The Zoe Disease and Other Afflictions

    She felt the lump inside her mouth – on the roof, top tooth row, about six teeth back.  Betsy, her daughter, and Betsy's kids had a dog once.  Zoe.  Cute little thing.  We all loved her.  Couldn't help loving her. She taught us all about love – the unconditional kind.  Zoe died of Cancer.  Well, actually, they “put her to sleep” as they say.  She couldn't eat anymore, even after an operation to have the growth in her mouth removed.  They gave her chemo.  It came back.  All it gave her was another nine or ten months.  Really, it gave the family another nine or ten months.  She had no concept of time, and the for some seven or so months it was life as usual for her.  So was it worth it?  Well, now let's see.  Five years they had her.  One week they agonized over whether the operation or not.  Three weeks or so, operation recovery.  Two months or so, Zoe's cross-jawed face distortion.  Then about some six months of life as usual.  For her.  Not for them; they were walking a constant tight-rope.  Is it coming back?  Will it be back?  Is she cured – for how long?  It was a high-wire act – almost a live-wire act.  But not for Zoe.  For Zoe it was a short window of return to normacy. Now Elmira wondered if the lump in her own mouth was Zoe's disease?  What do you think? She asked her doctor-son.  He looked at it.  It could be, he said, but I think it's an abcessed tooth.  Call Dr. Watson and make an appointment.

Coming of Age - Mapping Memories: December 7, 1941

My parents never hired sitters for us. Their policy was that if they could take us along, they did, and if trusted relatives couldn't watch us, the family stayed home. That was why, when one December afternoon my mother said she wanted to see a new movie, Smiling Through starring Norma Shearer, the four of us, my mother, my father, my then-little sister and I climbed into our green Chevy for the short drive to the theater. We were proud of our shiny new car, our first one ever. We were coming out of what my father called hard times. We had our own six-room house, and now an automobile. The economic Depression of the Thirties was winding down, and despite word from Europe of war and treachery, I was secure in the belief that, protected here between two great expanses of ocean, we were safe. My cousin Joey, who I was convinced knew absolutely everything, told me so, and if Joey said it, it had to be true. I had noticed that my parents looked worried when they talked over what was being reported in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, or what newscaster Lowell Thomas had to say over the radio at quarter-to-seven every week-day evening, but I was eleven, going on twelve, and with the optimism of  youth, I was eager for my future to unfold.

Now from the back seat where I sat with my sister, I was just barely aware of a voice droning from the car radio, until I realized Dad must have heard something dire, for he turned to Mother and said, We're in trouble for sure! There's no staying out of it now! 

Mother started to cry, and I, not fully understanding why, was suddenly gripped with dread. Without further word, my father turned the car around, and in silence we went back home. 

In school the next morning, Miss Nichols, my sixth-grade home-room teacher, led us in orderly file into the gym for an all-school assembly. Most of us had heard our parents discussing yesterday's news, and we  were subdued as we took our assigned places in the bleachers.

We are about to hear a radiocast from President Roosevelt, Miss Anna Ross, our principal, said.  He will be speaking to the whole nation. This is an important, solemn moment. I'm sure I don't have to tell all of you to listen quietly.

The only sound in the gym then was that of President Franklin Roosevelt”s voice over the airwaves, telling us that yesterday, December 7, 1941, a day that would live in infamy, Japan, without formal declaration of war, and even as the Japanese ambassador was in Washington discussing peace, had bombed Pearl Harbor in the United States terroritory of Hawai. Honor and justice demanded vengence. Today I have asked Congress to declare war on the government of Japan and its people, the President said.

Joey had been wrong! What could I rely on from now on? I was really scared. 

Today, looking back, I think of it not as a day of infamy, which of course it was, but the day I was cast out on my own to do my own thinking – the day that I, like the world itself, was on the brink of changing forever.

Joe and Adele

Prologue:  While using a Venn Diagram to compare my father's personality with my mother's, I decided a more  worthy memoir task would be to describe their lovely relationship for posterity.  I didn't want to be maudlin about it, though, nor did I care to go into great, boring detail.  What I finally came up with was the following.  I don't know if it works or not.

