A birthday no one remembered was outright unforgivable. A
birthday that would change all those to follow was downright insane.
It was a changing of the guard
birthday. The one when everything went thicker-face moisturizers, waistlines
and mindsets, and the absence of a credible man in my life was tossed around
me, over me, behind me, and in front of me by all my loved ones. But, instead
of a "Happy Birthday, Mackenzie" call from a mother who was never supposed to
forget. Or a "You thought your old man forgot, didn't you, Mackie?" from a
father who pretended to forget. Or some form of birthday sympathy from any of
my three older sisters, I got a call from ancient Father Somerville.
Father Somerville saw through my
god-forsaken soul, or made me believe it, even now in my supposedly
all-powerful thirtieth year of life. In his sixty-year-old seasoned pulpit
voice, he declared I had received a package from my Aunt Sara. A package from
her would have been great on a birthday no one remembered, if Aunt Sara hadn't
vacated her office and neglected her duties as lecturer of biblical archaeology
over thirty years before and been declared dead twenty years ago.
Aunt Sara was my father's youngest
sister. She was also my godmother. Along with my Uncle Tony, she had held my
tiny head over the baptismal font thirty years before. She had posed for
pictures with every relative on the Irish side of the family and wisely followed
that up with everyone on the Italian side. She enjoyed the seven-course meal at
my Uncle Gianni's restaurant, left to catch a plane to Cairo
and was never heard from again. Unless there was delivery from heaven or as
both rosary-touting grandmothers would say, from that other place that can't be
named, the package had to be a joke from one nasty person.
But, heck, it was my big 3-0
birthday. Maybe this was some ploy, although on the dark side, to get me to a
big birthday bash.
0 comments:
Post a Comment