Donna Servideo — mother to passerby Lauren and her sister Jackie — is a warm, thoughtful, and stylish person, even if she doesn’t always see herself that way. She grew up in upstate New York and raised her own kids there. These days, she’s most likely to be spotted at Lowe’s; she’s not handy like some of her family members, but she picked up a love of the smell of lumber and a talent for crafting from them. She figures she can always find something to use for one of her projects down one of the familiar aisles. She invited us into her home to chat about balancing a career and caregiving, dealing with death, and laughing so hard she peed her pants.
on her morning routine
I'm very lucky right now — I work from home, so my commute is from the bedroom to my desk. And my boss is really cool, so I don’t have to be at my desk at a certain time. Usually, I don't set an alarm clock. I just wake up. The exact time varies from 6:30 am to 7:30 am.
Then I usually grab my coffee and have yogurt or make my oatmeal. I use the Kodiak protein oats. I make it with almond milk, cinnamon, vanilla, and raisins. I've been making oatmeal for eons, but last week I saw a thing on Instagram. This girl was saying that in Mexico, where she grew up, her mom used to make oatmeal with sweetened condensed milk, and then she said that they covered it. And I was like, you know, I never cover my oatmeal. So, I covered it, and it was 10,000 times better. It was super creamy. I was so excited, I was telling the kids, I covered my oatmeal!
So, I usually bring my coffee and my oatmeal up to my desk, and I start checking my emails and whatnot. If it's a shower day, sometimes I'll take a break at 10 and then take my shower. I'm really blessed that this is the end of my career, and it’s pretty chill.
on being younger than her siblings
My oldest sister is 16 years older than I am. My brother was 14 years older than me; my other sister is 12 years older than me; and then the one closest to me is two and a half years older than me. There was a big gap between the older siblings and the younger ones. I don't know why they waited. But because of that gap, my one sister and I were the only ones living at home after my dad died. He had a heart attack and passed away when I was ten or eleven. The other ones were married and out of the house already.
I was a B minus, maybe even a C student. I was little when my dad died, and my mom was sweet, but she had a lot of anxiety and depression, so I didn't really have anybody paying attention to my grades or whether I was doing my homework. I don’t blame them — some kids don’t need that kind of supervision, but I think I needed somebody to push and to discipline me. So, I never felt all that smart. And my mom didn't drive, which made it even harder. We couldn't do extracurricular activities. We would take cabs if we had to go somewhere, which was weird because none of my friends had to take cabs. If somebody wanted me to come over to their house after school, I’d have to tell them that they’d have to drive me home because I wouldn’t have a ride. I couldn’t really be on the basketball team or play softball or anything because there would be no way to get there. I did play basketball in seventh grade because my brother came and drove me there, but he had his own family by that time, so it was hard. I took piano, but the piano teacher lived down the street and he used to come to the house.
on caring for her mother
Before my dad died, maybe even before I was born, my mom had some nervous problems. At least that's what my older siblings tell me. But I didn't know. After he died, I was the caregiver for my mom because she was not well. She had good bouts, and then she had really bad bouts. Sometimes she'd end up in the psych ward.
She had a ninth-grade education because she quit school in ninth grade. After that, she worked at a department store called Montgomery Ward’s, and my dad’s sister worked there too, and she must have introduced them. My mom was 18, and they got married right away, and then she started having kids, and he never had her work. I don't think he knew that she was unstable when they got married because they got married so young. Thankfully, he had life insurance and set up a trust because I don't know what she would have done. She never had to worry about money while he was alive, and then when he died, she didn't even know how to write a check. I had to help her write a check. She didn't know anything about balancing a budget, and she didn’t know anything about insurance. We would go to a doctor’s appointment, and I’d fill out all the forms. Even now, I remember the names of the pills she was on, and I know her social security number by heart because back then, your insurance number was your social security number. The minute I turned 16, my brother was like, You're getting a car because we're sick of carting mom around. And then I was basically her personal chauffeur.
