Fun and crisis. Continue reading
My dad was born on August 25, 1924. His seventieth birthday was therefore in 1994. It was a Thursday. 1994 was a pivotal year for TSI and for my relationship with Sue, as explained here. I was up to my armpits in alligators. By then Jamie had five children. By my calculation Cadie was 16, Kelly was 14, Gina was 6, Anne was 5, and Joey was 3. I could be off by a year for any of them.
A decision was made that my parents would come to New England to celebrate my dad’s epic birthday with his grandchildren. Jamie probably negotiated this with our mother. Her conversations with my dad seldom ended pleasantly, and I am pretty sure that neither Sue nor I had any input. The plan was for them to stay at a hotel that was near the Lisella’s house in West Springfield. I think that they stayed at Howard Johnson’s, but they might have chosen the Hampton Inn if it was open yet. I don’t think that they rented a car.
The party: Jamie reserved a large room at the Simsbury 1820 House for the gathering. My recollection is that on the big day Sue and I picked up mom and dad at HoJo’s and met the Lisellas at the restaurant. A total of eleven of us attended—three couples and Jamie’s five children.
The party did not get off to a great start. The chair reserved for the guest of honor, who certainly weighed less than 170 pounds, collapsed beneath him and left him on the floor. Fortunately, he was not seriously injured, and the event proceeded more or less as planned.1 I had prepared an interactive presentation. I think that I took the floor for it after the meal. I hoped to involve Gina and Anne by asking each of them a question that I was pretty sure they could answer. They both let me down. Gina remonstrated me, “Uncle Mike, we are only children.”
I struggled through the rest of my little talk as well as I could. I think that I rescued the evening, however, by leading everyone in a non-traditional rendition of what all of us called the family song, “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” It was my dad’s favorite song of all time. So, we sang it all together, each of us singing the same words but using different melodies, keys, and tempos. My dad, who was completely tone-deaf2, thought that it was great. That was all that I can recall about the evening.
The basketball game:I am not positive that the following event occurred on this same trip. I did not keep track of when my parents came to New England for visits. They only did so on a few occasions.
Every meal that we consumed at the Lisella’s was a cook-out. Joe fired up the Weber and cooked hamburgers and/or hot dogs. The grill was placed near the garage, which was at the end of the driveway. On the side of the driveway was a basketball goal set at precisely the regulation height of ten feet.
Before and after every meal there was a basketball game of some sort. On the occasion in question some of Joe’s brothers competed. I had played with them a couple of times in the eighties, but by 1994 I was not in nearly good enough condition to compete. Instead I kicked a soccer ball around with the kids.
At that point I had known my dad for seven and a half decades. For a few of those years we had a basketball goal at the end of our driveway. I used it extensively. I have no recollection of him ever taking a basketball shot, much less playing one-on-one with me. On this occasion, however, some demonic spirit overcame his reason, and my dad decided to play.
I did not see how it happened, but my dad fell down and broke his arm. Joe had to drive him to the emergency room at Noble Hospital. He was admitted and stayed for a few days.
I am unfamiliar with the details concerning the next few days. I may have had to take a business trip. By 1994 my mom’s mental condition was not good, and she depended greatly on my dad. She was almost certainly under a great deal of stress.
Other memories: I am pretty sure that it was on this trip that the following exclamation burst forth from Gina, “Uncle Mike, you have the same hair as Grandma!” She was right. Our hair matched in color (both before and after aging), texture, and waviness. I don’t think that she previously had put two and two together to realize that her grandmother was her uncle’s mother.
One time my mom mentioned that the Lisella house did not have many books. I had noticed that myself. Joe’s reading was mostly confined to World War II. I don’t know what Jamie read. She might not have had time.
1. Jamie talked with me later about this incident. I understood her to say that she had refused to pay the bill provided to her by the Simsbury 1820 House. I may be wrong about this. I have remembered quite a few events incorrectly.
2. His favorite musical genre was Gregorian Chant. That was also the only kind of music that met the approval of Pope Pius X, who was also tone-deaf.