April 26, 2010
My mother was raised in a big Irish family, the Cullinans, in (mostly) Cambridge , Ohio in the 1920s and ‘30s. There were eleven children, one of whom died in infancy, leaving Mom the second oldest, younger only than my Aunt Evy, who died when I was ten. She was my “first death,” that is, the first person I’d known to die, as I couldn’t really include JFK, or even the kid in second grade who was absent one day and then the next and who never came back, and months later we were told that he’d died and gone straight to heaven with no stop in Purgatory, because he’d had the Stigmata in his last days. Anyway, I grew up with many dozens of first cousins, a passel of aunts and uncles and all the infighting and drama and sprawling, boozy holiday gatherings that comes with that territory. Fodder for old stories and boxes of black and white photos with scalloped white borders. Only a few of my mother’s generation of siblings survive (sadly, not including her): four aunts and a defrocked priest, all far on the other side of the Mississippi than me, and for the most part unseen, save at one brief reunion a few years back, since I was in high school. The exception is my godmother, Aunt Jeanne.
Aunt Jeanne is the youngest, which puts her now in her ‘70s. She has raised four girls of her own and spent a busy professional life mostly in the service of doctors and dentists—early on as a hygienist, in more recent decade as a decorator, designer, real estate agent, confidant, counselor and life-fixer. She is a woman of uncommon girt, compassion, humor and courage. Her laugh alone could mend wounds, cure cancers and stop wars. She is a font of stories, an encyclopedia of Cullinan family trivia I got to see her yesterday. It was the highpoint of this New York junket (from which I am now returning, at 38,000 feet altitude). And considering the other sights seen—including my marvelous nephew Shannon and his family and friends, my dear sister Terry and thousands of pieces of exquisite art—and the food consumed (don’t get me started again)...well, that’s saying something.
After a midday meet-up yesterday with said nephew at the South Street Pier, and an hour or so of watching his young sons explore, embrace, mater and finally conquer a scruffy playground surrounded by screened-off sewer excavations, my wife and sister and I walked around Chinatown and what nobody calls the Bowery anymore, then headed to Queens for our mini-reunion at, of all places, a noisy, chaotic outside beer garden in Astoria. Suddenly I was thrust into the approximate ambiance and demographic of a college fraternity party—-a hormonal crush of twenty-somethings in sweaty muscle shirts and tank tops, sloshing pitchers and plastic cups, a mob-scene indoor bar, officious, clueless bouncers and an earsplitting, terrible rock cover band called (I do not lie) “Kindergarten.” The perfect place, naturally, to catch up with one’s godmother. We fled as soon as we could to a dim-lit, tinkling crystal bistro in Williamsburg with Jeanne and her daughter and son-in-law. There the wine and talk could flow freely by candlelight, and we were regaled with stories that included such diverse anecdotes as eavesdropping on Marilyn Monroe telephone conversations, a midnight STD doctor’s visit by a young, frantic Beatle, a visit by Carl Sagan to a fortune-teller in upstate New York, a mysterious (but ultimately explicable) disappearance by a much younger present blogger at an intergalactic Grateful Dead party in Poughkeepsie, a clumsy FBI contraband stakeout and a telephone lesson DIY childbirth on an apartment stairway in Queens. You get the idea. You do? Wow. Then you definitely should have been there.
Tomorrow will bring a return to the office, unreturned phone calls, unanswered emails, unpaid bills, unsecured license tabs and, hopefully, some small progress in marketing, selling, promoting and publicizing Houdini Pie. I’ve had a few lovely comments from readers, but then they are readers I know, and while I don’t for a minute (no, not a goddamned instant) think that they are just being kind, they are after all acquaintances. I have no idea how many strangers, if any, have purchased or read the book. Or likely ever shall. Or how to so inspire them. I’m open to suggestions.
