celtic_writer

Genius in Pearls

Thanksgiving. It was an eight-dishwasher-load feast to clean up, a multitude of children running through the house, playing games in the stark attic, all reappearing to ask politely for glasses of milk to accompany third-desserts of pumpkin pie or brownies or something else totally sweet, and not normally allowed.

When you are at Aunt Mary's, you can have whatever you want. No parents are asked for permission. I am happy to report all went home fat, full and foolish.

My sister Kathy also brought a gift, clothed in a Hefty sandwich bag. Our mother's pearls, scooped from the cleansing of a now-retired safety deposit box. The ones our mother left to me.

I am not a pearl person. But I remember when my mother bought this necklace, soon after my father Frank J. passed. She loved this band of jewels. And I know she bought them with a bit of the money Frank J. bequeathed to her, the stash he put away to make sure she was protected.

And I know she bought them because she missed him. She had spent 3/4 of her life with the man.

"You should have pearls, Mary," she told me before she left, fully assured I would get the message.

I hold their roundness in my palm, and, gently closing my fingers upon them, think of her.

There is genius in pearls. They take a long time to form, and men dive to great depths to retrieve them. And you can hold them in your hand, or wear them around your neck, a talisman to remind you from where you have come, a place you realize was safe and good and fine.

Full moon tonight here in Mason Neck, and elsewhere. Dear Doug left this morning to drag the trailer down south, to attend to some business scheduled for Monday. Labbie Walt sleeps on Marg's bed in my office, and he is dreaming, paws moving in pursuit of bunnies and duckies, or children who gleefully toss the Kong for him across the yard.

Dangers of Babysitting

Came across a statistic the other day concerning the average rate paid for a babysitter in the Year 2007 in this northern VA zip code: a cool $10.50 an hour for tracking one child.

Such numbers bring back memories of youth, when the most the market could spare was 50 cents an hour for being the temporary guardian of an unlimited number of kinder, hopefully a brood that wouldn't tie you up in a closet and steal your car keys, soon after their parents joyfully roared off to a few hours of freedom.

That is...unless you were raised Irish Catholic. Within family walls, childcare offered no compensation. And in terms of babysitting, it could be downright dangerous.

One Sunday morning, when I was around eight or so, the family conducted the normal holy ritual of attending 9 o'clock Mass, then returned home for the all- important Sunday Breakfast. My mother, Dottie M., gave my brother Kevin, age nine at the time, and I strict marching orders so the repast could be prepared.

"Watch your sister so I can finish making breakfast in peace," she commanded.

OK, Maw.

Our sister Kathy was about three years old when this story unfolded. We liked Kathy, but we would rather be reading the Sunday funnies than watching a toddler. So Kev and I came up with a plan. We would put Kathy in her crib, give her something to play with, and then we could pass the time catching up on the exploits of Prince Valiant, Mark Trail, Winnie Winkle and the other colorful comic characters in the New York Daily News.

The three of us went upstairs to the room Kathy and I shared. Kev swung the little one over the ribs of her crib. I found the Number 10 mayonnaise jar that had found a second career housing crayons for the creation of great art, and gave it to Kathy to play with. My brother and I then settled on our stomachs on the floor, with the unexplored wilderness of the funny papers expanded before us.

Kathy knew she was being ignored, and began jumping up and down in the crib, trying to get our attention. When this didn't work, she got busy dumping the crayons out of the jar and played with them for a while. Like many three-year-olds, she had the attention span of a gnat, and after about 30 seconds, she was looking for new adventure. If Kev or I had bothered to spend one second glancing in her direction to check on the welfare of our baby sister, we would have quickly ascertained that she had that boo-boo look on her face that always meant trouble.

So Kathy did what any attention-starved child would do. She turned to violence.

She picked up the crayon jar, and holding it like a depth charge over her head, chucked the monster at her unsuspecting siblings on the floor, cracking my brother on the head, knocking him out cold. The jar did not break, thanks to Kevin's head, but bounced on the rug a time or two, and rolled to rest against the room's far wall. Dottie M., despite the noise of sizzling bacon and the cracking of eggs far away in the kitchen, automatically knew something else was cooking.

"What's going on up there?" she called.

I looked at my brother. He had little stars and planets circling above his head. I glanced at my sister, who was laughing and jumping, and who thought this was so much fun that she would like to do it again.

I simply said,

"Kevin's sleeping."

Kevin did come to, just in time to share the parental reprimand. And he still, to this day, has the lump on his head to prove it.

