The influence of special Two Footed and surroundings
So Momma comes home and tells Wonder Boy she pulled a Justin Bieber. Oh, no, no, no, the Paparazzi do not stalk Momma…but if she is in a car and anyone purposely gets in her way, well, she won’t run over you (maybe) but she will deafen you with her horn.
You see an Opportunist of Questionable Intent thought it was a great idea at 6:30am to wade in to the traffic and solicit tips, no services required… I know, I know, it happens in The Big Smoke all the time but not here…really, even if it is the 9th most populated city in the country…everyone knows someone who knows you…and you wouldn’t want your Mom to know you were panhandling down at the Four Corners…Shame, Shame….no Ho Ho Santa Claus coming to you this Christmas.
Still the Two Footed are a polite bunch which the Opportunist of Questionable Intent full well knew. It seemed the drivers of our city in front, behind Momma were like sheep being led to the slaughter. They dutifully dug in their pockets, even going for more, when the Entrepreneur of Questionable Intent told them what they had given wouldn’t even buy him a cup of coffee at Timmy’s.
Oh, but not Momma…Sometimes she wonders if she and her sisters should have to wear a sign that reads ‘Daughter of A Dragon’ to warn the innocent and ward off the disreputable because those girls…they burn pavement…ferociously…everywhere they go…when crossed, that is.
So as the Opportunist of Questionable Intent argued for the drivers to dig deeper (hands in your pockets 🙂, Momma laid on her horn… made not so subtle sign language ….the Opportunist, looked over, vexed….this was not going as planned and momentarily considered approaching the next car in the line. However, a second glance at Momma’s thundering face and he saw, heard, recognized A Daughter of A Dragon and disappeared in to the Light of another Morn. Better he lived to see another day. Because…
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape…You don’t spit into the wind…You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger…And you don’t Mess Around with THEM…
Paraphrase Jim Croce
No doubt, with progress, comes situations that the Geeky inventors, are helpless and hopeless to anticipate… In a Geek’s world, logic prevails…while for the rest of mankind, it is part logic, part magic, part spiritual and the rest just falls out into various vexations that we saw coming, but had no way to control.
Like ‘in the day’ everything was plug it in, plug it in from home appliances, to entertainment equipment. Oh, sure, if you wanted to take say, first your transistor, later your boom box to the beach party, you brought along batteries…a lot of batteries….Now it is a ‘no go’ in the Nanny State Western World where there are laws prohibiting breaking the sound barrier…with hefty fines…maybe even jail time for offenders…go figure.
Today, it is still all about plug it in …to a charge station. It seems like every member of the house needs at least one super-duper power bar, with six to eight plug units, with an extra bar set up for general family use…that much-needed carbon monoxide monitor (the smoke detector still uses batteries)…and the Family GPS, (Global Positioning System) used frequently because does anyone really know where they are going? The GPS is fun because you can tease it by not going in the direction it suggests…then listen to Recalculating, Recalculating… Just don’t follow it verbatim when it directs you to the middle of a lake…after all…it is artificial intelligence.
Now you know what the individual power bar for each family member charges…because we each have our own cell phone that requires daily top ups from all the downloads, necessary to keep us entertained 24/7. Then we need space for charging the IPad, since the bigger screen streams better videos and shows as well as the digital news (no wonder the newspapers are going bankrupt). There is the digital camera we use and…. Let’s not forget we have to charge the toothbrush. We need a couple of spots for when a friend drops by and has to top up their equipment….sounds marvelous, clap on the back smart…till you meet Diva Calico Gen.
Still the latest, greatest scratch your head and roll your eyes…the EV (Electric Vehicle) wherein it takes hours to recharge…definitely only for the upwardly mobile who have a garage full of cars to use while the EV is in Charge Mode….and do you get your own station or abandon your EV at a community charge centre and walk home…all scary stuff way beyond my pay grade to ponder.
And how will the Diva Calico Gens of the world react? Have the Geeks considered that aspect….ya think?
