Visiting Home and Aaron's Stories

My dear wife set up a visit to Nana's in Connecticut over the Labor Day weekend for Elena Marie, Isabel and myself. It went as expected, which was: Great! and there were some delightful unexpected surprises (I put "unexpected surprises" in there for my dad: of course, surprises are unexpected, so "unexpected surprises" is a redundancy, or perhaps it's a tautology ... or maybe it's both ... but I digress).

Nana was very happy to see her great-grandchildren, and we had three Nana-cooked meals a day. Shockingly, I didn't gain weight over the weekend. But, then again, she didn't serve gnocchi, because she knows EM and li'l Iz don't like red sauce.

Me: Nana, any time you're cooking gnocchi, you call me: I'll drive here.
Nana: But your kids don't like the tomato sauce.
Me: That's perfect: more for me!

The children both cried themselves to sleep the first night (no surprises there; they missed their mama), but the second night, they dropped right off (EM: Move over, Papa, you're hogging the whole bed!) after the evening prayers and were all bouncy the next morning for another fun-filled day.

What's not to have fun with? With Autie Beki and Uncle Howland visiting with their children Peter (EM: Peter, come over here; come play with me!) and Sofiya (li'l Iz: Sofiya, Sofiya, are you having fun with me?) and bike rides (Pepé gave Isabel a bike with training wheels that should could ride by herself and crash only once, but even then, she hopped right back on and said: Look, Pepé, I'm going faster than Sofiya! but EM, pushed by her papa, wanted it to be known that she reached the school playground first! -- and, yes, as the person pushing and balancing her non-training-wheeled bike, my heart did not burst, thanks for asking).

Then, a special surprise for me and Nana was that Aaron, Trish and Michele visited! Aaron and I grew up inseparably as the cousins who were always getting into trouble (somehow, fires always seemed to spontaneously start near where I just happened to be standing ...), so I retold the story of how I kept asking for small cups of water from Nana: oh, um, just because ... Nana, herself, later came in and said:

Yes, Douglas was a good boy, but one time he kept asking me for cups of water. When I followed him, there was a fire in the middle of the room. 'Douglas!' I said, 'did you start this fire?'

Me, as a little boy: shakes head, looking surprised.

Aaron then told the story (he, in fact, had quite a few more rememberances and stories from our childhood than I did) of when Mike, our older, bigger, cousin one day knocked the wind out of Michele, Aaron's sister. Neither Aaron nor I nor both of us together could take on Mike in a (hypothetical) fight, so Aaron, Michele's big brother and protector, took Mike out in the backyard with one well-placed kick. Little did he know that all the uncles (and his father and grandfather) watched the event unfold from the living/sitting room. Uncle Roy, his father, jumped up from his chair and was going to give Aaron whatfor until Uncle Nick, Mike's father, stopped him: No, Roy, Mike was too rough with Michele and Aaron is defending her. You let him be. Saved by the Uncle St. Nick.

Uncle Nick died a couple of years ago, leaving behind 4 children (Kim, Joy, Carry and Mike) and one step-daughter (Laura) and his wife (Aunt Elaine). His death came suddenly, like it seems to for us Auclairs, and it still hurts to think about it, as I learnt more about his kindness, business acumen, love of classical music and parenting at his death than I knew from him in his life. He was a supremely self-confident (cock-sure) man, like we Auclairs are, but one not given to boasting. Nana, having already lost Pepé, took the loss of her eldest son very hard. He died and was buried in his shirt-sleeves: a simple, hard-working, man.

Aaron told another story about John, the third of our terrible trio, who as a young boy, after Pepé set up a mini golf-course in the back yard, wondered what a golf ball, propelled with appropriate force by a golf club, would do when hitting the back wall of the house. He found out (it penetrated the asbestos wall, leaving behind a golf-ball-sized hole), but, again, Uncle Larry (his father), Pepé and Aunt Roberta (his mother) were watching this all from the sitting room, where the golf ball happened to find itself. Pepé was furious, and decided to take disciplining his grandchild into his own hands, storming out of the house, rolling up his shirt to introduce John to the woodshed in a new way. Only Uncle Larry's and Aunt Roberta's intercessions stopped Pepé, but that fury left its mark on John, for he retold this story with awe to Aaron. We all remember Pepé as a man of few words and fewer emotions, so his anger would be a terrible storm, indeed.

Nana asked me if I played cards (she was angling, of course). So I had my own story to tell.

One day, Nana, Aunt Rolene and I were sitting down to a game of set-back and Aunt Rolene was instructing the masses (me, new to the game, at the card table, and her younger daughter, Cybel, on the phone with her friend in California) about the artistry and skill of the game. Cybel was having a hard time swallowing this, as she saw this entirely as a game of chance. Aunt Rolene would not hear of this heresy, so, to prove her point, invited Cybel, who had never played the game, to the table for a thorough thrashing. What happened, as Cybel stayed on the phone with her friend ("Yeah, I'm playing this silly card-game, it's all based on luck...") was that Cybel casually took every trick in the hands she played. You should have seen her mother's face as she stewed under a slow boil of listening to her daughter beat up her own mother's sacred card game as her daughter executed a perfect setback hand after hand. It's funny in retrospect ...

Bedtime. Mass time (which for EM, meant "Potty time" during the gospel reading ... grrrrr!). Lunch time. Then, drive home time.

EM: Papa, are we there yet?
Me: Nope!
EM: grrrrr!

... a few moments later ...

EM: Papa, are we there yet?
Me, having fun with the game; joyfully: Nope!
EM: grrrrr!

... a few moments later ...

EM: Papa, are we there yet?
Me, even more joyfully: Nope!
EM: grrrrr!
...
EM: Papa?
Me: Yes?
EM: Papa?
Me: Yes?
EM: Papa?
Me: Yes?

... in case you didn't know, Elena Marie needs to know that she has my attention ...

EM: Why do you keep saying: 'Nope!'?

Back at the hotel, the children did a full-on tackle of their waiting Mama.

As li'l Iz says: The end.

... and so it is.