It all started with that damn China cabinet.
Every few years, I had to help move it. Or at best, help clear a path so older and stronger folks could help move it. Upstairs, always upstairs. Never on the first floor because hey that would just make sense, right? I could never wrap my head around why they always needed to move it. Throw the damn thing out. Get something smaller. Goddamn, these people's backs are hurting. My back is hurting just watching them. But soon they settled on a place, and naturally I skipped town to waste years away in college. Of course they ended up staying somewhere the moment I left. Of course.
Long before that, Saturdays were the best days. Usually the mall, maybe Hoffman's, Kaydeross Park, or Collins Park. Lazy weekends spent splashing around and keeping active so we'd likely conk out early. I'm sure that was their plan, at least. Throw in a few morning bowling league action and they sure kept us busy Saturdays, and sometimes Sundays as well. It didn't matter. My mother and her sister always tossed us in the car and zipped off somewhere special.
"MOOOKIEEE!" always rang from my Uncle Pops' lips whenever Mookie Wilson slapped another base hit for the Mets back in the '80s. But those were just the days I was hanging out near him - who knows what he was like the rest of the time. I wasn't at their home when the Mets won the World Series in 1986, but I sure wish I was.
Uncle Pops also had a habit of yelling my aunt's name while she was usually frying up something in the kitchen. "ANGIE!" he'd always shout from the living room. I don't remember why he'd always beckon for her exactly, but later in life he hardly ever left his chair, and she always had to bring him things. He was twenty-two years my aunt's senior, so in hindsight he might have been enduring health issues by then, and she was just taking care of him.
Pops passed away in 1999. I was in Buffalo then, unable to make the funeral. And while I hardly developed any relationship with the reserved man who drove taxis in my hometown for a living, I'm a Mets fan because of him.
My Aunt Ann came over from Germany by boat with my mother in the 1950's. Neither knew English very well, but never really had a choice but to assimilate as my grandfather took up shop in upstate New York. Ann's formative years were spent toiling in her older sister's shadows, attending the same schools a few short years after my mother passed through them.
At some point as young adults, my aunt became ostracized by her siblings and father for deciding to date a black man - Pops, whom she would eventually marry and have a child with. My mother long since reconciled with her, but I am not sure if my grandfather ever let it go. Christmas Eves at our grandparent's house now strike me as awkward as I never saw my Uncle Pops and my grandfather speak much while us cousins tore open gifts in front of them.
In the years after Pops passed, my aunt lived her life as a single mother (her son was in his 20's and 30's by then, so likely not much mothering going on). She maybe dated a fellow or two that never stuck around. Traveled with friends to Atlantic City and Vegas. Lost some weight. Moved one more time closer to my parents, who had just sold our home and settled into a retirement village some ten minutes away. Retired after twenty some-odd years with the city. Finally got her driver's license. Colored her hair. Straightened it. Let her son move in with her after his world collapsed. Built a better relationship with my mother and their brother. Spoke her mind and didn't give a shit what others thought. Sent all of us cousins Christmas and birthday cards, regardless where we were in the world and if she asked for our address or not (my mother usually updated her). My mother and Ann would venture out a few times a week to go grocery shopping, my mother being her personal chauffeur of sorts. They'd stop at the meat market, maybe Walmart, and almost always someplace for lunch. They were not only sisters, they were best friends.
Every few years, I had to help move it. Or at best, help clear a path so older and stronger folks could help move it. Upstairs, always upstairs. Never on the first floor because hey that would just make sense, right? I could never wrap my head around why they always needed to move it. Throw the damn thing out. Get something smaller. Goddamn, these people's backs are hurting. My back is hurting just watching them. But soon they settled on a place, and naturally I skipped town to waste years away in college. Of course they ended up staying somewhere the moment I left. Of course.
Long before that, Saturdays were the best days. Usually the mall, maybe Hoffman's, Kaydeross Park, or Collins Park. Lazy weekends spent splashing around and keeping active so we'd likely conk out early. I'm sure that was their plan, at least. Throw in a few morning bowling league action and they sure kept us busy Saturdays, and sometimes Sundays as well. It didn't matter. My mother and her sister always tossed us in the car and zipped off somewhere special.
"MOOOKIEEE!" always rang from my Uncle Pops' lips whenever Mookie Wilson slapped another base hit for the Mets back in the '80s. But those were just the days I was hanging out near him - who knows what he was like the rest of the time. I wasn't at their home when the Mets won the World Series in 1986, but I sure wish I was.
Uncle Pops also had a habit of yelling my aunt's name while she was usually frying up something in the kitchen. "ANGIE!" he'd always shout from the living room. I don't remember why he'd always beckon for her exactly, but later in life he hardly ever left his chair, and she always had to bring him things. He was twenty-two years my aunt's senior, so in hindsight he might have been enduring health issues by then, and she was just taking care of him.
Pops passed away in 1999. I was in Buffalo then, unable to make the funeral. And while I hardly developed any relationship with the reserved man who drove taxis in my hometown for a living, I'm a Mets fan because of him.
My Aunt Ann came over from Germany by boat with my mother in the 1950's. Neither knew English very well, but never really had a choice but to assimilate as my grandfather took up shop in upstate New York. Ann's formative years were spent toiling in her older sister's shadows, attending the same schools a few short years after my mother passed through them.
At some point as young adults, my aunt became ostracized by her siblings and father for deciding to date a black man - Pops, whom she would eventually marry and have a child with. My mother long since reconciled with her, but I am not sure if my grandfather ever let it go. Christmas Eves at our grandparent's house now strike me as awkward as I never saw my Uncle Pops and my grandfather speak much while us cousins tore open gifts in front of them.
**********
There are not many things more difficult than hearing and seeing your own mother cry. Listening to her shaky voice calling you later than you'd think she'd be awake. Making out words through choppy reception as she drives home from the hospital, her best friend laying there on life support. I kept deciphering through my head how this could have possibly happened, why nobody checked in on her health, how whatever the hell heartless feelings I was wondering trying to Perry Mason the fuck out of something that's really just irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Aunt Ann passed away last month at the age of sixty-three. Same age and cause as Wilt Chamberlain, who passed the same year Pops died. Chamberlain was a giant among men. He was larger than life and lived it to the fullest. So did my aunt. She lived her life however the hell she wanted, spoke unabashedly to anyone who needed it, and made my mother happy.
The license plate on my Uncle Pops' wood-paneled station wagon read "ON EMPTY." It reminds me how we're all just running on such here. Life is too damn short, and nobody gets a second at bat.