December 24, 2013 5:15 am.

The Don CeSar Hotel, St. Petersburg Florida.

Our mother died an hour and a half ago. Sissy, Gale and I were there at the hospital. I will tell you more as time passes. Not now.

As the long day slid into night on December 23rd, it was just us three camped out, waiting to see how Mom fared after emergency surgery.

After she passes, we sit, numb, on the curb outside the hospital. “Scata,” I think. Pronounced skah-tah, it is the Greek word for shit. I’m not fluent in Greek at all. But our Irish Mom had spent plenty of time amongst our people and used to amuse us with a fabulous parody of Doris Day. She would twirl around the kitchen with a dish towel for a hankie and sing.

“Que scata, scata. Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Que scata, scata.”

I hum this and Sissy knows what I mean. Gale does not as she came along way after Mom’s first marriage. I turned in her direction.

“It’s all shit,” I say. She nods. As much devastation that just reigned down on Sissy and I, it was Gale who had the most visceral physical shattering in those final moments. If I live to be a thousand, I will never be able to forget the sound of her little heart breaking, the shards tearing up through her throat. It was the sound of a small gentle animal caught in a stainless steel bear trap. That’s another story for later on down the line.

“Are we going to cook dinner?” Sissy asks.

“YaFuckinARightWeAhh!” I answer in perfect Bostonese. Mom would be very angry if we let the dozen Christmas Eve lobsters in the garage die along with her. My brain doorman has checked out and in his place left a robotic autopilot to manage the Tilt-A-Whirl. Act casual, say nothing, pretend it isn’t happening.

Dad had finally gone home in the early evening. We’d been at the hospital since the morning and all we could do was wait to see if Mom survived the night. At ninety, he was faring as best as he could and yet he was pale and shaking so we bullied him into leaving. We did not realize he might have additional issues. This week in March 2014, we discovered that Dad had suffered a mild attack sometime in the past few months. Back in the winter, it was nothing but a blip in his impending grief.

“OK,” Dad says when we call him with the news. We considered going to the house but we didn’t want him fumbling around in the dark to answer news he would already know as we rang the bell. Instead we made the decision to call.

“Do you want us to come over now?” Sissy asks.

“Ya. No. Later.” Silence.

That’s how he is. We’d sent the Big Kids away earlier after instructing them to say goodbye, just in case. It was too much for everyone except us. A job for the Old Broads. We, the not faint of heart. After reading this far in the blog, you may think we would have made a scene – everyone sobbing, screaming and running in hysterical circles.

We only do that on regular days.

In times of crisis, we are a fierce army that grimly mobilizes itself. That Bad Thing had prepared us and in the beginning disbelief stage of mourning, we are all fighting back. Act casual, say nothing, pretend it isn’t happening.

We drive to our respective hotels because we don’t know what else to do.

Our parents’ home is not big enough for all of us, so the last few years we had taken rooms at nearby hotels. The Big Kids are now truly adults who secretly call us the Old Broads. Mom and Dad finally realized this in the past few holidays and not only stopped begging us to stay at the house, but embraced the practice of off campus housing.

A few years ago, Christmas vacation

“Where do you think you’re going?” Mom asks Baby J and my son at ten in the evening.

“We’re going dancing!” Baby J adds a few more bracelets and a lot more mascara.

“What?? It’s late at night. You’re not going out! Nancy Grace says nothing good happens after midnight! You go to bed!”

Dad harrumphs in agreement. He is preoccupied with his investigation into the identity of the offender who has clogged up the toilet. “Every goddamn year one of YOU PEOPLE clogs up the toilet! You’re using too much paper! I’m not made of toilet paper, you know!”

I love Nancy Grace, I do. I am surprised she isn’t a member of my family although I suspect she is a Republican. It could be that in Atlanta where HLN is based, only bad things happen after the clock strikes twelve, but our kids are Los Angeles and Miami folk. Many clubs don’t even open until eleven. I’ve grown used to the late night clubbing. I do much of my grocery shopping late at night as well. Every place is open, well, mostly always. The only thing I hate about visiting Boston is that after eight at night, the only thing open is the local VFW post. I’m a night owl. But in my parents’ house, their rules have to be respected. Forcing our offspring to respect them is the least we can do to try and make up for our own past shenanigans when we completely ignored them.

The Big Kids dutifully went into the bedroom, shut the door and the two twenty-somethings climbed out the window. Unfortunately they broke the screen on the way back in five hours later and woke Mom who roused Dad who was definitely nothappy. It was at that point Sissy and I decided it was time to visit our parents with a hotel as a home base.

There’s something about that particular bedroom. Back when Sissy was ’round about fifteen, Dad caught her and her best friend climbing through the very same window in the middle of the night, swinging a very cheap bottle of vodka. To this day I believe Dad was torn between punishing them for their sneaking out and underage drinking or complimenting them for being thrifty in their liquor choice.

Now we stay in hotels and as I am the Clark Griswold of my people, I bring just a few holiday decorations. The basics. Christmas window decorations. Garland. Colorful throws. Stockings. LED faux candles. Cookies. A four-foot fully lit blinking incandescent pink holiday tree. The basics.

Our parents’ house is fully decorated but I like everyone in our hotel rooms to go to sleep and awaken with the full holiday experience hovering over them. Some people think I overdo Christmas.

“I wonder if this is what it’s like to be on Santa Claus Ecstasy,” Sissy says one year, sounding muffled under her Rudolph blanket as the cheap Walgreens gadget projected Chevy Chase onto the wall.

“Is that a real thing?” I ask. Pink lights blink across my face.

“I don’t know but if it is, then this is it!”

December 24, 2013 5:15 am.

The Don CeSar Hotel, St. Petersburg Florida.

Sissy and I sit in our fancy room, saying nothing. The pink lights blink. On the floor, something flitters back and forth from the corner of my computer bag. I reach down and carefully slide it out.

Two letters. The first reads “TO MARGO BRANDT” in Mom’s curvy handwriting. The second she addressed to me.

I hold it up so my sister can see. It is the letter Mom wrote to herself almost twenty years ago for our Time Capsule. The same letter I had planned to read with her at Christmas Eve dinner later this day. Over the red skeletons of ravaged Maine lobsters and the aroma of salt-sweet melted butter, I was going to reach under the table, pull it out and hand it to her.

I remember now what Mom said when she penned her message in 1995. “I wish we could open the letters now and see what they say.”

“Mum, 2005 isn’t such a long time to wait!”

Mom smiled. “I hope I don’t miss it,” she said quietly.

I hold up the envelope – my mother’s message to herself. Sissy nods and I carefully break the seal. Mom’s unseen People must have whispered to her way back in ’95, telling her what we would desperately need by the time her letter was found. Because here is what it said:

 

Author’s Note: I’ve breached Mom’s privacy because I was not sad to read it. In fact, for a brief moment, it eased the pain and I smiled. You smile too, OK? We’re so lucky to have this. The Time Capsule was an amazing project I urge you to try, while you still can. 

Thanksgiving week 2013

Brad Pitt. Newt Gingrich. Sylvester Stallone. George W. Bush. Eminem. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. Frances Bean Cobain. They have much in common with us. They all experienced embarrassment at the hands…or mouths…of their mothers. It used to be more embarrassing for celebrities but now – with the maternal mastering of Facebook and Twitter – mothers can also embarrass us to the world.