Now Jakita, the Ultimate Earth Dog would never lower herself to chew wires (although Kleenex are still fair game)…in her puppy days, she was a chewaholic but she went to Chewaholic Anonymous so that passed…Bad Boy Andy has no interest, not a Geek, bigger fish to fry (if he can find them)….and Charlie, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte refuses to be bad…but for Diva Calico Gen, life is a relentless pursuit of self entertainment . She methodically whips, then chews all wires, in every charging station because apparently…kitties just want to have fun….and duh, you can buy new ones…good for the economy…oh, and it is a challenge for Geeks to rethink their game plan ….so it is all good, right?
So give it some thought, Geeks. There surely is a solution for every problem that in turn will create another conundrum….just keep in mind Diva Calico Gen…(maybe 14 years old but has the wherewithal of a kitten), she lives to one up you, with sharp incisor teeth, a bat of her paw, and a sweet and innocent Cheshire grin…it’s always game on, Geeks.
We’re all just one charge away…No Superman to save the day….Use friends stations if you may….We’re all just one charge away. …..from Chaos! (Paraphrase Charlie Puth)
Momma has so many stories, some true, well, if not downright lies, at least fanciful. This one is rather humbling and sad, yet it is what you’d call life…the baptism by fire…so to speak.
He was a hometown War Hero…she was an unknown citified War Bride from over the Pond. But loves conquers all…right? But just between you and me, small town born and raised, to church three times each Sunday, doesn’t make for tolerance.
After all, the War Hero had disrespected your sister, niece or cousin by bringing a stranger in the mix. Anyone too big for their britches needed to learn the hard way that you didn’t up and do things without sanctions being imposed, cred being earned, if you wanted acceptance into this tight-knit bucolic community.
Well, a baby is always an ice breaker and so the young couple produced a handsome, talented son that seamlessly slid in to a hostile environment, invoking smiles and acceptance to such a degree some of the sting from the initial insults melted like snow on a spring day.
Emboldened by their success, the War Hero and his War Bride did what most folks did after the return from the Second World War. They grew their family….but this time…they were blessed with twins, a little boy and girl, born prematurely,
kept alive only by the Grace of God and some said, the act of baptism. We called them Twin Boy Blue & Twin Girl Pink…but they were polar opposite of their cool Big Brother, another Hometown Hero, the Class Clown, the all round Bon Vivant. The boy was Golden. The twins, though, struggled in school to learn, to make friends to fit in….but they always had each other.
But everyone knows that the true heroes are recognized when tested, like iron in a fire. And so it took a tragedy for us to see Twin Boy Blue’s strength and heroism. It just so happened Twin Boy Blue, Twin Girl Pink and the Hometown Hero were at a nightclub that was torched by revenge seeking disgruntled customers who had been literally tossed down the stairs for bad behaviour by the Bouncer. When the EXIT was blocked with flames, the club goers trampled each other to get to the windows and out to safety. The Hometown Hero, being fast to react, was outside lickety-split-quick; yet burdened by the thought that Twin Boy Blue, and Twin Girl Pink were still in the towering inferno.
Meanwhile, Twin Boy Blue also had sized up the situation in a hurry. He hustled his Twin Girl Pink out the window as she protested she would break her freaking neck if she jumped from a second storey. Along with the Bouncer, Twin Boy Blue helped the panicked club goers out the window, only leaving his post when the place was cleared of living clientele.
Way too many young souls winged their way to heaven that night. It was touch and go for Twin Boy Blue whose lungs had been infiltrated by the flames as well as suffering various burns to his face and hands. Luckily, Twin Girl Pink had little damage beyond cuts and bruises so was ready to be released from the hospital. The discharge papers were signed. Hobbling over to Twin Boy Blue’s bed, she saw her brother swathed in bandages, so still, so many tubes coming and going that she collapsed and died beside him, unable to face the possibility of a life without him. T.R.U.E. S.T.O.R.Y.
But God is full of surprises and our new Hometown Hero, Twin Boy Blue lived to see another day. Seems sometimes we are too blind to see just a little polishing can make the gold burnish brightly… so bright you can see what we had missed all along.
