Daughter turned 28 this past week, and when Husband and I asked how she planned to celebrate, she returned to a request she’s made many times before: Can we all do something together as a family?
Both my kids are very family-oriented; Son is especially so with his friends’ families. They think of him as a son. Funny, so do I. On holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, he is known to make several stops visiting all his surrogate mothers. Many of Son’s friends speak Spanish in their homes, and that’s one of the reasons he’s been fluent in the language since his teens. In fact, when he transferred from a public high school to a private academy, some of the parents on his baseball team asked him to tutor their children in Spanish, which he did with great success. I was newly divorced and working full-time, so I used to sit at the top of the bleachers by myself during the games since the other parents didn’t seem so welcoming.
After a game one day, a group of the mothers approached me as I descended the stands. They stood in an awkward bunch huddled together while one of them said, “H-e-l-l-o! We know your son, the pitcher.” Here she made a throwing motion. “He tutors our kids in Spanish. He is a bueno teacher, do you understand? He says it is very different here from his school in your homeland.”
I blinked. “Our homeland? Do you mean Brooklyn?” Surprised by my command of English, the spokesmother waved her hand to clarify, “I think he meant the school before that, the one in your real homeland. Peru.”
PERU? Great, he’s sitting at these people’s dining room tables, eating their brisket and knishes, telling stories about his childhood in Lima, and the other parents aren’t approaching me in the bleachers because I don’t speak English. They weren’t snobs. I was just a foreigner. I looked around until I spotted Son, who does not have a Spanish name, and yelled, “JULIO! LET’S GO!!” as I tried to decide what language to kill him in.
As for Daughter’s yearning for family bonds, it has been a lifelong theme for her, punctuated by the death and divorce that have shrunk our already sparse number. What did she want to do as a family? See In The Heights, 2008’s Tony award-winning musical about street life in an upper Manhattan barrio. The tickets were a fortune, but Daughter was worth it, to say nothing of the warm memories it would bring Son of his childhood in Latin America.
And since nothing quite goes as planned, Husband came down with bronchitis two days before the play, so Daughter recruited her good friend, the Artist, to act as understudy in case he didn’t rally in time. The night before the show, as Daughter celebrated at her birthday party with friends, I called and left her a voicemail saying, “The quarterback is down. Have the Artist suit up; we’re putting her in tomorrow.”
Husband was sorely missed, the play was astonishingly good, and our Family Day lives to be rescheduled with all members present. Another happy birthday to Daughter, and thank you to the Artist for being such delightful company on a moment’s notice. Her website of striking original work can be viewed by clicking this link right here. And now, as we say in our homeland, hasta luego.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos show The Way Out
have fun
escape
bloomberg
up the wall
