybe she just thought Bob Barker, the game show's host, was cute. But after a lifetime of not being valued by her parents - and underestimated by everyone else - I think my mother was out to prove something."
An Italian-American daughter left Western Pennsylvania for Los Angeles in October 1981, traveling cross-country by car over four days. Her parents later flew to visit so her mother could try to be a contestant on The Price Is Right. The mother reacted with tears before the move, expressing loss and regret about the daughter's departure and references to planned nearby housing. A joking promise about the game show transformed the mother's sadness into hope. The mother had long dreamed of fame, was once told she resembled Pola Negri, and sought to prove herself after a lifetime of being underestimated.
Read at BuzzFeed
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