Now our Hometown Hero Twin Boy Blue is welcome at the Cool Kids table…because if he doesn’t belong there by now…well, who does?
So…somewhere, somehow, in the wee hours of the morning, as Itty Bitty (Momma’s sister) went from the Neurology Floor to Cardiac Care, all h-e-double-l took place and like a game of Hot Potato, Itty Bitty got passed on…to Intensive Care…
Where only the most brilliant, the most dedicated of medical staff tend to your medical disasters trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again.
Have you ever felt like a doctor was drowning you, absolutely throwing buckets and buckets of information over your slow-to-assimilate-head? Meet Dr. Information-On-Steroids. Should you be fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to end up in her war zone, she will go to battle for you…she’ll treat you like you are her own mother, she said, she did….she will speed read and absorb your file, knowing if you had a hang nail ten years ago, asking questions about the patient that baffle and bewilder you. Is she an Einstein, a Psychic or the Good Lord Herself?
Dr. Information-On-Steroids told poor innocent Super Boy she was putting his mother on life support and he said , ‘Well then, I’ll just be off to work’ … And she said, ‘What??? You are off to work. I may rupture a kidney, tear her stomach wall and you are… off to work???? I probably won’t. I am very good doctor but still…don’t you think you could wait until I completed the life support system procedure?’ ‘Yeah, I could do that,’ stammered Super Boy.
So, you may be curious, what happened to Itty Bitty exactly? The Perfect Storm – multiple total organ failure (Kidneys, lung, heart) pneumonia and, oh, a heart attack… Made that ulcerated diabetic foot with gangrene about to set in, seem like a walk in the park. Now Itty Bitty would have lots to complain about, well, if she wasn’t in a coma on life support. As our Uncle Patriarch would say, ‘Always something to take the joy out of your living.’
Dr. Information-On-Steroids wasn’t done yet. No, no Momma had to know the facts, the statistics, the possibilities. Had Itty Bitty been ten years older and in the same condition Dr. Information-On-Steroids would not have resuscitated her. Okay…good to know… I guess. It seemed there would be no more Sprints, only Marathons for Itty Bitty… The good news was 59% of patients made it through the initial crash with Dr. Information-On-Steroids help (be it the car crash, heart attack, organ failure or idiot drug overdose – her choice of words, not Momma’s. But the bad news was only 19% of Multiple Organ Failure patients lived longer than a year. Now that was a good soaking with a bucket of icy water. Breath, Momma, Breath.
There is a certain chaotic rhythm to any ICU where monitors glow, numbers change rapidly, graphs rise and fall while the ventilator hisses and gurgles… a multitude of beeps, then the alarms…apnea alert … blood pressure rising…oxygen level slipping…it is not the place to catch 40 winks, well, unless you are in a coma, of course….that helps. Oh, and only two visitors at time…got to keep room around the bed just in case the crash cart is needed.
Yeah, a lot to absorb… doesn’t help when a body feels punch drunk from sleep deprivation. But… read my lips … better days ahead!
Starting Right Now She’ll Be Strong…Cause she’s still got a lot of fight left in her..
So poor Momma’s Little Sister, Itty Bitty. If it is not enough that like Alice In Wonderland that she goes chasing rabbits and only pops out of the hole intermittently, then like Humpty Dumpty, she had a great fall….and all the King’s Horses and all the King’s Men….well, you know the story….couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.
It started simply enough….a call came saying Staff found her collapsed…but Itty Bitty had no clue how or where she even had been headed. An hour later, Itty Bitty was ‘Fine, just fine.’ A day passed without incident….then Itty Bitty was found passed out under the bed….but this time she told the staff, she was looking for her shoe….and no worries, an hour later, she was on her way to the dining room, ‘Fine, just fine.’
The very next morning Staff called Momma…Itty Bitty was confused…it was a Saturday, so they had to contact on ‘on call’ doctor before they could send her to the hospital. Thirty minutes later, when no doctor called back, an ambulance was ordered anyway. Itty Bitty was sent to Emergency and now Tag, the Hospital was ‘IT.’ Itty Bitty was their problem now….and good luck with that!
