My Great-grandfather Turns
Twelve Today
(c) 2003 Bill Dodds
Chapter 4
It was kind of like being sucked into the valley of death.
I knew I had no choice but to walk over there and get caught between those two
huge mounds.
It's hard to breath in there.
"Come on, birthday boy," she said and smiled,
the bright red lipstick practically dripping off her lips.
I don't know how old Great-aunt Beth is. She's the
youngest sibling -- that means brother or sister -- in her family so she isn't
as old as my grandpa. Grandpa is in his mid-70s and Great-aunt Beth is at least
10 years younger.
"Come on," she said and I was sure everyone was
watching me.
"You know he does sort of look like an
undertaker," one of the wheelchair ladies said.
"Looks like he needs one," a man answered.
I walked around the traffic jam and stuck my right hand
out. After all, I was 12 now. Wouldn't a handshake be more appropriate? Of
course it would.
"Happy birthday, little
Mikey," she said,
rushing forward and ignoring my very adult gesture. I didn't even have time to
take a deep breath. I closed my eyes and felt her fat arms wrap around me. Like
Santa Claus, Great-Aunt Beth shakes like a bowl full of jelly.
"Why, just look how tall our Mikey has grown!"
she said.
I opened my eyes just a slit and there was her face, right
in front of mine. We weren't quite eyeball-to-eyeball but I wasn't lost down in
that other world either.
Why, just look how small Great-aunt Beth has grown, I
thought.
"You're turning into quite the young man, aren't
you?" she said and I heard some of my cousins snickering behind her. I
didn't know what to say.
"When was the last time we saw you, Aunt Beth?"
Dad asked. "Must have been Christmas."
"I didn't make it out here at Christmas,"
Great-aunt Beth said. "I was on that Caribbean cruise."
The image of her in a skimpy bathing suit flashed through
my mind. I shuddered. She must have thought I was just returning her hug because
then she increased the intensity of the strangle hold she had on me.
"It has to be a year, Johnny," she said to my
dad. I figured if he could live with "Johnny," I could put up with
"Mikey." "When Dad turned 99."
It was hard to think of Great-grandpa as anyone's
"Dad." It was hard to think of him as anything but a skinny lump under
some white sheets. A skinny lump with a shrunken head that had no teeth.
"How much have you grown,
Mikey?" she asked me.
I shrugged. I tried to, anyway. I couldn't really move much. She let go of me
and I inhaled deeply and almost got knocked over by Great-aunt Beth's perfume.
She must use a quart of that a day, too. I don't know the name of it but I bet
it would clean old paint brushes.
"You used to be down here," she said, kind of
saluting herself right at her chest. "But now... Now I can see right into
those beautiful, sky-blue eyes."
I suppose I've forgotten to mention I have beautiful,
sky-blue eyes. That's because most of the time, if I'm asked, I just say I have
blue eyes. Great-aunt Beth is always the one who mentions I have
"beautiful, sky-blue eyes."
"Just like Dad's" is what she always says next.
"Just like Dad's," she said, to no one's
surprise.
I guess Great-grandpa and I are the only ones in the
family with eyes that color. Big deal.
Other than that, I pretty much look like my brothers.
Average height and weight for my age. Kind of sandy-brown straight hair.
Speaking of hair, while Great-aunt Beth was talking, I saw
several curly mops of carrot-orange hair bobbing up and down behind her. Those
were some of my cousins. Aunt Carol's kids. Aunt Carol is my dad's sister. She
and Uncle Albert have five kids: three boys and two girls. The boys are the same
ages as my brothers and me. One of the girls is the same age as my sister,
Sarah.
Then they have one spare kid who's only in first grade or
so.
It's always fun to be around them. If I could just make it
past all the aunts and uncles, maybe this day was going to be all right after
all. I was sure those guys were as glad to see us as we were to see them.
I have other cousins, too, of course. Tons of them. But
the Jamesons -- that's their name -- were our favorites. Mine anyway.
In fifth grade I had to make a "family tree" --
show all my immediate relatives -- for school and it looked more like a family
forest. I know how to explain aunt, great-aunt and great-great-aunt but when it
comes to cousins -- first cousin, second cousin, third cousin, first cousin once
removed, first cousin twice removed, second cousin once removed and on and on
and on -- I give up.
My general rule of thumb is this: If you're stuck seeing
this person year after year whether you want to or not, it's a relative.
"Least you didn't almost throw up on Aunt Beth this
time, huh, Michael?" some man back in the sitting room said and everyone
laughed. It was one of my uncles or great-uncles.
That was another thing about relatives. You make one
little mistakes about a million years ago and they never let you forget it.
They never let anyone else forget it either.
I was in kindergarten -- kindergarten! -- when Great-aunt
Beth gave me one of her industrial-strength hugs and she squeezed a burp right
out of me. Not a little "erp" burp. A big, old, raggedy "BRAP!"
burp.
Now the story was slowly becoming I had thrown up on her.
I hate family stories. All these old people sitting around
talking and talking and talking about what went on when they were kids, as if
anyone remotely cared.
"And now when I think back on how we used to walk
those two miles to school..."
"And how Dad used to warn us about the Taylor boy
whenever we were heading out to go swimming..."
"Did you learn to drive with that old, gray Packard
or did we have the blue Ford when you...?"
Yawn. Yawn. Yawn.
I knew if I could get by the semi-annual physical
inspection ("Why you look just like...") and could make it
through the "burp" kidding and the long, boring stories about The Good
Old Days, I would be home free. There would be a lot of good food, all you could
eat and some of my relatives could eat a lot, and there would be envelopes for
me with birthday cash. Hot diggedy dog.
So I laughed right along with my uncle or whoever had made
the crack about my burping. Yes, siree, that was just about the funniest thing
that ever happened in the world.
"Michael."
I stopped laughing. That was a voice I didn't hear
directed at me very often but I recognized it immediately. It came from behind
me. Everyone else stopped laughing, too.
I turned and there -- on the other side of the wheelchair
traffic pile-up -- was Great-great-aunt Lauretta, Great-grandpa's sister.
"He's awake," she said and no one had to ask who
"he" was. "He wants to see you now."
Go to Chapter 5.