It was a lot. But at the time, I didn't think it was a lot. It was just like, that's what you did. I had to help her. I never thought about it being hard. It wasn't until my kids started to say things like, Mom, you had a terrible childhood. I'm like, I did? I didn't think I did. All things aside, I feel like I had a nice childhood. I mean, I did pretty much bring myself up.
on the things she remembers from childhood
My dad was a Marine. He was in Guadalcanal during World War II. Then he came back here, and he went to RPI, which is Rensselaer Polytechnic. He studied radio repair, which is what he did in the Marines. Then he started a business repairing electronics — televisions, radios, all that. They had an appliance department. Back then, you would bring your toaster, your blender, your hand mixer, and they would repair it. Can you imagine? Now we just chuck them and go get another one. But he had a hearty business doing all that. He worked a lot to provide for us.
After he died, my mom went to the psych ward, and while she was there, my older siblings came, and they took every picture of my dad, they emptied his side of the closet, and they took all of his clothes. They were like, Don’t talk about daddy, because they thought it would upset her. It was like there was no memory. I don't blame them because I think back then, they didn't know any better.
He used to sit in his chair at night and eat his pistachios. I don't have many memories, but I have a few. I don't even think we owned a camera after he died. He was the one who took pictures. I have literally no pictures of myself after age 10. There's nothing. Jackie asked me to write down all my childhood memories, and I included the few pictures I have and anything I could think of. Like, my favorite dress in kindergarten was green. I remember it like it was yesterday. And in second grade, there was a poem I had to memorize. And my mother used to make us soft-boiled eggs, and we’d crack the top off and then dunk toast in it; we called them dip-in eggs.
on meeting her husband
I applied to colleges on my own, and I got into SUNY Plattsburgh for speech and hearing therapy. I don’t know how I decided on that; it just seemed like something I would like. It was exciting to be on my own and have some freedom. But my mom had a breakdown after I left, and I ended up coming home. I was gone for a semester, and she lost like 30 pounds since I wasn't there to take care of her. When I came home for Thanksgiving, she just looked like death warmed over, and I was like, I can’t do this. So, I decided to come back home, and I went to community college.
But it was funny — I came home before Christmas, and my friend from high school had me meet her at this bar. And that's when I ended up meeting Tony, my husband. He was with another girl that night. We were leaving that bar and going to another bar, and it was snowing really hard, and there was this big hill that you had to drive down. I was at the light, and he was in his car with his girlfriend, and he just slid into the back of my car. He was scared, thinking we’d have to exchange insurance information and all that. But I just had a clunker, so I was like, Don’t worry about it. I just waved him on. And he thought, Oh, she's pretty cool. And then on Christmas, his family always had a party, and he told my friend to bring me. So, I went, and his girlfriend was there too. I’d never met his dad before, but he came and sat down on the couch next to me, and he said, Why can't my son meet a girl like you? His girlfriend was like two feet away. And then the next night, he called and asked me out on a date. He broke up with the other girl.
I wasn’t going to leave school for a guy I’d just met, but it just so happened that I couldn’t go back because my mom was such a mess, and we could keep seeing each other. When we started dating, Tony was the manager of a grocery store. They asked him to take a store in Port Jervis, two hours away. We moved there together. When we got engaged, we were living there, but we got married up here. We went out for seven or eight years, and then we got married in ’88. I would have been 25 or 26. We stayed in Port Jervis for another year or so, but we didn’t have any family down there, and we couldn’t afford a house in that area. And we were thinking about having kids. So, in ’89, we moved back here and bought a house. And we had Lauren in ’91 and Jackie in ’95.
