My upbringing was very atypical. I come from a large Italian family who lived on Long Island for quite some time before deciding to drop everything to move to Upstate New York and start a Ministry. This included my Uncle's family, their cousins family and another family who was close friends with all of our families. I was one of two babies that were born in Upstate New York.
I was also cross-eyed, very, very cross-eyed.
It's very hard to talk about my childhood without talking about my cousins. We all were homeschooled, but together in a schoolhouse built by our parents who had purchased an old, large farm for their mission. I still remember the times where we would play three hour long games of freeze tag or basketball(which was very hard when you had about fifteen people on one court).
Because of the way we were raised we are all very close with each other. We did various community work with our parents throughout the years including food drives, mission trips etc. and were exposed to many different people and environments as children including Spanish Harlem, and many people from Africa and Central America.
The Ministry was dissolved by the time the last of us were teenagers but we all still remain very close to one another. Although my upbringing was very weird and akin to a cult at times I still would not change it for anything in the world.
