Fifty Five: A Work in Progress
About Me
A proud pizza bagel at heart, but not by blood
Hello! My name is Jess D'Agostino and I am a graduating senior at the University of Michigan. I am majoring in Political Science with a minor in writing and am currently fully immersed in the law school admissions process. I made this project within the writing minor's capstone class, where we were essentially given the chance to create whatever we wanted within an incredibly collaborative, supportive atmosphere. Although I explored multiple options, I knew right from our very first class that I wanted to utilize this class to begin the research and development phase of what I hope to someday see on the shelf of a bookstore. They say there are times where stories just present themselves to you and literally beg to be turned into a book. 3 years ago, at my mom's 54th birthday party, I was handed one of those stories.
Enter: Jonathan D'Agostino
​
Meet Jonathan D'Agostino: father of 3, grandfather of 3, husband of 35 years, attorney at law, songwriter and music publisher. My dad has been the person I'd say I knew best until 3 years ago, I found out I didn't exactly know him at all. It all begin with a 23andMe test. It was all the rage amongst those in their mid-fifties; the intrigue began when my dad's yielded an odd result: 99.9% Ashkenazi Jewish. Ashkenazi Judaism was expected to play a 50% part in the results with Arlene Moskowitz as his mother. But where was the D'Agostino side of Palermo, Sicily? Where was the representation of the entire line of construction working, unfaithful, yet somehow hearty and wonderful Italian men that comprised my dad's paternal ancestry? These results were instantly met with a shrug and a "it must be bullsh*t science, I guess." Spoiler Alert: it wasn't.
​
Everyone else seemed to laugh it off, but my dad knew something more was at play. He scoured the realm of possibilities; had his mother had an affair and never told his father... or him? Did he somehow take the test wrong? Finally, he spent an hour or so at my mom's Studio 54-themed 54th birthday party (yes, everyone was in wigs and sparkles) trying to convince his closest cousin to answer a simple question: why did his results come back this way? Anthony finally came around, took a deep breath and said: "Jon, you're adopted."
55 five years later. Many broken bones. 35 years of marriage. Countless college baseball homeruns. So much life had been lived with no knowledge of this massive piece of information.
​
16 year old Barbara Fleischman gave birth to a healthy baby boy on August 15, 1964 in Brooklyn, New York and gave him up for adoption to Anthony and Arlene D'Agostino, who had just lost a baby in a late term miscarriage. My grandfather, Anthony D'Agostino, grew up an uneducated, traditional Italian man and insisted that my dad never know he was anything but their son. He never would have thought of the necessity of knowing your biological ancestry for medical reasons, and after his untimely death at 64 years old, nobody in the family dared go against his lifetime wish to ensure my dad always felt like his son and nobody else's.
​
This story has lots of twist and turns and I simply can't include all the nuances I wish I could on what is already probably too long for a landing page (oops, sorry!)
​
If you've made it this far, here's the TLDR: I was given this crazy story and I want to someday turn it into a book. For my project, I had lots of hard conversations, wrote a lot, scratched a lot out, thought a lot, cried a lot, and started to prepare foundational material through a "writer's journal" that I'd love so much for you to read.
​
So... welcome to my crazy (not Italian), Italian, Jewish family story. I'm so happy you're here. <3
​
- Jess
​