Now Emergency Departments see everything….unforgiving lethal gunshot wounds, cardiac arrests, killer strokes, gruesome car accidents….so Itty Bitty being ‘confused’, small potatoes, they sent her to SAZ (Special Assessment Zone) and labelled a sticker, overdose of painkillers from her diabetic foot neuropathy, a breeding ground of seething infections and boiling ulcers…..okay, said Momma….treat the symptom, to reduce the painkillers….sounds like common sense….but no….they sent her to Emergency Jungle…
You know where beds, with various poles of pumps and intravenous to treat assorted maladies, are parked like 747’s on the tarmac, awaiting clearance from the Control Tower….but there is no Delay Law…you can be in Emergency Jungle for days, your bed bumped every couple of seconds by another Patient, Visitor, Nurses, oh and the Maintenance, keeping the place clean, with those huge brooms and mops, while Itty Bitty awaits a room upstairs….it seems neurology is supposed to have some concrete understanding of confusion….
Finally a bed was secured in Neurology. Note: Bed which means, ‘no room in the inn.’….Itty Bitty got a corner, with a bed and a screen…it is all good…except for Itty Bitty who went from wired one day, to down that Alice In Wonderland Hole, only peeking out occasionally to say, um or um, um or um, um, um, um, um…..say what, Itty Bitty? Momma tried to feed her but as soon as it was forced in, Itty Bitty, pitched it out. And meds…forget med’s… Momma can not claim to be a Medical Genius but she was betting, putting all her money on it, in fact, that there was something not quite right.
Day 4 Momma arrived at the hospital to find a room had become available, way down the hall. Itty Bitty was there but…the lights are on ….but she’s not home…she was so far down that Rabbit Hole that no one can rescue her. New Rules…Itty Bitty would kiss Momma, then grab her arm squeeze it tightly, leaving ugly bruises, take her hand, kiss it, then try to bite it.
By this time some blood test results had filtered back and a bed was being readied in the Cardiac Care Unit because there were enzyme abnormalities noted. Finally Itty Bitty fell in to a light sleep and Momma went for something to eat. Upon her return, there was Itty Bitty half in, half out of her bed, face purple, unable to breathe. Momma called out, in came the doctors, in came the nurses, in came the women with the big fat purses. But treatment was impossible. No one could reason with Itty Bitty. Even restrained, Itty Bitty managed to rip out her IV’s, her oxygen mask, even the cute little bow ties anchoring her wrists to the bed rails.
That was Itty Bitty…a mystery, even to the most been there, done that doctors, held together by a wing and a prayer. But, don’t be fooled. Itty Bitty had just begun her journey. She’d show the world:
This is my fight song….Take back my life song…Prove I’m alright song…
Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me……(paraphrase Rachael Platten)
It is like this, …it’s Girl Power and in our home, we rule…there is Momma, Charlie, Gen and me of course….oh, and Ruby, the Incredibly Wide Eyed Monkey…I think, because she is wearing a decidedly pink, frilly dress….but let’s not tell our Testosterone Toms, Bad Boy Andy, Clem-Kadiddle-Hopper or our Wonder Boy.
Now, long before today’s feminists shattered, nay broke that glass ceiling, (You Go.. Hillary… We’re so proud of you, We’re so Proud of You), there were homes, school yards, universities, workplaces where women were surreptitiously changing the balance of power as boys climbed trees, played war games and beat each other up, just for, the just for…
Momma does not lay claim to be being the first generation to push the envelope. No, Grandmama could have run the world, one hand tied behind her back, according to Momma. She was so strong and ferocious.
More importantly, Momma learned a lot, (the most) from her older sisters, who it was hard to best. They may beat on you one day, but would die on a cross for you the next. They laughed with you and cried with you…and above all they were loyal, taking secrets to their graves that could have seen you grounded for life. Still, don’t get us wrong. And…it is not like Momma didn’t like the X Y chromosome gender. Momma adored her beloved esoteric father.
