To the Moon and Beyond the stars

Luca

God blessed me with a wonderful family, three younger sisters and two older brothers with parents who have always been madly in love. Our holidays were always filled with such light and laughter.

My mother, Elena, has been a wedding dress designer since she graduated high school. She knew exactly what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, she graduated and moved to the big city to peruse her dream with a few sketches. She met my father when she was 24 and he was 30.

Rocco walked in with his soon-to-be wife in attempt to find the perfect dress for their big day. He was immediately drawn to her, he even says he couldn't keep his eyes off her as if she was the bride-to-be. My mother, in all her elegance, rejected his many advances. He came back everyday for a month and practically begged her for just one date. He ended up leaving his fiancée just one week before their wedding, and offered the ring to my mother. She politely declined his marriage proposal, telling him she would meet him for lunch the next day if he was truly serious.

They fell in love, got married the next spring, and settled into a small cottage at the edge of the city. My father's father got very sick and Rocco being his only son, was called upon to takeover the family business. He learned how to make deals, run clubs, and sell drugs and guns all underneath the local policemen's noses. He built a house for Elena with 12 bedrooms, a library, 10 bathrooms, a gigantic kitchen, with a cozy study for himself over looking her garden in the back, and her very own wing to interview clients and make their dresses from home. Four years into the relationship, they decided to start their family in this house, starting with a boy every year for 2 years. They waited 5 more years before they had me, hoping time would create the perfect baby girl for my mother. Unfortunately, they got me. But they tried the next year, and ended up creating my triplet sisters.

They've now been married for 35 years, almost four strong decades of pure love. I couldn't ask for a better family.

Rosalina

I have no recollection of my parents being together, my father got married to our stepmother before my sister and I were born. My mother turned to drugs when we were 5 and went to prison, the state forced us to go live with our father. We didn't know him, he'd only come around on our birthdays to give us a cheesy card and a couple of high fives.

When my mother overdosed, my father gave us up. We went into foster care at age 7, we were always passed from home to home purely because two adolescent girls were "too much".

My sister graduated high school and went on to college for accounting, she met a man named Damien and fell in love. She ended up moving in with him and his family at age 22, leaving me on my own.

I work at a small coffee shop, working 60 hour weeks in order to make rent every month, barely having enough money for food. My boyfriend, Keenan, lives with me as well and is between jobs right now. The little bit of money he does get from unemployment goes towards his drug use. He's usually passed out on the couch by the time I get home from work every night and rarely comes to bed at all.

I've been on my own since I was 5, I've been by myself for almost 20 years now and honestly, there's no other way I would want it.