Family stories: I cut my teeth on them, went to sleep in my Grandma N.'s dining room on the old love seat listening to them, watched in awe and delight as my aunts and uncle and dad, choking with laughter, recited them at our family dinners. And I have continued to tell them myself. Where would I start, if I wanted to write them down?
As I am the image of the children my Grandma N. birthed and raised, it seems fitting to start with one that explains those four. L and A, both girls, came before my dad and J, the youngest, and also a boy. They lived in a three-story house at the edge of a beautiful park in a lovely little New England town. The landlords of the house resided on the second floor; Grandma and Grandpa lived on the first floor, and the 4 children slept and played in their bedrooms on the third floor. I've often thought how peaceful it must have been for Grandma and Grandpa, but have always wondered about the landlords!
L, the oldest, was the epitome of the Victorian female child (her own description); solemn, quiet, "seen-but-not-heard", and expected to be the guardian of her younger sister and brothers. A was her direct opposite and the bane of her father's existence. Uncle J has always maintained that is because A was temperamentally Grandpa's clone. My dad was a real tease and cut-up. His main goal in life seemed to be (right up to A's untimely death in her 60's) to drive A to distraction and preferably hysterical tears. L and J tell me that dad and A fought daily almost from the time dad was born. And I believe it! To dad, it was a glorious game; to A it was a fight to the death, which she always lost in a hail of tears.
The particular story I am thinking of took place when dad and A were young teens (A was two years dad's senior). They had what dad described later as a magnificant fight, upstairs in the hallway of their bedroom suites. Everyone was in their pajamas. A was screeching and crying, dad was egging her on. This fight was a little different, in that it became physical, and a lot of shoving and pushing was going on. L was trying to make peace; J, four years younger than dad, was looking on with interest. (I wonder, still, what the landlords were doing!) Well, A completely lost it, and in her anger, with her adrenaline in overdrive, she gave dad a mighty shove, and he went tumbling down the stairs. Feet first, in total surprise that his sister had bested him, he went sailing THROUGH THE WINDOW at the foot of the stairs. He stopped, half way out the window, lying completely still on the landing. A looked on in horror, J with his usual dispassionate interest, L with despair. Dad didn't move. A, screaming his name, flew down the stairs. Dad still didn't move. When A knelt next to him, crying "I've killed him! I've killed him!", he calmly sat up. Gottcha!
Postscript: Uncle J, now 80, stops to see me twice a year on his way from a midwestern winter home to his northern New England summer home. He spends one night, and we go out to dinner, then stay up very late, while I prod him into telling me the old stories. At least once a year, this story is retold with relish. Both dad and Aunt A are gone now; I'm sure wherever they are, dad is egging her on and she is shedding tears of frustration. I miss them both.
Today's exercise is to tell a family story. I have so many it was hard to know where to start.
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