Her Big Bro’ was totally amazing and Cousin Buddy was so cool, her BFF, if there had been such a thing in the day….
Yet in the late sixties the eastern world…it was exploding, … and maybe it started on the play ground in the 1950’s. In Momma’s day, there was no kindergarten. You learned to color, cut and paste at home and got right down to the serious business of reading, writing and arithmetic in Grade One. Pity the poor little boys, who had problems just sitting still. Of course, the girls did better, read first, got the hang of 1,2,3 easily…and always were the teachers pets. It was a No Brainer. As in all settings, in all corners of the world, the cream rose to the top, so La Crème–de–La Crème Society was born, then bonded in a tight-knit clique and no surprise, no boys need apply.
Mean girls, give me a break…they have been around a long time, even in (especially in) bucolic country settings. It is not like La Crème–de–La Crème Society especially went out of their way to terrorize the six boys in a class of twenty-seven but to the members, they were so pathetic….one little guy wore his snow pants summer and winter, making a swishing noise every step he took, another one would cry when the teacher asked him a question, another, through no fault of his own, looked just like his nerdy forty-five year old father, which was so scary in a six-year-old and so one and so on. As one of the respected members of La Crème–de–La Crème Society, Momma said it was so easy to judge, and never a challenge to find imperfections.
La Crème–de–La Crème Society were a tight-knit, yet diverse group who swore no allegiance, made no blood pacts, were never BFF’s, yet seamlessly continued the ground work for girls worldwide to radically transform from caterpillars to butterflies. They ran the relay race and passed on the baton, laying the groundwork for a more equal tomorrow.
So Little Sister Millennials, keep the ball rolling, do your part…but don’t kid yourself…We didn’t start the fire…it was always burning since the world was turning (Billy Joel)….. Remember, I mean like, who can forget… Queen Boudicca, Emeline Pankhurst, Sister Teresa? (Check them out!!)
PS: Oh, one last thing Momma asks on behalf of La Crème–de–La Crème Society for all the boys who suffered them, like a Justin Bieber song…. ‘Is It Too Late Now To Say Sorry?’
Way, way back, when Moses was a pup, Momma was bred, born and brought up in a Franglish settlement. Say what? You know French and English….best place in the world to start cutting your teeth on politics, different faiths for One God, oh and hockey, their reason to be, French or English. It helped to have a self-deprecating sense of humor to survive the slings and arrows that may be heaped upon you if you dared cross that invisible line.
That is what made Momma what she is today…one foot on this side of the line while her other foot, just her toe really, creeps across the other side, always looking to make sure no one notices her boldness as she strains to see and understand the other side.
Small town life was good. The French and English had learned to live side by side in peace, intermarrying, sharing common family values although there were a few citizens who seemed to be still entrenched in the Battle of The Plains of Abraham. Some hard-headed Franglish refused to acknowledge the existence of the war or the changes that ensued, especially around land deeds. This, of course was a great source of amusement to the First Nation Mi’kmaks to whom the concept of owning Mother Earth was preposterous.
However, in Momma’s day, all that had been resolved. They only dark clouds on the horizon was a group who wanted to form their own country but truth be told, they never were much interested in country hicks. No, they went to the inner city to stir up excessive devotion to their culture and language. Farmers, fishermen, lumberjacks, mill workers, small business men….the likes that lived in our town, well, once they put in a day of hard labour, had no time, patience or even stomach for worrying about stirring up a kettle of trouble. Besides, they liked their neighbours, their friends, their community just the way it was, imperfect though it may be to an outsider looking in.
Yup, it was Shangri La…but not without slings and arrows. Sometimes the mindset of her own kin had Momma scratching her head. Momma’s sister, The Queen was about to marry the love of her life…who just happened to be so dear, so beloved and so French (aka as B-I-L: brother-in-law). One day B-I-L-To-Be was at a local bar and Momma’s uncle, WWII Sergeant came in and sat beside him.
