Family

I'm taking time out from my usual complaint narrative to write about family, on this my Aunt Grace's 83rd birthday. When I was growing up in suburban New Jersey, I was lucky enough to have three women in my life all the time. My mother Catherine Cecelia is the oldest, and her two sisters Eleanor Margaret and Grace Patricia are/were younger by two and four years, respectively.

What was it like having this catholic women's trinity, as I affectionately call them (don't worry they all think/thought that's funny) around all the time? Well, it was wild! Since I'm the youngest by so many years, they treated me like a princess. They had a mother I never knew who was, by all accounts, kind and overprotective, and my three were certainly all that and a bag of chips where I was concerned. They all got from their mother (and from Catholicism too, I suppose) a sense of impending doom. They worried constantly, and when I grew up I'd joke with them and say things like "it's a wonder I ever left the house!". Yes, I was the "don't do that, you could break a leg" kid.

My aunts doted on me and thought I was cute and funny, even though I was really high strung and scared all the time because of what we'll call the "Catholic school climate" of the 1970's. My mother was a little more pragmatic about things; she's the only one of the three who had children, and it's just her nature to be a bit more "business-like" (a recent quote from said Aunt Grace).

When I became a rebellious public school teenager I did it big time (rebellion, that is) keeping secrets, constantly pushing boundaries. I fought with El, who lived with us and who was by nature feisty, and I made Grace cry. My mother had her own way of dealing with things. She didn't argue, didn't chastise, didn't really even criticize. With El and mom I could justify my behavior as teenagers do, but seeing Grace cry would always stop me up short. This was, after all, the woman who had dropped me off every day at catholic school after a mile-long car ride during which I often cried the whole time, and then cried herself all the way to work because she felt so bad for me.

I never called them Aunt Grace or Aunt El; they were too close for titles. Since neither of them ever had children, they loved us four Murphy kids like their own. When El died eight years ago, I worried so much about Grace, mom too, but Grace so much. Today I know she'll think of her sister and miss her so much.

In August I took Li to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Tenafly, and we cleaned El's grave and I cried and cried and told her all kinds of things about all kinds of things, like families do. My family has changed so much (they're so damn old now) and sometimes I long selfishly for all of those lost years I squandered living away from them. But I'm closer now, and Thanksgiving's just around the corner. Today I'll call my Aunt Grace and she'll call me "my darling," and the world will be a little better for it. Me, I'm just lucky to still have what I have -- a family that stills puts me in awe of itself sometimes.
Happy Birthday Gracie