Exploding Turkeys During Cold Season

Talk abounds in northern VA about the menu for the annual Thanksgiving clan gathering here a week from tonight.

I have been contemplating frying a turkey, a process much different from the traditional baking method.

According to The Food Channel, one must purchase two hundred dollars worth of equipment and supplies in order to dunk the unsuspecting bird in boiling peanut oil for about 45 minutes. And, according to the gent on cable, one should also have a fire extinguisher close by, just in case the turkey is too tubby for the amount of oil in the pot, causing spillover into the heating unit and a must-do call to the local fire department.

There is also talk of not-quite-defrosted turkeys exploding when placed in hot oil, blasting bird innards to the yards of neighbors, who might think there'd been a drive-by turkeying and call the authorities.

There are also lots of people sneezing here. The cold season has started, and every ah-choo reminds me of the unique remedy touted by my grandfather, John Leo Casey.

Pop Casey, as he was known, was a short Irish fellow from Jersey City who worked as a dispatcher for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He was a crusty gent, and at 5' 2" tall, called everyone he met "Shorty." He lived to get a rise out of you.

One Thanksgiving during my childhood, my mother Dottie M. came upon a Three Stooges-like scene of her father and my 7-year-old self out on his driveway. He was holding me back with his hand on my head and I was swinging my 7-year-old arms with all my might in an desperate attempt to punch him in the stomach, the result of him ticking me off about something during that happy holiday celebration. Dottie M., appalled by my un-lady-like behavior, commanded me to stop. Pop said, "Leave her alone. There is something wrong with a kid who doesn't have any spirit."

Pop would tick you off. Then, assured of your strength of character, let you in on the secrets of life. Like how to cure the common cold.

According to Pop: "If you have a cold, swallow a thumb-full of Vicks Vapo-rub and wash it down with a swig of kerosene. It'll cure whatever ails ya."

I remember sitting there, three white dots and a big cartoon balloon above my head, thinking, "This is totally whacked."

But he did use his own remedy. I witnessed it. Plus the man smoked three packs of unfiltered Pall Malls a day...and lived to be 84.

Don't anyone light a match.

Image: Turkey, by Ms. Vicky Kate Gillen, then age 8.

Gig

Labor Day.

There's been a Gillen working in America for a while now. The name Gillen first appeared in The Census of the City of New York in 1703. It sits on the list with the likes of Flynn and Dooley, Mooney and Lynch, with a Kearney thrown in for good measure.

The origin of this last name comes from the Old Irish word gillie, which means servant. The gillies were the men who held the horses of the warriors in battle so the steeds would not shuffle off to Buffalo while their owners conducted hand-to-hand combat.

If you are an angler, a gillie is the person who shows you where the fat trout hide, and makes sure you get back to the lodge so you can tell the stories about the ones that got away.

So today I've been thinking about a gillie or two. My grandfather John David Gillen, known as Gig, comes to mind.

He was a brown-eyed only child, a working-class guy who learned to love wood, a refinisher of pianos for Steinway & Sons. He made them shine before they went out the door to sit in expensive-looking parlors and living rooms.

He married a woman known in the clan as Kate the Bear. During their courtship, Kate the Bear's family apartment needed painting. Gig showed up to help, and, in the process, got completely covered in paint. Kate the Bear insisted that Gig, a small man, borrow a pair of trousers from her brother Dan, who was a big fellah, so Gig could walk home looking clean. "I watched him walk up the street, holding up those pants so they wouldn't fall down. I fell in love with him that moment," she said. To him, he was just going home. But I think it was more than that. He was a man who had the strength of character not to be afraid to make a fool out of himself in public.

Circumstance shows us who we really are, and when the Depression settled in America, Gig could no longer afford to work with the wood he loved. His living was then produced via vegetables, when he became a foreman in the vegetable and fruit market in NYC.

One summer day my brothers and I drove with our father into the city from New Jersey to pick up fresh produce. The market was a wild place, full of shouting and anger. In my young experience, everyone seemed to be mad at one another, yelling, upset. It was part of the game. "It's OK. They're negotiating," my father told us. Then I saw a man with a billy club chasing another man. The man with the club was my quiet grandfather, suddenly turned berserker 'cause this other fellow tried to cheat him. They disappeared behind a building, and we did not witness the outcome of the argument. We were relieved when my grandfather walked back around the corner, and simply said in his New Yawk accent, "Hey. When did yez get here?"