Tara-barala, tara-barala

Il prete la suona,

La serva la balla

"What's that you're singing?" my daughter Ann asks from her wheelchair in her family room.  It's the end of March, 2010, and she's recovering from knee surgery. I am at her house, nurturing her, like in older, happier times

"Oh, it's just a nonsense little song your nonno, my dad, used to sing,” I say, 

“... usually  just to get your nonna's goat."

"What does it mean?"

Having finished cleaning up her kitchen after lunch, I wipe my hands on a tea towel and come into the family room to join her.  "Well," I say, "tara-barala, tara-barala is just a musical incantation, sort of like 'tra-la-la'...  And il prete la suona means the priest plays it, and la serva la balla means the servant girl dances it.  When my dad used to sing this, I always imagined a priest in white-collared, long black frock belted with a rope, and a servant girl in country dress and apron, dancing and swinging together.”

"The whole thing goes like this," I say, remembering:

“Tara-barala, Tara-barala.  Il prete la suona; la serva la balla.

E quando non é piú buona, la serva la suona; il prete la balla."

"Which means?" Ann asks.

"The last part?  Oh, it just means:

And when it isn't any good anymore, the servant girl plays it; the priest dances it."  

"So why did it get your mother's goat?" Ann asks.

"I don't know.  I think maybe it had a double meaning.  Maybe something   naughty.  Anyway, I loved to hear him sing it.  No, I guess what I really loved was the little smile that quivered at the corner of his mouth when my mother would scold him with:  Joe! You know I don't like that silly song!

  

Yet, come to think of it, even as she was reprimanding him, my mother's eyes hinted at a smile as secret as his.  It was like that with the two of them – he an impish tease, she a proper lady, involved in a private joke between them.  A love affair, no doubt about it, and my two sisters and I, growing up in the aura of their love were darn lucky.  At the time, though, we just took it all for granted."

Joey and Me

The big red brick house on 84 Stetson Street in the Brookline section of Pittsburgh, half-way up a high hill overlooking West Liberty Avenue, has been sold. My Aunt Mary's family and mine shared the house for the first eight years of my life.  Then we moved, and her family stayed. It will ever be my house, though, and I like to think its spirit will always hold within its walls, a little part of me. 

Aunt Mary was my father's sister. Lawrence, Anita and Joe were my cousins. Joey was four years my senior, and so much more intelligent than the rest of us that he had few friends his own age. Alack for him, of course, but lucky for me. He and I got along great. He was my mentor, and I followed him around like a puppy dog. I thought he knew just about everything in the world there was to know. 

One of the best things about him was his imagination. Other kids, in those long-ago days, played cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians, but Joey thought up much better games for us to act out. Sometimes we were Eskimos, and the terrace in front of the house was tundra we had to traverse in raging snow storms. When the terrace wasn't Alaskan terrain, it was parched desert we had to ride our camels over in search of water.  Just in the nick of time, as we were about to die of thirst, we would come upon an oasis. Joey explained to me all about oases. Sometimes the terrace, especially in summer, was where we sat on the grass and just talked. He told me vampire and monster stories that made the skin on my back tingle, and scared the bejebbers out of me. I loved hearing them. At night, though, when I climbed the narrow stairwell up to the attic bedroom I shared with Joey's sister Anita, I would remember those tales of his, and would have to slither up the stairs sideways, my back pressed hard against the wall, so that no monster could sneak up behind me and say, Gotcha!

One day (I couldn't have been more than five or six), Joey said, “Saturday when my mom goes downtown, I'll ask her if you and I can go to the movies while she shops. Dracula is playing at the Art Cinema.”  

In those days the Art Cinema Theatre on Liberty Avenue showed regular movies, but mostly horror films, not pornographic ones as it did in later years. I don't know how Joey got Aunt Mary to agree to drop us off at the theater the next Saturday without questioning him about what was playing, but drop us off she did. As it turned out, she finished her shopping earlier than she had expected and wanted to get home, so she convinced the theater manager to allow her to come in to get her two young charges while the movie was still in progress. As she told us later, she walked down the aisle of the darkened theater to find me hunched over almost double in fright, my hands over my eyes, and Joey mesmerized by what Count Dracula was doing on the screen. What Dracula was doing, I guess, was sucking someone's blood, but I was too traumatized to watch. Well, my Aunt Mary yanked us out of there fast, and that was the alpha and the omega of our Saturday afternoons at the old Art Cinema. 