Sissy and I have set up folding tables across my small living room as we prepare for the coming feast. The Big Kids are out on South Beach. Baby J and my son used to be the Little Kids. Then my ex had two children who became the Little Kids thus elevating the older two to the level of Medium Kids. When our recently discovered sister Dina had a son and then a daughter – these children evolved into the new Little Kids On The Block. Everyone moved up a level. The Medium Kids are now campaigning to become Big Kids but you really do not get that title until you are old enough to get into some kind of trouble, triggering your parents to admonish, “You are too BIG to be giving me all of this aggravation!”

Tonight Sissy and I are prepping solo. Mom is recovering from her surgery and doesn’t want us to change our plans. “I’m sitting this one out. I just want to rest, recover and read.” We will have a houseful of guests even though Dad will be in St. Petersburg. The last two years our parents have stayed home because Olivia gets nervous if she has to get all dressed up and go on a long trip.

Olivia is their fancy-dress-wearing dog. She has a terrible underbite and is shaped like a toppled over question mark but we are never to insult her.

“Don’t listen to them, Olivia!” Mom tells her. “They’re all jealous because you’re so pretty!” Mom has pictures of Olivia all over the house. Olivia with Santa, Olivia at the beach, Olivia wearing bows. I have inquired about the whereabouts of our pictures.

“Oh, they’re around,” Mom says casually. We have been replaced and I secretly think Olivia’s underbite is her way of mocking us.

Truly, it is just too far a trip, so Dad will have Thanksgiving with his daughter and her family where he will have only one well behaved Big Kid at the table instead of my house – which he calls “The Circus.” Family, exes, crew folks, Big and Medium kids. We understand. He and Mom can play ringmasters when we all converge on them at Christmas.

Sissy and I wonder about the Time Capsule.

The Time Capsule (really just a thick envelope of sealed envelopes) has been found. I’d wanted to have the participants add little items, just like the old elementary school project. But much like with my son’s first-grader class, that idea never really got any viable traction.

1995

“What kind of thing?” Dad demanded. “Like money? I’m not putting money in there. In ten years these kids better have jobs!”

“No Dad, not money. Something special, a small thing like…”

“I’ll tell you something else, you can’t put food in there. Food will rot and then you’ll get rats. Terrible idea!”

I was getting exasperated. “I didn’t ask you to put FOOD in a Time Capsule!”

“You don’t know if there will even be food in ten years!” Nana interrupted. “I was reading about food shortages all over the world. By 2005 we may have to resort to cannibalism!”

“Oh for God’s sake, Alice! What the hell is the matter with you?” Dad is not a huge Nana fan. He turns the television volume up.

Nana leans in to me and jerks a thumb in Dad’s direction. “Soylent Green is people!” she stage whispered.

“Nana, ‘Soylent Green’ is just a movie!”

She shook her head. “So YOU say! I say cannibalism! Put some Twinkies in there. My research shows they last one thousand years because they are made out of petroleum.”

“RATS!!!” Dad bellowed.

I gave up. No trinkets or treasures. “Just write the letters please, Dad.”

“HAAH?”

On the patio, Mom was working on her letters to the grandchildren, several who had not been on their best stellar behavior of late. She tapped her pen against her chin. “What should I write?”

What indeed.

Thanksgiving week 2013

The letters written by grandparents in 1995 were originally supposed to be opened in 2005 for all to read and enjoy. But I had misplaced the envelopes and now there was discussion about how much enjoyment we were really going to experience.

“I wonder what they wrote to the kids?” Sissy says as she pushes the end of a whole clove into the skin of a juicy Clementine. The little fruit is already lined with neat rows of cloves. The house is filled with the wonderful aroma of citrus and spice. “Remember when we made these with Mom?”

I do. When we were kids, Mom brought home a book. “How To Make Flubbers, Etc.” It is a fun read about making art projects on the cheap with household items. Although at first glance it seems dated, we love it. We chose page 10 for our retro centerpiece. Sweet Petes. A clear glass bowl filled with spicy clove oranges and fresh cranberries.

“So what do you think about the Time Capsule letters? Now or later?” Sissy asks me.

The letters gave us two concerns. The first was that now so much time had passed and their grandparents were elderly, we wanted our children to take seriously what had been written almost two decades ago. I didn’t want my parents to be uncomfortable. And I didn’t want our kids to open up an envelope that might detail embarrassing kid stories. I shouldn’t have worried on either count.

I consider this. “I say let’s give the Big Kids their letters after dinner Thanksgiving and save Mom and Dad’s on Christmas Eve.” My older niece Nicole would also get her letters then as she was in Colorado.

Thanksgiving morning we slipped into my son’s room and left the letters for he and Baby J to read while we banged around in the kitchen, hinting that it was time for them to get up. It wasn’t very long until we heard an uproar of laughter in the hallway.

The Big Kids were delighted with the letters, their only complaint that they were too short. My father detailed teaching Baby J to ride a bike and Mom’s included some of J’s kid drawings. Photographs. My son got to read a little of what life was like in the past and his grandparents’ bright promise for his future.

“Look! Look!” They laughed as they passed pictures and crayon drawings back and forth. “OMG! This is great!” I was happy but now wished I’d waited until Christmas.

After dinner was over and the guests had gone, my son brought out the sealed envelope from his late grandmother Eve, his father Mitch’s mom. With his Dad, stepmom and the Medium Kids gathered around the table, He began to read aloud. We eventually had to pass it around the room and take turns. It was splendid to read Eve’s words and sad as we wished we’d asked more questions when she’d been around. Unlike us, Mitch’s southern family members are not masters of inquisition techniques. Everyone in his family just minds their own business. What a concept.

“I hope this letter finds us all well. There are a few things I’d like everyone to know…,” began Eve’s letter to her grandson. I will paraphrase the rest because the wonderful, very personal letter was not to me.

Eve lost two husbands over the course of her life. She raised four children and a grandchild. She loved her father, she wrote, and told us about growing up in the South with her family. She worked at a government job until she retired and gave us a view into the workplace in the eighties. “Don’t let anyone tell you that sexual harassment isn’t real It is! I experienced it but I didn’t take it!”  You gotta love her.

Lost in a grandmother’s message, enveloped by the comforting fragrance of Sweet Petes and holidays gone by, we read on.

As private a person as she was, I don’t think Eve would deny you the wise words she used to close her letter. They are worth repeating.

“In my whole life, I only ever loved two men. And each of them loved me back. I am very lucky. I wish this for you. Love and be loved. And I love you. Grandma.”

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.  How lucky Eve was!

In less than one month, I would read Mom’s letters aloud.

Author’s note: I love Thanksgiving. It is the only holiday that everyone comes to my house. My tiny apartment has held up to 40 people on any given Turkey Day! But I could never get through it without Sissy! And a lotta help from my friends.

Late summer, September 2013

“Come on let’s go! Go! Go! What a groovy show! Come on and go! Go! Go! It’s Cousin Brucie! And here’s an oldie for ya, cousins! Tyrone Davis singing ‘If I Could Turn Back The Hands Of Time!’””