on her mother’s shock treatments
My mom tried to kill herself around the time Lauren was in sixth grade. We didn't tell the kids until later. My husband talked to her about it once. He told me that she said everything was black. All she saw was black; there was no color. She had some really bad doctors. It was just here, take these pills and numb yourself. But she did have shock treatments, and those were amazing. They helped so, so much. She had some when she was young, when I was little, or maybe even before I was born. And they were bad. They were like the ones in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And she said she would never do that again. But then much later, towards the end of her life, she was at Four Winds, which is a big facility here in Saratoga, and they wanted us to consider shock treatments. We told them that she said she’d never do that again, and they explained that it wasn’t like it used to be, and so we convinced her to try it. She got so much better. The last year of her life was probably the best year she ever had. She had a good doctor, she had the shock treatments, and she wasn’t sleepy all the time. Then she had a heart attack, and she died.
on commission-based jobs
I'm a recruiter, mostly for IT stuff. Earlier in my career, I was an administrative assistant at this consulting company. We were acquired by another company, and when they came in, they were like, We really don't need you as an administrative assistant, but would you want to become a recruiter? It's not anything that I ever would have picked to do. Not even close. But the money was good, and it helped us to buy a home and have things for the kids. We were definitely not rich, but with me as a recruiter, we were better off than if I had done something else or stayed in admin, because recruiting is commission-based. It gave me an incentive, like, if I hire this person, I'll get $500, and then once I did that, I’d want to get another one and another one. It’s basically like being in sales. I got pretty good. I mean, not to brag, but we had like 80 recruiters, and I was always in the top 10.
At my current job, we started recruiting for things other than just IT, since business is so slow. I had to find nurse practitioners for a psychiatric office. I was like, oh, I’ve got a little experience with that.
on balancing work and motherhood
When I had Lauren, I went back to work after three months. And then when I had Jackie, I took six months off, because we had a little bit more money and I could afford to do that. But I was really worried about how I was going to do everything with two kids. So, I asked to come back part-time, and they said they’d rather have me back part-time than not at all. So, I worked four days a week. It was nice to get that break — one day where I could catch up on things or spend time with the kids or whatever. My mom also helped out a lot. She’d watch the kids. My husband would drive to her apartment, pick her up, and bring her to our house. It was good for her. It gave her purpose. So that was a win-win. It helped us save a lot, and I didn’t have to be home to pick up the kids right at 5:30 pm every day. I did have to work late a lot. I didn't think the kids noticed, but then when they were in middle school, they were like, Mom, you’re never home. But I was the breadwinner; I made more than my husband. It was a huge burden and responsibility because I had to be the mom, make the dinner, clean the house, and then I also had to work and be successful. I don't even know how I did it.
on Y2K
My kids say I was always home late. Y2K was a huge issue for the IT industry — everybody panicked. So, a year or two before that, we went on a rampage, hiring people who knew all the old systems. I was really busy. If they could breathe, we were hiring them. And, of course, the money was good because it was commissions.
I remember New Year’s Eve 1999. My husband and I have four couples that we always spend New Year’s Eve with. We rotate houses, and we always have lobster and crab legs; we’ve been doing that for 30 years now. I think it was at our house that year. We were all waiting for all the lights to go out and everything to shut down. People were taking money out of the bank because they were afraid that they weren't going to be able to get cash. It was nutty. It was really, really nutty. And then nothing happened. Everything was fine.
on going on and off anti-depressants
My brother died in a snowmobile accident in 1998. The water cracked, and he went in, and my sister-in-law went in. She was able to get out, but he wasn’t. They had divers come, and one of the divers found the snowmobile under the water, and then ripped his scuba suit on the snowmobile, so they had to call off the search. They didn't find him until the next day. He drowned. It was pretty bad. He was kind of a father figure to me after my dad died. So, in 1999, I went on antidepressants. When I experienced anxiety, it helped me to see exactly what my mom had been going through. Hers was probably much worse. I have empathy, because I don't wish that on anyone. It is the worst feeling, and I know I didn't have it as bad as she did.
I’ve tried to come off my medication several times since then, but it’s really hard. I tried to get off the medication I’d been on the summer before last. I took smaller and smaller doses, I completely got off it, and then about a month and a half later, I started having weird symptoms. I would have these fits of crying, and then I would have fits of laughter. I went to see Lauren, and we were laughing, and I couldn't get control. I laughed so hard that I actually peed my pants. I had to go back to her place. It just couldn't help laughing because of the medication withdrawal. It was the weirdest thing. So, I ended up going back on a different medication.