Joey continued to invent chilling stories for me, though, and to think up magic games for us to play.

Between playtimes, Joey tried to prepare me for when I started school; he was grooming me to be the best student in West Liberty Avenue Grade School. How successful he was is definitely a matter for debate, but I remember how diligently he would grill me in arithmetic. My cousin Anita, I could tell, felt sorry for my struggle to grasp all he was trying to teach me. I so wanted to make him proud. She often stood behind him, facing me, and would hold up her fingers to me, displaying the answer to an arithmetic question he had posed. She would say, “Don't be so hard on her, Joe. She's just a little girl.”  Joey persevered, nonetheless, and by the time I started First Grade, because he had taught me how to sound out the printed word, I was able to shine in reading. I remember that one day the teacher, Miss Liepart, put the word used on the board and asked if anyone knew this new (to us) word. In my head, I sounded it out before raising my hand and answering, ǔs-ed.

Miss Liepart smiled and said, “Well, yes, there is our old-friend word us  in it, and that's very good, Mary Stella, but there is also the word use there, and so we say ūse-d.” She went on to repeat two or three times that my answer had been a good one, but I felt I had let Joey down. I remember hoping he would not ask me if we had learned any new words that day, but, of course he did – as he asked me most days. I told him the whole us-ed/use-d story, expecting him to scold me, but to my amazement, he said I had done very well. “That's how it is sometimes with English,” he said – or similar words to that effect. I was relieved.

In my eighth year, my family moved into our own house in Beechview, and I no longer saw Joey every day. I thought my heart would break, but of course, hearts don't really break and life goes on. My mother, to ease the separation for me, put me on the 42-Dormont trolley (we called them street cars then), and allowed me to go by myself to the old house, which Joey and his family now filled top to bottom. I missed that dear house so, and all the joys that living there had given me. I ran all the way up the hill from the trolley stop to Joey's house, breathless to see my aunt and all the family again, but mostly, I could hardly wait to see Joey. I had a million questions for him to answer for me.

In June, 2006, Joey died.  The house with a soul of its own still sits there on its hill, but strangers fill its rooms. And all those precious memories? They are mine to my dying day – another of Joey's many gifts to me. My regret is that in all those years, I never told him thank you. 

Second Coming: Dream Sequence

I was just straddling the fence and watching the horses mosing around in the corral when I hear one of the cowpokes say there's gonna be a second coming over at Campbell's ranch.  So some of the guys start in pooh-poohing it, and some start asking what's a second coming.  But me, knowing my catechism, I take off right away for Campbell's ranch, cause I got questions I want to ask Him – if it's for sure Him that's coming, which at first I have my doubts.

Well, I get to the ranch, and there's all these people milling around and asking when the whole thing's supposed to start, and who the hell set it up, and stuff like that.  Then a powerful bright light shows up, and they all get quiet.  And I get this scared feeling, because right smack where the bright light is stands a man in a blinding white robe, and he stretches his arms out to us.  All around me, people are oohing and ahhing and rolling their eyes back in their heads like that girl in The Exorcist movie I seen once.  Then I notice that some other of the people are stomping around kind-of mad like, saying, “What's all this shit about anyhow?” and “When's the TV people gonna show up?”  Then one smart alec yells, “Hey, everybody!  Smile!  You're on Candid Camera!”  Some people laugh, but most of them are real serious and some cross themselves.  I figure those ones are the Catholics, because although I don't, some of us Catholics, especially the old-timers, do that when hearing something holy or scary or that someone's got cancer and like that.  Anyways, there I am, ready to sprint on over to talk to the man in the white robe.  I mean, if it sure enough IS Jesus, then I aim to get my points in, 'cause God knows I sure can use some.  

Next thing I know, I'm right up there face-to-face with him, so I take off my cowboy hat, and I surprise myself by saying, real respectful-like, “Lord, why are some of those guys over there saying what's all this shit, and like that?”  That's not what I mean to ask him at all, but there it is – right out in the open, and I can't call it back.  