“Time,” I say. “Time, time, time?”

Sissy claps. “I got this! ‘Time Has Come Today’!” She yells out the title of an old 1967 Chambers Brothers tune. She’s playing our radio game.

“No,” I shake my head. “Not a song. I was gonna tell you something I just remembered.” Something is tapping on the door of my brain but the doorman is apparently on break. I can’t quite hear it.

“Time keeps ticking away? Time has come today? Come on, I must be close!” Sissy keeps guessing.

Sissy and I are cruisin’ the tiny town of Scituate Massachusetts in a rental car while blaring the hits of the 1960′s as provided to us by legendary disco jockey Cousin Brucie. I never miss his show if I can help it. How I love satellite radio! The ability to transport back to the comforting days of summers by the sea without interruptions of present day.

Every summer I rent a cottage on the Point, the sliver of land that juts defiantly out into the harbor and boasts the two hundred year old Scituate Lighthouse. The lighthouse and two teenage girls who once resided in it played an important part in the War of 1812. The girls, Rebecca and Abigail, spotted a British warship slipping into the harbor and began to play the fife and drum as if the American militia was on to the Brits. The warship departed and that’s one of Scituate’s claims to fame.

The other is that Scituate is known as the Irish Rivera. Year-round residents as well as we “summer people” are proud of that. Why are we so proud? No one really knows but, “Because we’re Irish, damn it! That’s why! Keep it up with the questions and you’ll be sorry!” is a popular theory.

It is, as I have said, the scene of our childhood crimes and triumphs and every year we go on a pilgrimage to return to the smell of salt and seaweed and freedom. Mom hasn’t flown since 2001 and so we take this journey without parental supervision. Much like we did in the 60′s. But unlike the decade of the Summer Of Love, we call and tell her everything that happens. We never try and rent our rebuilt former home on the Point although it is occasionally available. We just get as close to it as we can without actually sleeping in our old bedrooms. Even for the Irish, some things are just too painful.

Sissy and I are safe in the car and in search of fried clams. This after just having run screaming from the Egypt Country Store, also known as “The Postie” due to the fact that back in the fifties, it was a post office as well as a candy store. It is also called “Little Egypt’s” by snickering old guys who still remember the old Coasters song of the same name about the famous belly dancer.

“She did a triple somersault and when she hit the ground, she winked at the audience and then she turned around. She had a picture of a cowboy tattooed on her spine, sayin’ Phoenix Arizona 1949!”

There is nothing wrong with the Egypt Country Store. It is a delightful little hundred-year-old New England building. Because everything in New England is at least a century old. Even Fenway Park. Poppy always assured us this was the way things were supposed to be.

“What? You don’t like old things? Whattya gonna do with ME when I’m a hunnert? Toss me in the ocean? Nice, kid. Real nice. Now run down the cornah and get me a cigah and learn some history!”

He actually did end up being tossed in the ocean so I wonder if that was his Bad Thing swimming toward him or just the craving for a cheap cigar.

As I said, there is nothing wrong with the Egypt Country Store. The store has a wonderful menu of delicious hot and cold fare – from burgers to veggie sandwiches and homemade lemon and limeade. The candy is all of the sweets we still love. Good ‘N Plenty, rows of candy buttons stuck on that thin paper, salt water taffy and fresh fudge. They sell Scituate shirts and caps and a full array of local gifts.

The store also has a life-sized pirate statue, a six foot St. Nicholas and an authentic gilded sarcophagus watching over the premises. It’s a great local spot to go where locals go.

Except for this night. The summer sun was plummeting from the darkening cloudy sky and the chilly Cape wind was picking up. St. Nick seemed to be sneering at us as we paid for our purchases. A creaking noise. Was that sarcophagus opening just a crack? Sissy and I exchanged glances and sprinted out the door as the shopkeeper waved.

“We’ve got a gun! But we don’t have any bullets!” we laughed as we ran. No one is ever prepared in Scituate. Even the best prepper in the world falls astray when wrapped in the comforting embrace of the Irish Riviera.

Summer 2012

I’m in the same rental cottage as every summer with my friend Rosie Bernhard. Rosie and her husband Chick have become part of our extended family. I met them while working in the movies. They both perform stunts for a living and my niece Baby J, also a stuntwoman, calls them her “real parents.” Probably because we are not known for our athletic prowess in my tribe.

Chick was off on a film, Sissy was working in Boston and not due down until the next day so Rosie and I planned a cool summer night listening to the waves at the seawall and scaring each other while watching George Romeo’s 1968 black and white classic “Night Of The Living Dead.”

Popcorn on the table, sodas at the ready, we snuggled into our chairs as the movie started.

Right about the time that cinematic siblings Johnny and Barbra are leaving the graveyard, they see a man lurching toward them. Johnny jokingly calls out the iconic line, “They’re coming to get YOU, BARRRBBBBBBRA!”

And every single light on the Scituate Point goes dead. No power, no street lights, no moonlight, nothing. Just the threatening dead dark of Stephen King’s New England and your rational mind faints while your brain shrieks, “They’re coming to get YOU, BARRRBBBBBBRA!”

I scream. Rosie screams. We can’t find our cell phones in the pitch black. We are sure there has been a terrorist attack somewhere. I run toward the house phone, tripping over bowls of popcorn.

“Wait, wait!” Rosie hollers. “IvegottagunIvegotmyGUN!”

What did she say? Oh her gun! Rosie is also from Massachusetts. “Newton, the rough pahht!” Like all of us, her words run together when she gets what Nana called “all whipped up.”

“I’ve got my GUN!”

Oh thank God, I think. We can hold them off – the terrorists or zombies surely coming up the street.

“OH NO, I DON’T HAVE ANY BULLETS!”

WHAT? Rosie had safely separated the bullets from her licensed firearm while visiting relatives with young children. I suspect that this is a lie. Insisting I should have a working knowledge of firearms, Chick once hauled a protesting me to my one and only visit to the gun range. “You don’t have to own a gun but everyone should have some knowledge of how they work.” After I nearly shot him he said, “If anything ever happens that you need a gun, just call me. I’ll come right over.” I’m not a gun girl and I am sure that is why Rosie’s bullets are stored elsewhere.

“You don’t have any bullets?” I scream back at Rosie.

She gives me the standard Boston answer. “Ya. No.” Translation = “You are correct. I am no longer in possession of any ammunition.”

I finally find the house phone and frantically dial Simi.

“Turn on the news! Has there been a terrorist attack? There’s no light anywhere on the Point!”

Simi sighs. “Is that Rosie screaming in the background?”

“Uh……ya….”

“Are you guys watching scary movies?” Simi asks patiently.

“Uh……ya….but the lights…”

“Well,” Simi says, “I am watching TV in Miami. There has been no terrorist attack in any place other than Scituate and if there had been one there, I’d know. The power probably went out.”

Oh. Then we see a flashlight bobbing outside, coming toward us.

“I have to GO!” I yell into the phone. “I think the Army is here!”

“Hmm. Okee dokee. I’ll talk to you later,” Simi says as she hangs up.

It wasn’t the Army. It was just the landlord from across the street coming by to remind us about the notice she left on our fridge. The one that said the city would be running a power test this evening and everything would go dark for thirty minutes.