He loved the Mets, and was known to take as many grandchildren as possible to Shea Stadium, stuff 'em with hot dogs and peanuts and soda, then return them to their mothers as tired, happy slugs. And he was also a man of quiet, happy to read the paper and smoke a cigar in silence. When a big clan group would arrive on the scene, he'd say, "Hey, so when are yez leaving?" It was explained to me that he was happy to see us, and it was just his way of asking how long you were going to stay. Thinking back on it, I am not so sure. Now I know where it comes from.

And he loved to walk. There's a story about an excursion one Election Day when he plopped my oldest brother Fran, then a toddler, into the fancy pram purchased by my grandmother so one could stroll along the sidewalks and proudly show off the sainted first grandchild. He told Kate the Bear, "I am taking Francis for a walk." Along the way, they stopped at Gig's favorite tavern, and the owner told him, "Sorry. We're closed for Election Day," so no adult beverage could be served. Upon their return, Kate the Bear asked Fran, "So what did you see today?" Fran answered, "A man. He said, 'No soda.'" Gig looked at his grandson and said, "Ya big mouth."

In my childhood, I liked to accompany him along the few blocks to the store where he would purchase the newspaper and his beloved White Owl cigars. The Daily News tucked under his arm, he'd stroll along and talk with you like you were an adult, even though you were just a kid. And as I grew older, he stopped holding my hand. He showed me he didn't need to.

Independence

Today all is red-white-and-blue, barbeques burn hot, beer is drunk and I dare not tune the TV to any major network. There I'm sure to find politicians and pundits spouting in imbecilic terms about the virtues of freedom.

Freedom has become a weak word.

Independence. Much better. Self-reliance. Even stronger. When I think of these words, I think of Nora.

She was my great-aunt, one of a family of sisters, female "greenhorns" who came from Ireland, with nothing. Her siblings went to great lengths to quickly lose their brogues, to become "American." Nora never changed her accent, her way of talking, or her original way of thinking. She knew she didn't have to.

She married a guy named Tycie, a drunk. A man with rheumy eyes and faltering step, a human who, when I was a child, frightened me and made me cry every time I saw him at a clan gathering. To Nora, he was OK, the deal she had made, and one she never abandoned. But she didn't let him stop her. She was too smart for that. Nora created a life she never blamed on anyone else.

She was always open to exploring new technologies, including a butterfly chair, positioned on the outside patio of our home in Connecticut. She got herself in there, thought it way comfortable, then couldn't get out of it. "You had better give me a hand, boyos," she admitted. "It could be dangerous for all if I am left here to ponder the worries of the world." And she laughed hysterically as the clan gents pulled her from the chair, and set her on her feet again.

And she would let you know when something on this earth displeased her. When conversation around the dining room table turned to current events, and the topic pointed to the entertainer Danny Kaye, Aunt Nora remarked,

"Now that guy's a load a crap."

It delighted us, as it caused my mother's eyebrows to raise, and my father to laugh. We were never allowed to say such words.

And she would teach you life lessons as you walked down the street in Jersey City. One time, when I was eight or so, we encountered a man who had no legs, positioned against a building's brick wall, begging for support from passersby. She walked up to him, put some coins in his cup and asked, "How are ya doing today, dahrlin'?" "OK," he said, and smiled at her. We walked to the next corner. She stopped me.

"Are you afraid of that man?" she asked.

I was.

I replied, "I don't know what to do."

"You walk up to him, and you look him right in the eye, and you give," she told me. "You are no better than him, darhlin'," she said. "And don't you forget it."

I haven't.

And Aunt Nora liked dogs, particularly a bassett hound of our childhood named Napoleon. My mother was dismayed when she found Nora feeding a good portion of a holiday ham, off limits to family as a foodstuff for "company", to that hound. "Oh, I'm just giving Nappie a little treat," she said.

Knowing she was in trouble, she leashed the beast and booked it out of the house "for a stroll down the avenue." And he dragged her down the quiet road, he of big paws, she of high heels. I remember them venturing off in the twilight, away from the vigor and personalities of the clan, he searching for new smells, she talking to him like he was something real.

Chaunce, Paddy the Slasher and Miss Rheingold

Father's Day.

Methinks it is terribly ironic that, in 1972, Richard Nixon established the third Sunday of June as the permanent national observance of Father's Day.

My father hated Richard Nixon.

Frank J. would yell at the TV whenever Tricky Dick's big face appeared. Funny. I find myself doing the same when I see Dubya.

Some say life is a numbers game. You do your own math with what you've been given. My father had one working eye, two degrees, an all-his-life wife, four kids, 62 years of living, and a laugh that was 100% Irish bar room.