Nice and gentle then, he answers me that those are the non-believers.  He sighs real deep, and he's just so darn sweet that I don't rightly know why, but I get this little lump in my throat. For a minute I think I might cry, but I don't. Instead I say, “And are you fixing to smite them right here and now with the jawbone of an ass or something equally awesome?”

He says, “No, no. Not right here and now anyway.”

So I finally get around to asking what I came to ask in the first place.  “Well, Lord, what about me?  Am I gonna make it?  Salvation, I mean.  Am I heading for heaven, or – well, you know – the other place?”

He does a really Italian thing, then.  He holds out his hand, palm down and wiggles it a little,   like saying with his hand, maybe yes, maybe no.  And here I always thought he was Jewish, not Italian, but then, I guess he wants to be everyman for us.

“Lord, I don't mean to be disrespectful,” I say, “but what kind of answer is that?”

I look to see if he's mad, and I'm set to duck, in case he goes for an ass's jawbone, but he just smiles so beautiful at me and says, “Well, son, it depends on how you behave from now on.”  And then, just like that, he ups and disappears clean out of sight.

So I never do find out.  Guess I'll just have to wait 'til I die, only by then it'll be too late.

The Tale of Betsy And Her Brother Fred

What I saw were two spheres of packed snow on the white lawn, the smaller 

ball on top. Was that what she saw, too?

Two round, smooth pebbles which we had taken from the base of the large maple in the yard, were pressed into where conceivably a snowman’s eyes should be, if indeed this picasso-like creation of Betsy's and mine could be termed man in any sense of the word. A larger pebble, or nose, was more-or-less centered on the ball, and for a mouth, a short brown stick was pressed in at a rakish angle, giving the snowman a jaunty look.

             “I like your little snowman,” I said.  “He has character.”

       “He’s my brother Fred.”

       “Your brother Fred?  Honey, he’s just a snowman.”

       Betsy smiled.

       At first her mother and father and I had delighted in her made-up stories.  We marveled at the depth of imagination at her mere four years of age, and told ourselves that she must be very bright. The belief filled us with pride. However, as the stories became more and more frequent, uneasiness began to reign in our hearts.

   A few years went by, and then one time, off-handedly, she announced that Harry Potter lived in their basement, and that she was in love with him.  Another time she said that as soon as her daddy and mommy were sound asleep each night, she went off to the bat cave for an hour or two.  

“With Batman?” I asked.

“No,” she said.  “With the other vampire bats.”

The other vampire bats?  What other?  

“You’re just pretending,” I said, barely disguising the plea in my voice. “Aren't you, Honey?”  

She smiled. 

“Honey, you do know that’s just pretending, don’t you, and not real?”  

Again she just smiled.

A few years later, Mrs. Willison, her Sunday-school teacher, told of a conversation she and Betsy had. “You know,” Betsy had told the Sunday-school teacher, “I have an older brother.”

Mrs. Willison knew Betsy to be an only child, and assuming that she longed

for a sibling, she played along.

“Really?” she said.  “Why have I never seen him at church?”  

According to Mrs. Willison, Betsy's answer was to smile a knowing smile. 

Now, as Betsy and I stood together in the snow-covered yard, a gray winter 

cloud hid the sun, and a sudden wind stirred the bare branches of the maple tree. 

Betsy took the scarf from around her neck and wrapped it where the two large 

snow spheres met, knotting it in front.  

“There,” she said. “Fred gets cold easy.”

It was useless.  

“Well, I get cold easily, too,” I said. “Time to go in.”

During the night, the temperature inched upward, not uncharacteristic for early December, and when I checked the thermometer outside my bedroom window the 

next morning, I saw that the red mercury line topped forty-seven degrees.

Fred will be sinking into a watery grave, I thought.  When Betsy wakes up, 

we’ll have to talk more about this fantasy thing of hers.  She simply must stop living 

in the world she creates for herself and start living in this one.  But when I looked 

out onto the lawn, I saw the snowman intact, still as fat and saucy as before. How

could that be? And did I imagine it, or was Fred several steps closer to the house?  

The uneasiness that for several years I had kept lodged in a far corner broke loose and spread.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Assignment: Examine of picture of you taken in your childhood.

When was it?

What were you doing?

Landscape?