“Geez, you guys look like you need a drink!” She holds up a plastic grocery bag full of airline nips – tiny booze bottles. She yells across the street for her husband to join us. The power eventually comes back on but the Irish house party expands and doesn’t shut down until 4am. “Yeah I’m from Scituate,” our landlord proclaims as she raises a nip and toasts us, “but I’m also prepared!”

Late summer, September 2013

Sissy and I barrel away from the candy store. Cousin Brucie is still spinning our oldies.

“OK, cousins. Here’s a Sputnik classic not to be missed! I’m gonna play ya a snippet of Vladimir Putin singing that old’ Fats Domino classic ‘Blueberry Hill!’”

I slam a hand on the steering wheel. “Sputnik!

“Pussy Riot?” Sissy asks tentatively. “Not really oldies but..”

“NO! Capsule! Sputnik. Space capsule. Time. Time capsule!”

Sissy’s eyes widen. “We never…”

“…opened the Time Capsule!” I finish as the brain doorman finally swings the vault open. “I know where it is!”

And all of a sudden, I did. It was in a small wooden box under my son’s baby shoes. It was as if the doorman texted me a picture.

Sissy grabbed her phone. “Let’s call Mom! We can open it at Thanksgiving!”

Wouldn’t that have been great?

February 1995

My son’s first grade class is creating a Time Capsule. A plastic box to be buried on school grounds opened at a later date. The teacher has listed the rules of inclusion.

“No. Not candy. We’re going to write letters about our dreams so we can see if they come true. Write something about what you hope for the world. What? Not Twinkies, I’m sure there will be food in the future. You could bring a newspaper, a magazine or friendship bracelet or…WHAT? No, no! Not your hamster!”

After much discussion and ample rejection of unacceptable objects, the school time capsule was completed and the class was very excited. For the next two weeks, they begged the teacher to allow them to open it. I suppose time passes for the very young in much the same way it does in dog years.

The excitement of my son and his classmates spread, especially to me. I admit I am not a global history buff. What’s past is past and I am much more interested in what’s coming. Like co-existing in a robot/human society or the odds on the World Series.

One summer night I tell my friend Rosie, “Naw, let’s pick another movie. I don’t need to see ‘Lincoln.’ There’s no suspense. I already know how it ends. Now ‘Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter’ – THAT’S a movie!”

“Well, it does seem to have a lot of great stunts,” she answers. Rosie is a stunt woman.

I’m just not a student of history. But a Family Time Capsule for my son? THAT was a project everyone would love.

Not.

March 1995

“What?” Dad said. “You want me to write a letter to the future? I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you people!”

At seventy-nine, Nana declined to participate. “Get back to me in ten years when you open it and I will see who’s lying!”

“Lying about what, Nana?” I asked, desperate in my campaign for candidates.

Nana shrugged. “Whatever they write down. And I bet no one will admit who put that soaking wet towel on my bed after their shower!”

“Nana,” I pleaded. “This isn’t True Confessions! It’s just a letter to my kid.”

“Never,” Nana said in a low voice, “put anything down on paper. It can be used as evidence against you!”

I’ll never know what she was hinting at, but if she was planning a bank robbery, she was no longer allowed to drive

At least Sissy was more honest – and sane. “I’d love to do it. But let’s face it. I do procrastinate about certain things and I probably won’t.”

Fair enough answer from the brilliant woman who eventually decided give up tending bar and entered law school in her fourth decade. A born attorney, she finally found her true calling.

My son’s paternal grandmother way up in Tallahassee didn’t miss a beat. She was a no-nonsense woman. “When do you want it?” Eve asked. “I’ll drop it in the mail.”

“I’ll do it too,” Mom said, full of enthusiasm. “It sounds like fun! Can we write anything we want?”

Nana shook her head slowly and made a “zip the lip” gesture. Mom ignored her.

“Yes, Mum. Anything.”

Dad threw down the newspaper. “Fine! Where’s the paper?”

When the letters were assembled for capsulization each of my parents submitted a letter for my son, Baby J and her sister Nicole. Once they began writing, they decided to also pen notes to addressed to themselves. And my mother wrote a letter to me.

My mother initialed her letters on the back and sealed them with tape. She took the project very seriously. “I wish we could open the other letters now and see what they say,” she whispered to me.

“Mum, ten years isn’t such a long time! And we can make a fun party out of it!”

Mom smiled. “I hope I don’t miss it,” she said quietly.

In the school age storybook world of the tortoise and the hare, I have always been that rabbit, running serpentine back and forth across the highway and dodging the emotional traffic. Slow and steady might win the race but then again, it is very difficult to hit a moving target.

I immediately brushed her off. “Don’t be like that!” And instantly regretted it.

1981

My handsome stepbrother played the guitar and had a series of crazy girlfriends he rotated through our lives. The glamorous C who wore her long straight hair, her lashes separated perfectly into mascara moons and who looked like Cher was a personal favorite. Sissy and I followed her around as if she might burst into a song about being a vamp at any moment. We mourned when the couple broke up more than they did. Another girl with a name that reminded us of the hard crackers we hated and could never live up to C. Girls, girls, girls came and went. Until the late 1970′s and Gale.

Gale dropped into our family and the memory of C faded away like the reruns of a TV show. Gale was, and is, kind and wonderful. I think she was searching for the perfect family after a broken childhood and although we are far from perfect, Gale married into the family.

Mom and Gale instantly became close. Gale truly was the daughter she never had. They shared opinions and recipes, fashion tips and summer trips. Mom and Gale also looked startlingly alike. It was almost eerie.

My mother and sister-in-law also shared the occasionally infuriating skill of interrogation and bad as it was to have one of them questioning you, the double team tap should have been enough to make you run, but you never got a word in edgewise, sideways or any kind of way.

“What do you think about [whatever subject]?” Mom to me. “Because I think [whatever she thought]! How do you like that?”

Me. “Uh, well, I…”

“I’ll tell you what I think about [whatever subject]!” Gale to Mom, for at least five full minutes.

“Oh I agree with Gale completely!” Mom to Gale.

Me. “OK, then.”

Chuck became very ill. By Thanksgiving in 1981, Chuck was depressed but always upbeat to everyone around him. But Gale was still cheerleading him on towards hope. I had to drive back to Miami that evening. Gale and Chuck were headed back to Boston. I hugged him.

“OK, pal. I’ll see you at Christmas!”

He hugged me back and smiled his new crooked grin. “I don’t think so.”

Losing him devastated the whole family, especially his very close siblings. He was a lovely man, just a great person and especially kind to me.

December 3, 1981

Mom and Dad asked Gale if they could legally adopt her.

“You’ve got to go on now. Eventually you will find a man, get married and have children,” Mom said. “We don’t want to miss a single thing. This way your future husband won’t feel uncomfortable coming around your dead husband’s family. We’d be your parents. You know how men are…”

“I AM NOT LIKE THAT!” Dad yelled. “Look at all these kids I have running around as it is!”

Dad had five children, Mom brought Sissy and I into the mix to make seven. Then various grandchildren, cousins and as the family grew, the practice of continuing to invite ex-husbands and former boyfriends to our holiday dinners. “You’re going in the wrong direction!” he’d yell. “Get divorced and stop bringing them around! I can’t afford all this food!” But I can say that by the time my son’s father was married with two more kids, Dad made his peace with our practice of collecting and retaining people and joyfully yelled out, “Come sit on Grandpa’s lap!” every time the little ones came to visit.

