Happy Birthday Kiddo

Life is such a Dickens novel it slays me, the way it loops around and interweaves and characters not see since the early chapters show up again knitting at the Guillotine.

I wrote about an instance of this in my column this week, telling about what happened a few days before when, on a bus to Manhattan, I began thinking about a pal I first met over 40 years ago who now lives in New York and then didn’t she manifest right there in the tiny shop in Grand Central Station where I was going to meet my boy Michael for supper. If reading more of my stuff doesn’t make you feel like too much you’re doing shots of maple syrup you can see this column, and in all kinds of places, but most easily perhaps by Googling “Terry Marotta” and the phrase “kitten’s teeth.” Google my name and “kittens’ teeth” and if it’s the last weekend in April or later up will pop the piece as it looks in papers all over.

Three of our 'honorary' kids were at the dinner too which I don’t think I said in that column. An honorary kid in my book is anyone who has (a) lived in our house for a year or more, (b) launched college and/or grad school applications from here and (c) knows how to unload the dishwasher. Anyway three of the five of them came this night to see Michael because it was his birthday coming up and he is the family baby after all, born some 15 years after the oldest honorary kid and younger by a fair amount than his two 'real' sisters.

Sometimes he has no sense. I love that about him. You can read in a February post how he put his coffeemaker in the bathtub to clean it a while ago and when he lived under our roof he was no better. He spent his early years hiding behind doors to scare us and dressing up in odd costumes. He microwaved an egg still in its shell once just to see what would happen and oh wait that was my idea, but he sure loved the results more than anyone else. When he turned 14 he began at this wonderful place called Commonwealth School and never wore a coat from one end of the school year to the other that first year though he had to walk to the train station, switch to the subway, get out at a windswept plaza and walk yet more to get to the school. September to June the kid didn’t wear a coat I guess because the thought he looked cute in these certain vintage T-shirts bought for fifty cents and sized for a ten-year old... He could wear child-size clothes because right around then he turned skinny. He was round and darling as a child and then he just kind of skinnied on out and even now still weighs just 135 pounds.

He still wears those tissue-paper-thin T shirts from the 1970s too. He had one on the other night and over it this odd little military jacket that looked like something an organ grinder’s monkey might have on.

Anyway forgive me for talking about him so much. It’s just that today is his birthday which is also old Will Shakespeare’s birthday and I’m a big fan of both guys. May you live and live, Michael of ours and be like Willie Shakes if that's what you want getting married after the baby’s on the way and then having twins and going to the big city and doing what you love. To us you’ll always be what your big sister Carrie called you when she was a college sophomore and came home midweek for supper and you were saying funny ridiculous things and when you left the room to go back to your homework she called you Our Best Final Project. So Happy Birthday BFP, and TRY to keep the electrical appliances out of the bathtub. Can't wait to have ya back under the umbrellas some nice warm weekend soon.