My parents, in those Depression Years before I went to school, had concerns other than snapping pictures of me and my younger sister.  Only one snapshot of me as a toddler remains in my possession.  I have no idea who snapped it; probably one of my cousins, whose family shared a duplex with my family. 

The photo is black-and-white, of course, possibly taken with a box-camera.  In it, I am probably no more than three years old, standing alone in the middle of a field of weeds and flowers, holding one flower (daisy?, dandelion?) in my right hand.  Many scraggly-branched trees form a border far behind me.  I think the site is the upper part of the large back yard of the duplex we lived in.  

As in the Parry Studios photograph, my demeanor in this photo is pensive, too, but perhaps more somber -- actually, even rather belligerent.  Maybe I didn't like to have my likeness taken, or maybe the novelty of having my picture snapped was foreign and puzzeling to me.  In the shot, I display  a big head of very thick dark hair, cut short, with Buster Brown bangs across my forehead.  I am dressed in a white, short-sleeved, short-pants, one-piece play outfit.  Only my two baby-chubby thighs and knees show above the flowers and weeds.

When my husband first found this photo among our jumbled collection, he put it in a lime green frame he had bought purposely for it.  Around the border of the frame is printed "Mary, Mary quite contrary".   He thought the frame a most appropriate find.  It sits on the melodian in our far room, and our four offspring love it, especially the inscription on the frame.

Manifest Destiny

The man kept the bird, not out of affection, but because he believed the two of them were linked in destiny, and he vowed with sacred compulsion to keep it, the bird, until death ― either its, or his. 

It had been on one fateful afternoon while he was shopping for oils and brushes in the five-and-ten, that the bird's riotously bright plumage had lured him into the pet and pet supplies section.  With a recklessness dictated by something undefined in him, he bought it with four precious twenty-dollar bills and sixty-nine precious cents, county and state sales taxes included.  As if that were not in itself an extravagance beyond his means, he emptied his pockets and purchased a cage on a stand for it also. 

He took the bird home then and every day coaxed it to sing, confident that a bird of such beauty was surely destined to sing with a heavenly, soul-quaking voice.  But every day the bird merely sat in his cage in the corner of the room, and ate the seed the man provided, and produced only noisy, chattery sounds in its throat.  The man eventually gave up coaxing, but never gave up hope, for he knew in his heart of hearts that someday the bird would sing for him.  He knew the bird had not been created for ornament alone, any more than he himself had been created just to live, eat, drink, and die.  They each had a purpose, he and the bird.  Such was his religion. For the bird not to sing more beautifully than could be imagined, and for he himself not to create on canvas a masterpiece such as the world had never before known, would be, he believed, the most mortal of sins, worthy of everlasting damnation. 

A few times over the many years, he brimmed full with ideas, and, laboring feverishly all day and far into the night, he seemed on the brink of achievement.  But each time resulted in a failure that left him heavy with worthlessness and despair.

He had no steady employment, but would take odd  jobs when his supply of money became exhausted.  When he had saved enough, he would retire again and devote himself to his art.  So it went – in endless cycle . And the bird looked on, and consumed

its seed and water, and dirtied its cage, and did not sing.  And the man replenished the seed and water, and cleaned the cage, and painted one uninspired, unspirited canvas after another. 

Then one gray February day, with a stomach that rumbled with hunger, and with a larder as empty as the wallet in his worn jeans, the man looked over at the bird in its cage, saw it plumped and fat on its perch, and imagined it sneared at him.  

"So what are YOU looking at, you ingrate?" he shouted, throwing his pallet at the cage, causing it to rock on its stand enough to set the perch inside it and bird plumped there to sway.  The bird cocked its shiny eye and let out a screech that pierced the man's ears and his very soul, and at last he knew his bird would never sing.  In the same moment he knew that he himself did not have, nor had he ever had, a masterpiece in him to present to the world.  

He opened the window and tossed the bird, cage and all, into the snow below.  Then, after slashing to tatters the canvas on which he had been working, the man threw himself, fully clothed, across his bed, and reaching down, pulled the blanket over his head. 

I shall lie here, he thought, and hold my breath until I suffocate and die.  But no sooner did the oxygen under the blanket grow thin, than he uncovered his face and took in great gulps of air.  Whereupon he brought himself to his feet, sighed, donned his thin coat, went out into the snow, retrieved the bird, cage and all, and resumed the cycle of  life —  his and the bird's.  