Mom waved him off. “You’d be our real legal daughter and at our age, the only child we will ever have together.”

“Thank the Christ!” Dad sighed. “So let’s get a judge to make it legal.

Gale was elated as were we and she became our sister. Then and forever.

March 1995

The Time Capsule. Mom smiled. “I hope I don’t miss it,” she said quietly.

I kept talking. “It’s only ten years, Mum. You’re not even sixty! You’re gonna love it when we open them! Just wait ten years.”

But it wasn’t ten years. It was almost twenty.

Because I misplaced the Time Capsule.

And I missed Mom’s deadline by twelve hours.

Author’s Disclaimer: For anyone who fears this may become another political blog, relax. In order to know Mom and to understand the devastating wake of emptiness left by her passing, I want to tell you her views about the world. Also, my apologies if you received the draft of Part 3. Way to mess up the flow of story, Miss Fancy Pants!

By 1980 I was eligible to vote. Mom proudly took me to register. Half of our working class family was predominantly Irish and the possibility of another Irish Catholic president from Massachusetts in their lifetime was tantamount to St. Paddy himself becoming Pope (and a close second to the faint yet hopeful possibility that Red Sox recovered from the Curse Of The Bambino).

Mom missed participating in Jack Kennedy’s the call to activism. She was a young married mother. “I always thought there would be more time to get involved. I really wanted to,” she told me years later. “He asked us to do something for our country. He wanted everyone to have the same rights. It was all so exciting!” One thousand and sixty-three days later, Handsome Jack was dead.

Mom’s Memory of November 22nd, 1963

“I will never forget that day,” Mom told us as adults. “Poppy came running into the house. He was screaming and crying. I was so afraid, I’d never seen him like that before. I thought they dropped the bomb!”

“They who?” I asked. Mom squinted her eyes. “That’s the biggest problem in the world. You never really know who they are and so you never see them coming.” How true.

“They shot Jack! They shot Jack! ” Poppy was inconsolable as he snapped on the TV. Nana sat on the couch with a heavy plop. “What?” she kept repeating as if she couldn’t hear anything at all.

Mom said, “At first I couldn’t understand what was happening. My parents were screaming and men were walking back and forth behind Walter Cronkite. We had never seen anything like it before. But once I realized President Kennedy had been shot, I grabbed you out of the playpen and sat you right in front of the TV. I don’t know why I did it. Now I think I wanted you to see history even if it was horrific.”

I do have a tiny memory of that day – of Mom shoving me down in front of the television and everyone crying, but not the reason why. The only other memory I have is Yaya at the door, her paper shopping bag empty, the bottom in tatters. Somewhere between the store, the bus and the cab, Yaya lost all of her groceries. She just stood outside the open door crying, “Oh Jack, Oh Jack.”

Poppy told Mom that while he rushed to get to us, he had to maneuver around vehicles dead stopped in the middle of the streets on his route. Doors wide open, drivers and passengers leaned against their cars, listening to radios and crying. Crowds were pushing into the neighborhood watering holes – bars were the only businesses that had TVs.

It was a national tragedy but for the city of Boston Irish, it was catastrophic.

By the time Bobby Kennedy was running, so was Mom. A single mother with two kids, the only campaign she could volunteer for was the one that made sure everyone was doing their homework and behaving well enough so she could stop having to replace disgruntled departing babysitters. Apparently they thought we were hellions and we thought they were liars. At least we insisted they were.

Mom missed it all. Yet she still managed to hone her beliefs about what was right and what was completely wrong.

Sometime In The 60′s

My mother only spanked one time that I can recall. I had to about six or so. I was playing outside the house in the snow when the garbage truck pulled up. Back then, many treasures could be culled from digging through the neighbor’s trash cans. This was because most neighbor drove their actual food trash to a public trash can, lest anyone inspect their leftovers. Rubbish items like broken chairs and mattress springs were just piled at the curb along with other “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” treasures.

“Hiya!” I yelled at the two black trashmen.

“Hiya back!” called the younger, my favorite. He always had some discovery for me. A tarnished cameo necklace, a cracked buoy and today – a small silver spoon. ”Save that!” he said, just like always.

“Thanks! Hey what’s your name?” I ran after the rumbling truck. This week we were learning introductions at school and how we must always greet people by name.

Heavy New England accents are often slurred and difficult for even us to understand, but I caught the gist before his older partner could stop him.

“Bye!!!!” I waved. I skipped back into the duplex, silently repeating his name  over and over so I didn’t forget. I scrubbed the little spoon and proudly took it to the dinner table.

“Oh that’s pretty!” Mom inspected the utensil. “Where did you get it?”

“My friend, Thegahhbageniggah, gave it to me!” I was very excited to show off the fact I knew his name.

Mom’s complexion changed two different colors. She reached across the table, yanked me by one arm and spanked me until Poppy pulled me away.

“Don’t you ever EVER say that word again! That is a very bad hurtful swear word! Go to your room and think about what you said!”

Mom did not use corporal punishment – ever. I snuffled away confused and rubbing my behind. Unfortunately, since I’d never heard the racial slur before, I could only assume that “garbage” was the bad word. In our neck of the woods, the biggest insult one kid could hurl at another was, “Yoahh a rehtahhd!” Not the most pleasant term, but it covered the entire spectrum of childhood enemies instead of honing in on one group.

For many weeks after, I was sure to refer to any refuse receptacle as “the rubbish can.”

Later on, Poppy told me it meant. “It’s sayin’ someone is less that you because they’re different. That’s not good.” Although Poppy’s actual lineage remains mysterious, he insisted he was Irish and therefore had been called every ethnic slur the non-Irish could invent. He remembered the time in history when drugstores counters sported “No Irish Served” and stores insisted “No Irish Need Apply.” Yet if he’d lived until the present, he’d be mystified at the debate over young black men using a specific racial term amongst themselves. Irish guys slurred each other constantly with the very words they found so offensive when others used them. “That’s how we know each other,” he insisted after being scolded by Nana.

Mom’s reaction – especially the “hurtful” part – stuck with me forever. In the late sixties, one of my Greek cousins called us the very same word because we were half-Irish. I remember the hot burning shame red on my face. Poppy waved it off. “Ya Greek cousins are retahhds. Ignore ‘em.”

The scenario of sadness was much the same in 1968. First Bobby Kennedy announcing the news of Martin Luther King’s assassination to King’s supporters in Indianapolis. “Bad times are coming,” Poppy told Mom. “This is very bad.” He was right. Just three months later, Bobby was gone. I remember Yaya shaking her head. “Both brothers? No. No!”

Bobby’s younger brother quoted him in RFK’s eulogy. “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

“Yes, yes!” Mom hugged me. “Always say ‘Why Not?’” And I do.

1980

Mom and I joined Ted Kennedy’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. She was finally free to do what she wanted.

“Do what you want!” Dad flipped through the TV Guide. “I’ll vote for him but I’m not going to any meetings with a bunch of nuts!”