B-I-L recognized Uncle WWII Sergeant and started a casual conversation. All of a sudden, looking for some stranger sympathy, Uncle WWII Sergeant said, ‘You know what. Can you believe it? My lovely niece is marrying a Blankety Blank (well, something like that). B-I-L-To-Be said, ‘Yeah, I know. She is marrying me.’ Never one to back down (Uncle WWII Sergeant had helped win the war, no less) said, ‘Huh, guess you are not so bad…for a Frenchman.’ Then, he chugged his beer and left, head high.
No doubt about it, Uncle WWII Sergeant was a curmudgeon. When The Queen worked at a Government Agency, Uncle WWII Sergeant would pass through three towns to come her office to apply for Unemployment Insurance every winter because no one else knew ‘nawthing about nawthing.’ When the other office workers (French or English) saw him coming, they would all go in hiding, calling out to The Queen, ‘Hurry. Quick. Your uncle is here.’ No one surfaced until he left because he could bawl them out in French, English and a bit of German and Italian mixed in, just to confuse them. After a while Uncle WWII Sergeant asked Momma’s sister if everyone else had been fired (justifiably so, he thought) because his niece, The Queen was the only one who could get those idiots at the Ministry to part with the money he had been robbed of, when he was working.
Trust me. Life is a lottery, says Momma. It is not like she stuck a pin in the globe and said, ‘I want to live there.’ No, sometimes, just like me and all our cats, you just get lucky.
Hasta La Vista, Baby….you never can tell….maybe you will get lucky too.
Momma told me this story… so it is mine to tell you. She seems to think there are a lot of what she calls Baby Boomers who will say, ‘Been there, done that and no thanks, I don’t want the T Shirt.’
In the good old days, all adults just pitched in and made sure kids behaved the way they wanted their own to act. Maybe it was the threat of corporal punishment but no one dared sass back. You bit your tongues and listened, especially to your teachers who put up with students every day, week in and week out.
However there was one teacher (isn’t there always), who no one ever forgets. She was small in stature but made up for it in her ability to keep students on their toes, by being relentlessly unforgiving if she caught them drifting off to dreamland, rather than being present, feet on the floor, head out of the clouds. She actually expected students to be connected to the subject at hand, (Geography in her case) while in her classroom. Momma tried to mind her p and q’s, concentrate, come up with the correct answer but out of the blue, like a snapping turtle, the teacher would attack, centering Momma out for admonishment.
Pity the student she brought up to the front, handed him or her a pointer and asked where, say Burma was. If the student pointed to the incorrect place (purely by accident), in a most irritating, sarcastic voice she would say, ‘Don’t tell me. Burma must have moved. Strange they are not talking about it on the news.’ The poor student would turn every shade of red as their fellow students tittered.
It is not hard to believe that this kind of walking on egg shells approach, makes one at the top of their game. Hey, everyone wanted to do well. That is why Momma would be so disappointed at the results of the exams when she got them back. Although it would be a passing grade, the teacher From H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks would routinely mark questions that were correct, wrong, and deduct points accordingly. One day after class Momma went up and asked her teacher about it. Putting on her sweetest smile the teacher would say, ‘You know what, Quite Contrary, you are correct. I’ll just mark it in my ledger and next exam, I’ll add the marks on to your score.’
Momma would look at her like she had two heads. The next exam would not even be marked by her. It would be sent to a central marking location to ensure provincial marking was uniform.
Momma wrote her final exam and waited for the results which came by mail. She could not believe it. She had got one mark less than the highest score for all of the geography exams written that year in her province. Momma and the teacher’s favorite student, even got an acknowledgement from Board of Education, because they got the top scores in the province (which rightfully made the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks teacher look good).
In reflection, did the teacher from H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks very perversity cause students to dig deeper, go further? Did she see something in Momma’s personality that made her need to challenge her to get the best performance? Was the teacher as devious as Delilah or as Wise as Solomon?