All of which, of course, gives validity to the adage that birds of a feather certainly do, by nature, flock together, and, further, that no matter how ferverently one believes he can, it is irrefutably impossible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  A third adage, a  most encouraging one, is hereby proven as well ― that hope springs eternal in the human breast.  

And for that we give thanks.

Picnic In The Park

Sunlight filters through the humid air that defines summer in Pittsburgh, and shimmers in waves before us as my husband Al and I walk the quarter-mile from our house to Squaw Valley Park.   We are on our way to the O'Hara Township picnic for employees and for residents who donate services.  Al is on the Zoning Board, so we get an invitation each year.

            As we come to the end of sidewalk on Fox Chapel Road, we step onto the shaded path that skirts the back approach to the park, and follow it alongside Squaw Valley Creek.  When the softball field on the left and the fountained pond far to the right come into view, we cut across the grass to reach Shelter Number One.  That's where the picnic is always held.

“They must have hired a less expensive caterer this year,”Al says.

“Why?” I ask.

“The steam table and big grill the usual caterer brings with him aren't here.  The grill that is here is no bigger than the one we have in our back yard.” 

Looking over the small group of people within the shelter, I see that the turn-out is meager compared to other years, and I mention this to Al.  “Maybe people are still away on vacation,” he says.  

Just as I am about to comment to him that I don't see too many familiar faces, a woman waves and says, “Hi, Mary.  It is Mary, isn't it?  We met at Hemphill's Christmas Party.” 

“Oh yes!” I say,  “How are you?”  I don't remember her name. 

Al sees a former patient of his, and they talk together for several minutes.  Al doesn't introduce me, so I  just stand there, and then the man gives me a lukewarm smile and moves on.  

We head for the food table and help ourselves to paper plate, napkin, and plastic tableware.  Someone says, “Hello, Doc.”  Al says hello back, and again I stand around while they talk about ailments and other times.

A man with a box of cookies in hand comes over.  “Here, you two, take a couple of these and put them on your plate before they're all gone,” he says.  “The wife didn't have time to make anything, so we picked these up at Oakmont Bakery.  Go ahead, have some.”  

I reach for a chocolate thumb-print and place it on my empty plate.  “Thank you,” I say, “but

was everyone supposed to bring something?  We weren't, were we?”

“Sure, everyone was,” he says, “but that's okay if you forgot.  There's plenty.” 

             Still  I insist, “We never had to bring anything other years,”

“Yeah, we always do,” he says.  “But, hey! don't worry about it.  There's always stuff left over, you know that!”

“Well, okay,” I say, and decide to let it go, although I know he's mistaken.

The sound and smell of hamburgers and hot dogs sizzling on the grill beckon now, so we take leave of the cookie man.  

Standing between grill and food table  is a woman, about seventy or so. She smiles and says, “Hi!  We have hamburgers and we have hot dogs.  Which will it be?” 

“No chicken this year?” Al asks.

She's still smiling.  “No, no chicken,” she says

“No chicken, eh?  Oh well.  Is there beer?” 

The woman laughs as if that's funny. “Of course not!” she says. 

“How about pop?”

“Well, no.  No pop.  But there's your choice of lemonade or iced tea or fruit punch in those pitchers at the end of the buffet.” 

I look over to where she is pointing and notice some foods are in pretty little flowered casseroles.  Nice change from the usual tinfoil disposables most caterers use, I think, but not very practical.    

“And be sure to help yourself to corn-on-the-cob.” the woman continues.  “It's good and sweet this year.  So, now then, what will it be, hamburger or hot dog?”

Al says “hamburger”, and I say “hot dog”.  We collect the other food we want, and a drink each, and then, seeing no one to sit with, choose two places at the end of the farthest table. Al sits down and is quiet for a minute, then looks around, then immediately starts eating at great speed.

“Whoa!” I whisper.  “Slow down!  You're actually shoveling the food into your mouth!  What's your problem?”

“Shh!  Just hurry up and eat!” he whispers back.  “Hurry and eat up what's on your plate.  We have to get out of here!  It finally dawned on me – we're at the wrong picnic!”

“We're what?”