Today at ninety, he’s much more vocal about his liberal views. He supports gay marriage. “Why shouldn’t they be as miserable as the rest of us?” He is decidedly pro-choice. “I’m not raising any more kids so ladies make your own decisions.” He waves the flag for Planned Parenthood. “People need to PLAN things out, not go off half-cocked. Oh wait, that wasn’t what I meant to say.” And he is known for getting into Old Guy throw-downs with his friend who is not a Barack Obama supporter. These battles usually involve yelling at each other and shaking their fists and frequently occur on the golf course. Despite being ninety and suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, my father still golfs and argues.

Dad had one issue with Teddy Kennedy’s campaign. And it wasn’t Chappaquiddick.

It was the cupcakes.

Mom knew how to attend a function as well as host one. Every meeting we went to, we brought home-baked goods for everyone. Her cupcakes were legend at Kennedy Florida headquarters. Delicious mounds hand-painted with sugar frosted lobsters and lighthouses.

“Jesus Christ!” Dad complained. “You’d think Teddy’s got enough money to buy his own cupcakes! Why do I have to pay for them?”

Mom had recently discovered “The Bird.” She waved a middle finger behind Dad’s back, grinning.

“I know what you’re doing! I can see your reflection in the TV!”

Mom snatched the cupcakes and her keys. “Run!!!” she laughed. And we did.

The Kennedy campaign meetings were crammed with dozens of intriguing characters. One woman that stands out in my mind – a wealthy benefactor who had a live chameleon sporting a minuscule ruby collar pinned to her shoulder by a rhinestone leash. Too many more to describe. I can only say it was glorious to see Mom in her element. She loved every minute of Teddy’s campaign. To be a Democrat was everything and for a brief shining Camelot moment, we thought he might win.

Then he didn’t.

We cried when Teddy conceded to the Southern peanut farmer. I remember Mom painstakingly taking down Teddy’s speech in the shorthand she learned in business school.

“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

It didn’t die for her, exactly, but it spent a good few years on life support.

When my mother announced in 2000 that she would vote for George W. Bush, my father made one single comment, punctuated with an obscenity very rare for him.

“We’re NOT sending HIM any fucking cupcakes!

 

Author’s Note: We lost Poppy in New England’s Blizzard of ’78. Seventy other people lost their lives. I will write about it in the coming months. The letter from Ted Kennedy below was among Nana’s most prized possessions and I am now the keeper of that flame.

January 1998

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” President Clinton looked right into the camera. “There is not a sexual relationship.”

“Thank God,” said Mom.

August 1998

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” the President argued.

“Oh shit,” Mom shook her head. “He lied to us.”

And that was that. I’m not sure if it was Bill’s cheating or the lie. Mom had suffered through rumors of indiscretions against her when she was much younger that hurt deeply, yet she remained a fierce Kennedy supporter until she joined them on the other side. The lie may have been what broke her Democratic back. She had very low tolerance for untruths and demanded you admit your transgressions even if she insisted she’d only heard about them “on the bus.”

Or maybe Bill’s bad behavior coupled with the distasteful cigar story, the blue dress, her family of divorced women and unwed mothers and the fact that she thought the Gores were idiots became too much. One day while dialing the knob of her radio, she discovered a voice who was also very dissatisfied with Clinton. Rush Limbaugh.

2000

Mom voted for George W. Bush. No amount of debating, arguing or cajoling by the entire family could dissuade her. She was mad at Bill lying. She was livid at Al Gore for cutting Clinton out of the campaign. She was mad at Tipper’s attack on modern music. “She must be stupid. She’s never heard a little Johnny Cash song called Folsom Prison Blues? ‘I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die?’” And she was still mad at Hillary for insulting Tammy Wynette in 1992.

The future First Lady famously defended her decision to stay with her husband after the Gennifer Flowers scandal by telling the press, “You know, I’m not sitting here like some little woman standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette.” Mom felt Hillary made fun of a woman she felt had suffered enough through her own troublesome marriage to country music legend George Jones.

The fact Mom hadn’t forgotten Hillary’s remark is my fault. A few years later, I did a TV show at the Grand Ol’ Opry that included Tammy and her husband, Tammy’s ex-husband George, his wife Nancy director Burt Reynolds, an old flame of Tammy’s. It could have been a ticking time bomb but was ultimately a testament to true adult behavior. Mom made me call every night to relate the details of shooting.

“Tell me all about Tammy Wynette!” Mom wanted to know. And it was worth the question.

A rockin’ chick, Tammy Wynette showed me her “beauty operator license” she’d renewed a few days earlier. Worth over 30 million dollars, I asked the former hairdresser why she kept renewing the license. “Because honey,” she drawled, “you never know. You just never know. If I lose it all tomorrow, I’ll know I don’t need no man to take care of me. I can get my own job.‘Stand By Your Man’ was just a dang song.’”

“Yes!” Mom said. “How cool is she? And who did Hillary think she was, talking so poorly about her!”

Uh oh.

Dad loves county music as well as easy listening and the standards. Mom loved them as well but also bought CDs that ranged from Dino and Frank to Elvis and Eminem. “He has a way with words! I love that Slim Shady song! Women wave your pantyhose! Sing the chorus and it goes…!”  That’s another blog. We did catch Dad the day after Mom died, sitting in front of the TV with their little dog on his lap, rapping along to Snoop Dog. He had shut everybody out so we left him alone.

They both loved Burt Reynolds and Burt’s kindnesses to my family will be written in the future. I will say his was among the very first calls my family received the day of Mom’s passing as well as a call from “Burn Notice” lead and fellow New Englander Jeffrey Donovan. Am I name dropping ? Absolutely. Yes I am. Because kindness needs to be noted and those calls were very special to my family. You only hear negative celebrity stories – that’s what sells papers and keeps TMZ in business.

The 1970′s

Our family’s love for Burt Reynolds pre-dates my working for him. In the 70′s my parents got caught up in the CB craze when “Smokey and The Bandit” came out. They loved it, good buddies! And Burt was the sex symbol of the decade. Mom and I even had the infamous 1972 Cosmopolitan nude centerfold of him mounted in the back of my clothes closet and I charged my girlfriends every time I parted my sea of bell bottoms. It was scandalous!

Mom talked to anyone on the CB who would respond and my parents sometimes took day trips just to chat with other drivers.

One afternoon Mom was joking back and forth with black truck driver. Suddenly a gruff redneck cut in, wondering what a white woman was doing talking to a…you get the idea. My father shut off the CB and when they arrived home, he removed it from the car.

“Throw it away!” Mom said. It was tainted.

“Yup,” Dad replied. And the CB radio went into the rubbish. An even bigger deal as Dad hates to throw things away.

The 2000′s

Mom was angry. “I don’t care how you feel! You will respect the President! And this new Democratic Party is NOT Poppy’s OLD Democratic Party!”

“Mum, you just called Hillary a skank!”

“She doesn’t even know what that means,” Dad said dismissively. “She heard that word from Baby J, who needs to watch her language by the way. Just ignore her.”

“I WILL NOT BE IGNORED!” Mom hollered the most famous line from “Fatal Attraction” and I couldn’t stifle my laugh.

“How disrespectful, you! You always make fun of me, just like you made fun of me for listening to Rush!”