His nickname was "Chaunce", given to him by his grandfather, a tall Irish character named Michael Jeremiah Sullivan, who talked his way through Ellis Island without papers, dragging along two Italian barbers he'd met on the dock who didn't speak a syllable of English. Those three remained friends 'till their dying day.

My father loved the story. One he told me was about the time he and his grandfather were persuading the cows towards the barn for the evening milking when a man with a scythe walked towards them through the field. "My grandfather threw down his stick, ran and embraced the man," Dad said. "It was his brother, Paddy, from Ireland."

Paddy the Slasher.

Seems Paddy was passing through, having heard that gold was available in every field in American, and was on his way west. His worldly belongings were strapped to his back, his livelihood contained in a long, curved single-edged blade. "My grandfather needed a field hayed," my father told me. "Paddy's power was astounding. He was a berserker with that blade." Seems he could clear a field faster than you could think about it.

But Paddy understood the need to get paid, and the instinct to move on. He did. No member of his family ever saw him again.

And then there was the Miss Rheingold incident.

Seems Frank J., with friends and relatives in tow, was out at a New York bar one evening in the late 1940s. When the bill came, everyone turned pockets inside out to discover there was not enough dough to pay the tab.

So my father, in his Irishness, got the attention of the bar owner and told him, "Do you know that you have Miss Rheingold here in your bar this very evening?" Rheingold was a popular beer in those parts at the time, and the competition to be chosen as Miss Rheingold was a coveted nugget. In this case, "Miss Rheingold" was really my father's younger sister, our beloved Aunt Cookie, who was hauled up on the bar's stage, passing the test with her Irish cuteness, and who was goodnatured enough to endure the wolf whistles so the bill could be covered by management, in full.

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss my father's story. As a human, he was not without his foibles. He wandered from my mother, drank himself to death, and receded from most of humanity by the time he left this world.

After his death, I found a small flint tin in the box upon his dresser. It held a small curl of my blond baby hair. I have it to this day. It reminds me of the last advice he ever gave me, "to accept what the world hands you. And deal. Just deal."

I am told that I write about him a lot. Others so much "wiser" than I, with raised eyebrows, tell me that I only seek the father figure.

Well, on this very humid Virginia night, I say to hell with them, their theories and all the ships at sea.

The reality is I really liked him. And I don't want him to be forgotten.

A Skunk, The Lone Ranger and Some Demented Trucker

My mother, Dottie M., had a small sign in her kitchen. It read, "Bloom where you are planted."

It made sense to her, this wooden reminder, as she was a small town girl who signed on to marry a traveling lawyer man, a woman who never liked to venture out to foreign places, a lady who loved to stay put. She probably looked at that quote many times a day, when she was left alone in the suburbs most weekdays with four children. Bloom she must. As CSN&Y sing, "Rejoice. Rejoice. We have no choice."

But it sure made for some interesting stories.

Like the time a skunk walked through the open garage door to discover a chaise lounge in the form of a long-in-the-tooth spare GoodYear tire, a rubber round innocently resting against the garage wall, its inner space readily available for a skunk snooze. My sister, the then-four-year-old Kathy, witnessed this event, and reported it to the mater who was busy trying to make something-from-nothing for dinner one late spring afternoon.

Kathy: "Mommy, there is a bunny in the garage."

Dottie M.: (not really paying much attention, as a woman with many children learns to do, for her own sanity) "Oh? What kind of bunny?"

Kathy: "It's a black bunny, with a white stripe."

Sound the alarm.

My mother had the skill of turning a small event into the Poseidon Adventure, with a little Wreck of the Hesperus mixed in for what-the-heck-and-why-not. Neighbors were summoned, and soon there was a crowd that seemed like New Year's Eve in Times Square gathered on the driveway. My pop Frank J. motored the station wagon home to see the multitude witness my mother hurling mothballs into the garage through that sinister open door. Methinks he stopped the car, rested his forehead on the steering wheel and thought to himself, "Oh my God, the poor woman has finally flipped."

My mother had a simple explanation.

"I read in Helpful Heloise that skunks don't like mothballs."

To which my old man probably replied, "You all should have been sprayed for stupidity."

Frank J. had a solution. He suggested the crowd disperse, found a rake, threaded its long stick though the tire hole, and moved the rubber resting place to the woods. The skunk must've been hard-of-hearing, as it never stirred. Eventually it woke up, stretched its little skunk arms, and wandered off, taking its potential foul-smell to other tires and mothers. We all went to bed exhausted that night, as I recall.