I do think being on a little something when the kids were little helped. I was pretty chill. I never yelled at the kids. I remember my neighbor would be like, I can’t believe you’re not mad that they just spilled that whole bottle of soda. But to me, that was ridiculous. They’re kids.
“My mom was not funny. My dad was very funny, and my brother was very funny. Tony’s parents were really funny. I don’t think I was considered very funny until I got older. I worked with this one guy, Leo, and he would crack me up. He just had this quick wit. And then my old boss, who I still work for he’s witty, witty, witty, witty. There are certain types of humor that I gravitate to. Lauren kills me. She absolutely kills me. I literally have to wear Depends a lot of the time when she’s home. She has made me laugh since she was three years old. She’s just always been a card. Her humor is my humor.”
on redoing furniture
My dad was very handy. My brother was very handy too, and my oldest sister, Pat; she can do anything: tear out a kitchen and put in a new one, plumbing, electrical. I like going to Lowe’s — I like all the tools, and I love the smell of lumber. I think I get that from them. I know every aisle. I just like to look down the aisles at things like the pipe fitting stuff. I know nothing about pipe fitting, but I’ll think, Could I use that for a craft of some kind?
My brother was fourteen years older than me, and his wife was very crafty. When I was a little kid, I would go over there, and she would teach me things, like how to decoupage with napkins. This was around 1970. And it just stuck with me. I make rocking chairs for just about anybody who’s having a baby. I shop for old rocking chairs at garage sales, and then I redo them depending on who they’re for. I just like to make stuff special. And then for a while, I was doing little things and selling stuff on Facebook. I really, really hope I can get back into that.
on watching people pass out at church
I went to Catholic school, and my dad used to go to church every single day before work. He used to drive us to school because the church was connected to the school. Sometimes we would go in with him and have to sit in church. When I was little, you couldn't eat anything for an hour before you were going to have the Eucharist. People used to pass out in church all the time. I told Lauren that, and she thought I was lying, but Tony confirmed it was true; you weren’t allowed to eat. You'd be there in the morning, and people would be like there she goes, and someone would drop down, and then there goes another. Sometimes you'd have three people pass out in one Mass.
These days, I kind of feel like if Tony wasn't a good churchgoer, I probably wouldn't be. I pray every day, and I definitely believe in God. But church sometimes is kind of a drag. I do love our new church, though. We've been going there for about two years. It's small, it's fairly diverse. There are a lot of Guyanese people and Asian people, and there are some Black people who attend, which is kind of rare in Catholic churches. And the pastor is the sweetest. The kids just adore this pastor. Sometimes I'll go to Jackie's church with her, and they have really good music. They got a drummer, a saxophone, and they have the big screens so you can see everything. It's different, but it's good.
on girls’ trips
Jackie got me my first passport stamp. She took me to Jamaica, just the two of us, eight or nine years ago. And in 2018, Lauren and Jackie took me to Italy. We left Tony here, but he didn’t mind. It was a girls’ trip, and we had so much fun. Lauren and I did karaoke in Italy, at this bar. We sang “American Pie.” Oh my god, it’s such a long song. My dad and his family are from Sicily, and we have family there, but we went to Capri. I’d love to go to Sicily someday, though.
“The kids say I’m morbid, but I think I’m a realist. My dad literally dropped us off at school at 8:00 am, and by one o’clock, my sisters came to tell us that he was dead. And then of course, my brother died tragically. And so, I just know, you’re here one day and you’re gone the next. I talk about death a lot; I’ll text Lauren a song and be like, play this at my funeral. I volunteered at hospice care for six years, and that was a lot of death. People would ask why I’d do that, and wasn’t it depressing, but for me, it was really nice. It was nice to know that I brought a smile to someone’s face or gave them comfort. Some people didn’t have family. Would you want to die alone? No. That’s scary. The only reason I stopped was because of COVID. We weren’t allowed to visit. I’ll probably do it again.”
