Stories you think you remember …

Having children
is like
having a bowling alley
installed inyour brain.
Martin Mull

You want to write about your family, but you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. So you mask it in another town or city, you change their names and you think you're safe. Maybe.

According to family lore, I was the unexpected, late arrival, accident of my family. The two who had been around for years weren't sure if they were thrilled by this surprise event.

The story goes something like this …

My poor mother while seven months pregnant with me, journeyed in the sweltering heat, long and arduous hours from Brooklyn to the Shrine of St. Ann in Quebec, Canada.

There she said the stations to the cross and several Rosaries, on her knees, while seven months pregnant, in the sweltering heat. She purchased special Holy Water and crushed rose petals for insurance and to place in front of her statue at home.

St. Ann is the Patron Saint of Mothers, and mine wanted her last and most “unexpected” pregnancy to be a girl child. For as she told my brothers many times, a girl child is the only real comfort a mother can ever expect to have.

I can never be sure if these family stories are true.
I might have made them up.

Recollections from the edge,

fOIS