Then there was the ugly "let's chase the semi and its demented driver" incident.

One winter evening, when all had gathered to partake of the evening meal, the typical question "So what did you do today?" was posed. My mother responded,

"Kathy and I chased a trucker."

That piece of information got everyone's attention. The clink of fork-to-plate was heard table-wide.

Seems Dottie M. was out conducting errands, Lone Ranger commandeering the Ford station wagon along Connecticut roads with little Kathy standing behind the front seat positioned as the faithful Tonto, already skilled at such a young age to hold tight to the fake naugahyde of the front seat top as my mother whipped along country roads, or it was "meet your maker time, kid."

An impatient, probably very-high-and-late-for-delivery trucker forced Dottie M., innocent daughter and trusty steed wagon off the road in the rush to get on with it. It got my mother's Irish up, so she regained her rightful position on the asphalt, and gunned it, catching up to the poor unsuspecting truckah. The consistent flashing of the Ford's headlights convinced the lad to pull his rig over into a gas station to bear witness to Dottie M's displeasure.

Seems to me we all sat at the dinner table that evening, chins to the floor, not quite believing our ears.

"He pulled off into this gas station, and got out of his truck, " Dottie M. announced. "He was mad at me. He said, 'Lady, what is your problem?' I simple shook my finger at him and said, 'Don't force me off the road!'"

"Jesus, Mom, you could have been killed," my brother Fran offered in response.

Dottie M. replied, "No way. I just talked to him like I talk to you kids."

Yep, you could've been killed.

Happy Mother's Day, Maw...wherever you are.

Brothers and Cousins

In the Celtic tradition, so many centuries ago, children were fostered. Young boys and girls were loaned at an early age to other adults responsible to instruct them in the practical skills necessary for living.

My dear old dad Frank J. had an older brother named Jack. They were pals, and were fostered every summer of childhood out to the wilds of their grandfather's dairy farm on the south shore of Long Island. Partly to get away from the heat of the Bronx, but mostly to get out of their mother's way.

Like the old Celtic working class, the bluecollar brothers learned how. To milk cows, scythe hay, clean barns, herd some wandering animal. And they were taught to love the story, to comprehend the way to use it right. Their Irish grandfather had talked his way, without passage papers, off a ship straight through the halt of Ellis Island, and found employment as a laborer in New York City until he had enough to buy land near the water for a buck an acre. So the farm became encouragement; life's rules set in dirt, not city stone.

The Celts believed a man, through fosterage, could rise above his father's experience. I suppose some of the important things we learn aren't necessarily what our parents teach us.

Frank and Jack went on to different lives. Uncle Jack became a warrior, tied to the U.S. Army in Germany during WWII, returning safely to work the rest of his life for one corporation as photographer and darkroom expert. My father, undraftable due to an accident where he lost an eye as a young child, became fostered to Fordham University, where he earned a degree in economics and philosophy, then went on to finish law school.

The two had one similarity. Each had two daughters.

I spent last week with my cousin Maryann and her family on Hilton Head Island. We too have been pals since childhood. Like our fathers, we are not the same. Maryann is frilly; I prefer plain. Maryann doesn't like to get dirty; I am always in the mud. Yet ruffled or not, Maryann has always had that spark of spirit that will try anything, and that is where we have always merged. And most of our time together is spent talking. The stories of our fathers delivered, sometimes new, sometimes shared once again for the hundreth time.

It is my theory that a daughter who is fostered by a father with the belief that she can do anything has a better-than-average chance of succeeding. In retrospect, over more than 50 years, Maryann and I have done OK, despite the common experiences we all have with death, memory, rejection, resolution. We are still here...looking it square in the eye.

She married a fine man, and after a long administrative/management career, is now earning her MBA. Her daughter, already so accomplished at the age of 25, has married a talented young man of integrity and bright smile. As for me, my job now is fostering others: in a classroom, through a speech, online. Creating stories in computer code, and traveling when I can to sit in some new silence, watching, listening, putting words on paper.

I made the journey back from the southern point of South Carolina yesterday, a 9-hour drive, gas prices rising near each big city along Rt. 95. Paul Simon tunes were on the Bug's sound system, music about baby drivers, complete with burping sax. As I drove over the Cape Fear River, I passed a lumbering RV, its name clearly marked on its bumper: TRADITIONS. Methinks the driver simply saw a blue blur zip by, some spirit heading north, that color slipping behind some other "rabbit" car going way too fast, and bound to get caught.