on her sense of style
My mom was a good decorator. She was decorating on a dime. She would take the knick-knacks and the lamps that are in this room and then move them to another room. She used to get all the magazines like House Beautiful and watch and study and look at all those things. She was more into that kind of thing than she was into clothes because the medications made her gain a lot of weight. But my sister Chris was a fashionista. When we were young, and my dad was alive, Macy's was this big, super ritzy thing, and I remember Chris asking my parents if she could get this crushed velvet mini skirt at Macy's. When I was in high school, I would go into her closet and take anything that she had in there. When Jackie was little, she’d say, I love all my aunts, but the sexiest one is Aunt Chris. Jackie couldn’t care less about clothes, but Lauren has a sense of style. She dresses very New York City. We'll be at Goodwill, and she’ll pull something off the rack, and I’ll look at it and think, are you kidding me? And then she'll go home and put it on, and it looks so cool. She’s also such a pocketbook girl, and my mother did love pocketbooks. Lauren got me these jeans. I call them my multi-million-dollar jeans because they were, like, $300. I would never spend that much on anything for myself.
But I don't really think I have a sense of fashion or style. I guess I like to be cute and colorful. I don’t like everything to be matchy-matchy. There was a girl in church on Sunday with this beautiful long red hair, and she had purple kerchief, a long skirt, boots, and a different-colored pocketbook. When we went to say peace, I told her I really liked her style. She was just so free-spirited, and I like that. You don't have to go by the book.
on her beauty routine
Almost every time Lauren comes home, she brings me some kind of serum or something because brands are always sending her stuff. And she's got that little New York City bathroom, so she can only keep so much. I don't know if I would splurge on that kind of thing for myself. I used Noxzema for a really long time. It was around in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It has an amazing smell. And I saw this woman recently, and I just had to tell her that her skin was beautiful, and I asked her what she used, and she said Noxzema — I was like, they still make Noxzema?! Now that I know they’re making it again, I might use that.
When we were young, we would put baby oil on our faces and lay out with foil to tan — I would burn. I'm surprised I don't have skin cancer on my face. I do have these age spots. I hate them. My mother had them. Now, I’m a little better with SPF. I also wear makeup almost every day, even when I’m working from home. I do a lot of Teams calls, and I’ve just always done it.
I only got Botox twice. I did it right before Lauren's wedding. I did like it, and if I could afford it, I’d do it more often. But they said you need to do it every three months! But I don’t want to do anything near my eyes, since I only have one good eye, vision-wise. I don’t want to risk it. One thing I always, always use is eye cream, but it doesn't matter because I still have a lot of fine lines. I think it's just genetics. I also always wash my face before bed. Although in the last couple of years, if I get really tired, I’ll be like, screw it.
I would say if I were going to do something big, it would be a tummy tuck [laughs]. I would feel really good with a tummy tuck. But then my tummy would look good, and all of a sudden, I'd be like, oh, I have bat wings. It would always be something new. My kids tell me I have body dysmorphia. They think that I don't see myself the way other people see me. I’m a little self-conscious about aging, but what are you gonna do, you know? If I had a ton of money, I suppose I could have one of those UV saunas in my house and get a bunch of stuff done, but I don't really like the look of it when people get stuff done. And I wonder, down the road, what’s going to happen to the girls who have had so much filler?
donna’s favorite spots in albany
There’s this one coffee shop, Arthur’s, that we love. It's in the Schenectady Stockade. It's a very historic area. They have amazing coffee and scones, but the nicest part about it is its community. It is such a safe haven. They have a knitting club.
There’s a bar called Vice and Virtue, which I especially like at Christmas time. I don’t go for the atmosphere as much as for the drinks because they have like 20 different Christmas cocktails. When Lauren was here for the holidays, I told her, We are going, I have to get my Christmas cocktails. And then there's a place in Saratoga called the Olde Bryan Inn. They have fireplaces and exposed brick.