She was right. I did. A few years later I began apologizing and didn’t stop even as she was in the ICU. By then she was way over Rush. And all of them.

But I wasn’t over what I had said. Who did I think I was, laughing at my mother for what she believed? I apologized so many times she finally said, “You have to stop. It’s FINE! He is not a nice man. I don’t listen to him anymore!” I still feel shame for deriding her. Miss Fancy Pants, that’s me.

By way of yet another apology, I sent her a Rusty Warren CD. Frequently called “the mother of the sexual revolution” in the 60′s, Rusty Warren is a stand up comedian who performed the anthem for young women of the era. Bounce Your Boobies is a slightly dirty, peppy song about burning bras and freeing yourselves from constraints the men of society tried to instill. It has a great intro…

You know girls, it’s great to live in a democracy today, where freedom is everywhere. But girls, we often take this freedom for granted: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of action. Just because a bunch of men signed that Declaration Of Independence in 1776, doesn’t mean that freedom was for men alone. Oh no, take Tom Jefferson, Ben Franklin, John Hancock – helluva guy for you right there! All these men had wives. They probably had a few broads on the side too. These women wanted freedom just as much as their men did. But gals, I wonder, do we? Hell, I think it’s time we did something about it. So come on, fellow females of the 20th century! Be glad that you’re an American! Proclaim your freedom! Stand at attention! Pledge Allegiance! And…bounce your boobies, get into the swing!

If you’ve never heard her, I highly suggest you check her out. She was so ahead of her time that Rusty never received her just praise. Mom loved her.

2008

“You don’t want to vote for Barack Obama because he’s black!” One of my Mom’s friends verbally attacked her.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Sox had won the World Series – finally. All Mom needed was to see a minority president. This is only my feeling – Mom never said – but her dream leader was probably a handicapped African American lesbian.

She was so angry she got up from the luncheon table and went home. She had begun to really listen to the Republican message and realized it excluded the very people she championed. Her opinion of Barack Obama was simply that he did not have enough experience and even her beloved Teddy Kennedy stumping for the younger senator couldn’t change her mind.

John McCain was a war hero, but had a hair trigger temper. Yet the spectre of 9/11 was still with us and he was a soldier. The only thing she liked about Sarah Palin was that she was mother to a Down’s Syndrome baby. Downs folks were one of her causes, she called them God’s Angels. But she was unhappy with the fact Palin brought her infant son into the roaring RNC convention. ”His poor little ears!” Also Mom admitted Palin could not see Russia from her house.

My father was solidly pro-Obama and on election day they both entered the booths. I don’t know who Mom voted for and I never asked. It was her business. I know she did not answer the telephone the day after the election.

2011 And Beyond

The change Barack Obama touted came for Mom but it wasn’t exactly what he’d planned. Mom broke up, finally, with Rush after his remarks about Sandra Fluke.“Terrible!” Mitt Romney’s 47 per cent. “Most poor people can’t help it! They need a leg up!” Binders of women. “What the hell does that MEAN?” Redistricting. “That means black people can’t vote!” Planned Parenthood. “Women needs clinics and birth control!” Racial slurs flung at the first black president. “Respect The President even if you did not vote for him!” And gays.

My son is a carefree talented guy who happens to be gay. His coming out was handled best by my own mother and his 275 pound Southern father who embraced my son as if he had said, “I think I’m going to the store.” Me? I have to quote Cher, who said her response to her daughter’s announcement was less than Cher-like. “No you aren’t.”

I admit to you, I said the same thing. Despite my beliefs, I know life IS hard on the little things. It wasn’t the gay that I was afraid of, it was what comes with it. Fear of others who forget God created us all. With Mom’s help I moved past my fear. I thank her.

Mom was disgusted by things she read penned by far right activists. “Pedophiles are white straight men! What are they talking about? This is vile!” The worst for her was pundits putting words in the mouth of Jesus. “God is love, not hate. Love one another!” She just couldn’t stomach it.

Then came Trayvon Martin and the swell of GOP support for his killer. It was the last straw.

My father has always been a fisherman, hunter and gun owner. He has all of the required permits. Anything he ever hunted, we had to eat. Quail, deer, gross greasy duck – we had to eat it. Although he loved tromping through the woods with his dog Ringo, he would not shoot anything that would not be consumed and he never stuffed any trophy heads. He was the same when fishing on his boat. Many weekends he came home with few fish. He’d thrown the rest back because there was no room in the freezer. Dad respects guns, doesn’t glorify them. His weapons have always been locked in a cabinet, the bullets in a another location unknown to us even as adults. He is a firm believer in the Second Amendment. He does not belong to the NRA. He believes in Stand Your Ground should someone attempt to break into his castle. He does not believe in hunting humans.

Mom grieved for Trayvon Martin. “He was carrying Skittles!!!” – favorite candy of the youngsters in our family. And she could not get past the glorifying of his murderer.

Barack Obama told her it was time for a change. So Mom became a militant political party of one. She supported her basic causes of equality and respect for all. She never put words in the mouth of Jesus. She did not want to vote in 2012 despite my encouragement to privately cast a ballot for whomever she wanted – or to even write in a candidate. Always vote! “It’s not a right, it’s a privilege!” It was what she told me way back in 1980. I don’t know if she went down to the polls and carefully printed “Edward M. Kennedy” in protest. I’d like to think she did, because the dream will never die.

Shortly before her final surgery, she called to tell me about a shopping trip she took with her girlfriends. “I bought a new dress for Dad’s ninetieth. And some shoes. Oh, and a sweatshirt.”

It was a pink hoodie.

I am supervising production on an upcoming television pilot. I enter the office today and clear my throat. “So, uh, a package is gonna come and it’s probably gonna say something like HUMAN REMAINS so it’s not for the, uh, prop department. Just put in on my desk. OK?”

Five people look up briefly and nod. They are finally immune to my situations. I once FedExed a hundred pound door stolen off a bar in Boston to the production office in Miami so I guess the words HUMAN REMAINS don’t faze them at all.

After much discussion, Mom’s ashes have been separated for final transmission. A portion will be buried with my Dad when he eventually becomes sick of us and shuffles off his mortal coil. I hope that is a hundred or so years from now. The packet being shipped to TV show will eventually be scattered this summer in the small Florida town of Cassadaga, the psychic capital of the world. Cassadaga is home to a lovely Spiritualist Camp and community that my mother dearly loved.

I plan this event in my mind as I research renting one hundred fake marijuana plants for the filming of this pilot. In Cassadaga we will rent rooms at the friendly hotel. I will hire a New Orleans type band and we will waltz down the street to a Louisiana version of David Rose’s iconic burlesque anthem “The Stripper” – a song Mom dearly loved.

She was born in 1937. Ladies in labor were still being knocked out to give birth, a practice publicized to lessen the stress on the expectant mother but in reality a way to reduce the stress on the obstetricians. While Nana Alice snoozed, dreaming of her new daughter Baby Alice, Poppy happily took the opportunity to name his only child after an African American stripper he greatly admired. Before Nana could open her eyes, my mother was legally named Margo.