“At the wrong picnic!  Look down there.”  He points to beyond the tennis courts, where smoke rises from a very large grill, and where a great many people have gathered around Shelter Number Two..  

            “That's where we're supposed to be,” he says..  “Keep eating!”

“Oh!  This is awful!” I say.  “We  have to apologize and then leave right away!” 

“Are you crazy?” he says.  “And waste all this good food?  We'll finish eating, and then leave.”

            “But, Al!  We can't just eat their food and not explain!”

“Listen, Mary!  Just keep your mouth shut, and eat!”

“I will not keep my mouth shut,” I say.  “Besides, I've lost my appetite.  I'm getting up right now and apologizing!” 

“Who will you apologize to?  You going to stand up and make a general announcement?  Like,   Attention ladies and gentlemen!  I'd like to apologize!”   Forget it!  Just keep eating!”

I push my chair back, but before I can get up, a woman from another table comes and sits across from us..  

She smiles at me.  “Hello!” she says.  “Where do I know you from?”

Oh how tactfully she puts it, I think. Where does she know me from indeed!  I'll bet they've all been buzzing, “Who are those two?  And they didn't  even bring anything!”  

           “I'm afraid I have to apologize,” I say.  “You see, my husband and I thought this was the O'Hara Township picnic, and we never realized our mistake until we had already piled our plates with food.”

            I give her a second or two to digest it all, intending no pun, and then I go on to say, “You have no idea how stupid I feel, or how embarrassed I am.  Please forgive us.”

            At first, all the woman says is “Oh,” but before I can wonder what to do next, she says, “My dear,  please don't be embarrassed.  Why, that kind of mistake is the most natural thing in the world.  In fact, you know what?  One time, I was at a funeral home, and when I looked in the open coffin and saw the corpse, I said, 'Who in the world is that?'   Wrong funeral home, of course.  So you see, dear, these things do happen”

            Not for a minute do I believe her funeral home story, but I'm so overwhelmed with gratitude that I want to hug her on the spot.  Instead, I ask, “Which group is it that's having this picnic?”

“The English Lutheran Church in Sharpsburg.” she says.. “We're a small congregation.  We've known each other, most of us, all our lives.  Every summer we enjoy an afternoon picnic together, but this is the first time we decided to rent a shelter here to hold it in.”

“I know that church,” I say, “and I love it!  It's a registered historic landmark, isn't it?  I passed it often on my morning walks when I used to go all the way to Sharpsburg and back.  I don't walk quite that far anymore, but I have always admired your church and wished I could tour the inside.” 

“My dear!” she says, and I know she's pleased, because she reaches across the table and places her hand on mine.  “We would be so happy to show you around!  Do come by some time.  Our Sunday services are at eleven.”

            Feeling better, my appetite returned, I decide I just might take her up on her offer some day.  So the two of us exchange names, and I apologize again and tell her it's a lovely picnic, and how delicious all the food is.  She tells me that's because everyone brings something, and it's almost an unspoken contest each year to see who brings the best.  And all the while we are chit-chatting,  Al is quietly clearing away his plate and mine.  He throws them into a nearby trash can, tells the nice lady to have a nice day, and leaves.  To me, over his shoulder, he says, “See you down at the other shelter, Mary.  No hurry, Honey.  Take your time.”  (So now it's okay for me to take my time?)

  When I finally join the township group, I see that Al, seated at table with a plateful of 

barbecued chicken and a can of beer in front of him, is holding court, telling our story.  Everyone seated

around him is laughing. 

“So!” one of them says as I slip into the seat Al has saved for me, “Are you coming to check 

out our food now, Mary?  Didn't you read the invitation?  It has right on it in black and white, that the 

picnic this year is in Shelter Number Two.”

“Really!” I say, and give him the sweetest smile I know how to smile.  “Obviously, Al and I 

missed that tiny detail.”

There follows more teasing, and Al and I do our share in rebuttal.  How good it is to be with them all, and in the place at last where we're invited to be.

Much later, as we get up to leave, from one of the back tables, I hear, “Hey, Kinsels!  What's 

your rush?  The party's still young.”

“We have to hurry home and get the car,” I say.  “We want to ride around Sharpsburg and see if there's another picnic we can crash.”