When Marty Brown died

When Marty Brown died

It was summer and so hot, both my big toes were stubbed from going barefoot and playing in the street. All I wore was underpants, shorts and a top; my hair was in twin ponytails and my bangs were short.
“Is it a party Mom?”
“No, honey, it’s very sad. Mrs. Brown’s son drowned. He was in Pete’s class at Prep.”
Somehow this wasn’t the same as the heroic deaths of the martyrs who lived for eternity in Heaven with God.
This was a Mom who’d be forever sad, a Dad who wasn’t strong but broken, a family with a big hole that would always be there in their happiness.
Fix it, make it right. Make Mrs. Brown smile again with her eyes, not with that tight bright cold smile that flickers across her crumbling face.
Please God.
But I think he was listening to someone more important than me.
Drowned in the deep water of the lake.

Burnt pudding, paper crowns

Mrs. O'Farrell made the plum puddings, and their delivery before Chrismas was one of the early harbingers of the Christmas Day festivities.
You weren't supposed to like plum pudding, it wasn't supposed to look good, but with its dark, almost repulsive blackened mass, like a blood blister, it wobbled on the plate, topped by a prickly sprig of holly with berries from the tree at the corner of our front yard.
Only Dad could get the holly sprig, because the tree was on the edge of the 15-foot rockery that overhung the sidewalk, and Dad in his soggy inebriety could be jeopardized, where we shiny agile monkeys couldn't.
Mom made the whole dinner, no potluck or shared duties, she cooked it all, she put it all on the table, us kids helped, maybe, setting the table, Dad poured the drinks and roasted the almonds.
After dinner, while we sat at the dining room table in anticipation, Mom and Dad warmed the brandy and spooned it over the pudding which had been steaming in its tin can on the stovetop since before dinner started. Then Mom raced around turning out the lights and inviting darkness and wonder to the feast.
Then the door from the kitchen opened, with Dad bearing the blazing pudding into the dining room. We all sang, "We wish you a Merry Christmas." with Dad fanning the brandy flames until he set the pudding down on the table.
We turned the lights back on and picked up our Christmas crackers, crossed arms and pulled each others' snap to open the packages of trinkets, fortunes, and most important of all, colored tissue paper crowns which we universally and immediately set atop our heads.
One year a cousin from Canada was coming. He asked us what we'd like him to bring and we asked him to bring the crackers. He told his young, American Jewish wife that they were to bring crackers as their contriubtion to the Christmas Day dinner.
By crackers, she understood Ritz, saltines, edible biscuits, and not the British party favors that alway accompanied the consumption of plum pudding and the end of our Christmas feast. Luckily, our cousin was able to detect her assumption in time to take corrective measures and deliver the party crackers.
In those days, everyone at the table had a little pudding and a lot of hard sauce -- butter and powdered sugar with one vivid maraschino cherry in the middle. The bitter, dense darkness of the pudding was blanketed by the heavy sweetness of the hard sauce as we read our fortunes and shared our trinkets.
Nowadays, a few of us still sample the pudding. For years, my sister made the puddings, and sometimes she still does. But the younger generation's attitude towards our plum pudding was best expressed when my niece purchased a canned commercial plum pudding at a British food import store.
"Ooooh, do you like plum pudding?" asked the clerk. "This is very small.... are there may folks coming to your dinner, maybe you need more?"
"No, thank you," replied my niece, "We just set it on fire."

Nightmare of the Boomers - who killed Kennedy?

I did not kill Kennedy
I loved Kennedy
Not the way Jackie did
Of course
She was his wife and my idol
Even though “Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me”
The Golden Calf
But he was my hero
My champion
Of passion
And idealism
Of Camelot
I will not reign in benevolence
But retreat in sorrow and pain

This is a mystery I cannot understand
This was a parade
A bullet
A shattered dream
Because I have no power over dreams
I can only pray

We were just leaving our freshman religion class and I was going down the hall to Ancient History, my favorite class with the whip-thin sarcastic nun, Sister John Patrick. She wore glasses and had pimples and tried to shame us into thinking, although there was no catechism for right answers in Ancient History.
During the year of interruption, my sixth grade, I had studied Canadian and South American history at the public school instead of ancient history at Holy Names. So Ancient History was all new to me. This thinking for yourself was scary stuff: if I could be certain, then I could live in happiness forever in Heaven instead of burning with guilt and shame, unloved in Hell when the End of the World came.
The downtown library was my Temple of Refuge. There I picked out books in the Roman history section and read that the early Christians had sought martyrdom, had been revolutionaries. When I dared speak that in class, Sister John Patrick said, “What do you think about that?” and it was if Perry Mason, no, the Prosecutor – Hamburger – was trapping me into admitting my guilt. I caved.
“I don’t know, Sister,” I said.
I was relieved when she caved too and went on teaching her lesson.

So as we were walking out of religion class and the next class came bursting through the door into their English class, it was the everyday tumult of the tide coming in and the tide going out at the same time and they told us:
Kennedy
Shot
Head
Kennedy’s been shot
Shot in the head
Kennedy may die
Kennedy can’t live

A shadowy army of skinny girls filled the hallway – it always felt like an underground tunnel, and today we were more confused than ever.
We filled the classroom at the end of the hall. Sister John Patrick’s face was paler than ever. Her little mouth was set in a grim line.
She let us talk among ourselves and didn’t call the class to order.
Shot
Kennedy
Texas
Communists
Ku Klux Klan
Russians
Death
Lincoln
Mad men

Someone knocked at the glass-windowed door. Sister answered it and turned back to us.
“President Kennedy is dead,” she said. “We should pray.”
So we all tumbled to our knees on the wood floor and prayed and wept quietly for a little bit.
She told us, “We don’t know who shot Kennedy, but as St. Paul said, we are all responsible. Our society killed Kennedy.”

There was no comfort anywhere for a long time.