“The Stripper” was her secret song. So we will strut to it, adorned in beads and feathers. At the appointed time, our family parade will pull over and Mom’s ashes will take flight, leaving behind her collection of sea glass for small children to eventually find and marvel in wonder at the colored sparkles hiding in the land locked grass. I’ll take her Christmas gift, the one I did not get a chance to give her, and snap it. A small bracelet blessed by the new Pope, the bright beads will scatter in the wind. Despite her souring on the Catholic Church, she had begun to warm to the recent Pontiff. He abhorred the thought of pedophilia, owned a Harley and had no issues with gay folks. What was not to love? The bracelet would have made her happy. So it will travel with her.

As I weave the fantasy of the perfect ceremony, I begin to experience a nagging discomfort. I also hope it goes better than the two occasion when we scattered Nana’s ashes.

Nana passed after a stay in a nursing home. Close to my parents she was visited every day by various family members. Even in her advanced age, vanity prohibited her from wearing her hearing aid so conversations were carried on by Nana screaming questions and the kids in the family writing their answers in large print on a sketch pad.

One example that typifies Nana’s unique conversational style was when she yelled out in a thick Boston accent to her gay great-grandson, “HELLO DEAH! ARE YOU STILL QUEEAH?”

He dutifully printed, “Yes, Nana. I am.”  He held up the pad for her to see.

She happily howled, “GOOD FOR YOU, DEAH! DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YA WHAT TO DO!!!”

She retained all of her other senses and sense and delighted the kids in hollering out outrageous questions because she hated all of the staid “old people” at the facility.

Nana, unlike Mom, picked her date and time to move on. Several times during her last year she refused food and drink and appeared to begin her ascent. Then she’d sit up in bed and ask for a sandwich. Finally, I believe, she just decided she wasn’t hungry anymore and that was that. We were sad, of course. And a day doesn’t go by that we don’t talk about her. But she was ready and so were we.

The second time we spread her ashes, we took her to Scituate, Mass. Her old stomping ground, Nana had survived the storm on the century, the Blizzard of ’78. Poppy was not so lucky. He was lost at sea during that cruel Scituate winter and washed up underneath the pier of his favorite bar when the spring began to thaw the ice. The city named a small corner of green after him and installed a stone that reads “Edward A. Hart Memorial Park.” It’s nice but I am sure the story of his return from the sea is one he continues to tell over and over in the Great Beyond.

We took Nana’s ashes to the end of the jetty. That same great-grandson was to say a prayer and open the urn so the ashes would spill into the ocean. Apparently Nana was impatient because he suddenly slipped on the slick jetty stones and all witnesses swear Nana jumped into the cold Atlantic Ocean, urn and all. Not our best handling of the one task our mother had entrusted to us while she was back in Florida. I did not want to report back to her, despite the fact that it paled into comparison to the first effort.

That previous Christmas, the whole family made their way down to the dock behind our parents home. After a short prayer, my dad opened his mother-in-law’s ashes and gave a respectful heave. It should have been more solemn, but we are part Irish, so we couldn’t stop discussing it as a December wind rose and created what can only be called the Perfect Blow Back. In an instant, my mouth was full of my grandmother and several other family members were moving their mouths like that old sitcom horse Mr. Ed.

Mom turned to me and I was ready for a lecture about why I should learn to keep my mouth shut. But instead she whispered, “Remember that old movie title? You know the one I mean.” She was struggling not to laugh.

Yeah, I knew. “Please Don’t Eat The Daisies.”

In my Cassadaga fantasy plan for this summer, I remind myself to pray that the weather is bright and the wind is calm. And at the appropriate time, everyone shuts up – just for once.

Today is my mother’s birthday.

I don’t quite know what to do with myself. My younger sister is visiting a Massachusetts spiritualist church. In her final years Mom shed the heavy weight of the Catholicism and began to practice her own form of a religion that blended the teachings of Buddha with the spiritualist movement. My older sister is meditating in her home in Virginia. Mom would so appreciate their good works.

Myself, I guess I will attend the High Holy Church Of Tom Brady. The New England Patriots play the Denver Broncos this afternoon. The winner heads to the Super Bowl. Mom would appreciate that as well. Because sports is also a religion, a talisman and in some cases, the Magic 8 Ball of my youth. Just shake it up and hope for the best.

Back In Mid-October 2013.

“There’s an eighty per cent chance that Mother has stomach cancer,” my ninety year old Dad announces over his cell phone. These conversations are usually loud and punctuated with the sound-words people make when they cannot hear. “Haaaah?” seems to be the most popular in my family. I believe it is more of a habit than an actual impairment.

Usually “Haaaah?” is deployed in the middle of the speaker’s sentence. For instance, if I say, “So last Sunday I was watching the Pat’s game,” you would interrupt by barking out “Haaaah?” now instead of just informing me at the beginning of my sentence that you could not hear me.

“There’s an eighty per cent chance that Mother has stomach cancer.”

“Haaah?”

“I SAID,” my father says louder.

“I gotcha,” I reply. It is just force of habit.

I’m not sure about this diagnosis. Mom had been suffering from stomach pain and other symptoms she would not want me to innumerate here. The doctors had spied a small mass that we knew had to come out but we were initially told that it was benign. Now, suddenly, it’s a new ball game.

October 31st 2013

I am on the phone with my Mom. Her surgery is tomorrow. The World Series Game 6 is tonight. Our beloved Red Sox are still breathing.

“Mom, I’ve been thinking about your surgery and the World Series.”

We of New England practice a specialized form of medicine. It does not have a name, but if it did it would be called “Sports-A-Stision.” It is founded in the deep belief that all the mysteries of the world can be understood through the culture of professional sports. One just must be able to read the signs and understand when a loss might actually be a win. This may come from the fact that the Boston Red Sox did not win a World Series for eighty-six years thus birthing the sentiment of “Ya, who cares? We didn’t want it anyway!” It is also the way we justify things.

We also celebrate the big wins in the same offhand way. “Ya? So? Now I can die happy,” delivered with a shrug was a popular theme when the Sox broke the Curse Of The Bambino in 2004.

Yet my family does set limits. A few anyway. Mom and I once discussed an elderly Boston guy who drunkenly proclaimed at a 4th of July party, “When I go, cremate me and spread my ashes in Fenway Pahhk!”

“Not me,” Mom grinned. “Do NOT take me out to the ball game!”

Back to our phone call. “Mom, I’ve been thinking about your surgery and the…”

“Haaah?”

“…World Series.” I just keep on talking. “It seems to me that if the Sox take the Series in Game 6, you couldn’t possibly have cancer. It will be benign and you’ll be home by Thanksgiving. Don’t you think?”

“Hmmm.” Mom is silent for a beat. “Could be, could be. But let me ask you a question. Who’s pitching tonight?”

The next day Mom awoke after her surgery to the news she did not have cancer. I call her.

“So, no cancer. How about that?”

“Haaah?” she says with a laugh. And then, “Ya, how about that? Those Boston Red Sox! I’ll be home by Thanksgiving.”

But she wasn’t.

January 19th, 2014

Tom Brady does his best but the Pats will not go to the Super Bowl this year. I am surprised I am not more upset. Who cares? I didn’t want it anyway.

I guess because I know in my heart that the Sox won it all just for Mom. Sometimes that has to be enough. Because sometimes that is all there is.