誕生日
Happy birthday to my father and my little brother. Yes, both of them. When my parents converted to Sabbatarian Christianity when I was little, they went full-on into Nature: avoiding doctors in favor of anointings from the ministry, growing their own vegetables. My mother baked all our bread until I was in high school. (That's why the reception of Rod Dreher's Crunchy Con thing as if it were NEW! and EXCITING! made me giggle a while back.) And they decided on a home birth for my brother, so my father spent the morning of his own birthday delivering him. Dad tied off the umbilical cord with new white shoelaces. I read him (my brother, not my father) his first story. My mother, I'm assuming, rested. I have this feeling massive doses of painkillers were not part of the natural birthing plan.
Now he (again, my brother, not my father) is thirty. Thirty.
So happy birthday, guys.
It would also have been my last remaining grandfather's birthday this week.
Three of my grandparents died in their early sixties, in rapid succession, between 1981 and 1984. My father's father was the only one left. He remarried after my grandmother died; his second wife died, too, a decade ago. After that, he lived alone. His hearing was always bad, and he was in his own little world, but he lived in his own house until the end. His woodworking shop was in the basement. (Contemporary safety Nazis would have a coronary if they saw the way we used to play with Dad's and Pop-Pop's tools when we were little.) He used to make furniture for people in need at church--bedsteads and things like that. He was a regular churchgoer and made a Bible stand for the congregation that was much beloved. His income was limited, but he gave to charity regularly. He spoke with benevolence about the new neighbors--noisy, the other old-timers on the block complained, but they were polite and kept their property tidy and didn't cause trouble.
My father's sister checked on him and helped him out every week. My father gretzed that if he kept insisting on doing woodwork, he was going to kill himself with the circular saw at his age one of these days. I visited most times I went home. (No, not every time, to my discredit.) He was kind of abstracted in later years but always happy to hear that I was still enjoying Japan. He wasn't totally out of touch with the talk of the day, either. Once not too long ago, I gave him a bag of rather frou-frou green tea, and he said, "Thanks! Full of antioxidants, they say, huh?"
He wasn't the story-telling type of grandfather. He never talked about his childhood in England, or about being in Europe during the war, or about how Allentown had changed over his lifetime. He'd outlived both his wives and had trouble getting around. When he died in November, I think he was ready. My mother hadn't even had time to get word to me that he'd been taken to the hospital. He would have turned 93 on Tuesday.
Now he (again, my brother, not my father) is thirty. Thirty.
"You're turning thirty! That makes me--"
"Past it."
"Try waiting until the next time I visit home and saying that to my face, buddy."
"Sure. I'm taller than you now."
So happy birthday, guys.
It would also have been my last remaining grandfather's birthday this week.
Three of my grandparents died in their early sixties, in rapid succession, between 1981 and 1984. My father's father was the only one left. He remarried after my grandmother died; his second wife died, too, a decade ago. After that, he lived alone. His hearing was always bad, and he was in his own little world, but he lived in his own house until the end. His woodworking shop was in the basement. (Contemporary safety Nazis would have a coronary if they saw the way we used to play with Dad's and Pop-Pop's tools when we were little.) He used to make furniture for people in need at church--bedsteads and things like that. He was a regular churchgoer and made a Bible stand for the congregation that was much beloved. His income was limited, but he gave to charity regularly. He spoke with benevolence about the new neighbors--noisy, the other old-timers on the block complained, but they were polite and kept their property tidy and didn't cause trouble.
My father's sister checked on him and helped him out every week. My father gretzed that if he kept insisting on doing woodwork, he was going to kill himself with the circular saw at his age one of these days. I visited most times I went home. (No, not every time, to my discredit.) He was kind of abstracted in later years but always happy to hear that I was still enjoying Japan. He wasn't totally out of touch with the talk of the day, either. Once not too long ago, I gave him a bag of rather frou-frou green tea, and he said, "Thanks! Full of antioxidants, they say, huh?"
He wasn't the story-telling type of grandfather. He never talked about his childhood in England, or about being in Europe during the war, or about how Allentown had changed over his lifetime. He'd outlived both his wives and had trouble getting around. When he died in November, I think he was ready. My mother hadn't even had time to get word to me that he'd been taken to the hospital. He would have turned 93 on Tuesday.