You probably are saying, ‘whatever’. Momma would never have to see her after high school. You would be wrong. The teacher from H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks decided, since she thought so much of Momma’s parents, (translation – Grandpapa) she would not only move to the same city but buy a condo in the same building. Momma saw her all the time at unplanned / unsolicited drop bys, at the nearby mall where everyone shopped, at family meals, at the teachers’ place, and even at Momma’s place. However, the teacher from H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks was now on Momma’s team all the way, mostly because Momma’s son, Wonder Boy was intelligent, perfect in every way, as well as the best looking boy the teacher ever knew. No one knows how someone as hopeless as Momma (in the teacher’s eyes), ever managed to have such a remarkable kid.
All these years later and Momma will tell you, if she is talking teachers with those she went to school with, it always comes round to the teacher from H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks. Whatever methods she used, you can bet, she will never be forgotten.
All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.
Now it is time for a Diva Calico Gen Cat to confess. Somewhere in my pretty little brain, I assumed the Two Footed had the slice of the pie, while the Four Footed had to continually strive in order to achieve a life worth living. Listening to the stories Momma shares, I may have had it all wrong. We, the Four Footed, sit in shock as she pours bucket after bucket of truth on our heads and in our ears, flooding our hearts with compassion.
Uncle WW2 Sergeant (Grandmama’s brother) had gone to the war a naïve country boy but returned as a stranger, so said the locals. He had seen too much, lived through too much mayhem, for such a sensitive soul. Today it would be labelled PTSD. Then, you were written off as another raging alcoholic. To Momma, Uncle WW2 Sergeant appeared to be no shrinking violet but rather belligerent, burly and in your face. His ability to turn an ounce into a pound was well renowned. He rented expensive farm equipment to the local farmers. On top of that he rented himself out as a Captain on a big fishing boat. He commandeered men, boats and fish, all with the same gung-ho-get-it-done attitude. Still, everyone knew he was a victim, with some invisible part cut out and left on a battlefield in Italy. We listened if he talked about the war but were warned not to ask questions and possibly make him have more re-occurring nightmares.
Now p–l–e–a–s–e, don’t say that all the baby boomers born after the war were not interested in the battles their fathers, cousins, brothers, uncles and friends fought. However ‘in the day’, if adults told them not to question, they obeyed, said Momma. Yes, they were interested but waited long after Buddy had disappeared before Uncle WW2 Sergeant opened up about his experiences of the war and how powerless it made him feel.
It is not that Uncle WW2 Sergeant was totally insensitive to the world around him. It was a great disappointment to him and Auntie Spanish Marilyn Munroe that they only had the one son. Buddy prayed to God nightly, because he wanted a sibling, but if that was too much to ask for, could he just have a puppy? Uncle WW2 Sergeant had his finger on every pulse, so of course, the next puppies that were born in his community, had one ear was marked for Buddy.
Oh and that baby thing? Well that took a little longer but Uncle WW2 Sergeant also had a team of locals with their ears to the ground, waiting for an opportunity to help out a damsel in distress….and well, money talks, it screams, actually. Just ask Grandmama’s Aunt Only Sister who waited years to adopt her son by jumping through the legal bureaucratic hoops of no return. Trust me, that privately arranged adoption of a baby girl, right in his home town, went much faster.
Talk about bragging rights. Uncle WW2 Sergeant, Auntie Spanish Marilyn Munroe and Buddy were over the moon, in love. Baby Be All End All walked at six months, she talked at nine months, and she was absolutely the most amazing baby ever born, according to Uncle WW2 Sergeant, Auntie Spanish Marilyn Munroe and Buddy. She was amazingly alert, with smoky grey-blue eyes that appeared to have a black rim around her pupils, that bewitched you. It was difficult to tear your gaze away. Everyone knew how long they waited and most were just happy to see them so satisfied after such an agonizing effort brought forth such a resounding result. But that green-eyed monster lived long and had no intention of dying. There were inaudible grumbles that ‘you reap what you sew’ ……but who among has not felt that sometime about someone.
Ah, a new day was dawning with a Panoramic View of Paradise. Who knew how fast and furiously the sun would set, leaving the family in tatters? Charlie, Jakita and I just shake our head in disbelief as Momma tells us, there is more. Just let me try to wrap my calico head around it before I share it with you….because you know and I know, sometimes….Stuff Happens…..
