70th

April 7, 2008

I was showing the fresh scars from my hand surgery to my uncle, who has me beat with fresh scars from the three separate surgeries he's gone through in less than a year. "If it's not one thing, it's another," he said. His latest looks like the letter "J" from his ear to his throat. We were comparing stories of stitches and scars when my father walked up.

"Who wants to see my scar?" he said.

My father had a recent surgery, too. Prostate surgery. Needless to say, no one took him up on the offer.

From the size of the cake, you'd think that my mother's 70th birthday party was for 100 people, but it was just a small family affair held at my parent' house, "down the shaw," as they say in Jersey.

After a champagne toast, eleven people did their best to make a dent in a smorgasbord of lasagna, meatballs, sausages, hamburgers, hot dogs, veggie burgers, green salad, potato salad, potato chips, and piles and piles of bread. It was a ridiculous amount of food, and we returned far more of it to the refrigerator than we put in our stomachs.

After cake, my mother opened her gifts. My brother’s present came first, a DVD of Astroboy, an animated cartoon from the 60s (remade in the 80s) that he loved as a kid. My mother often tells the story about how my brother used to ask her to draw a picture of Astroboy for him, and how she could never do it. She couldn't, from memory, visualize his robot cowlicks or where to put them. "Draw Astroboy!" my brother would demand, "draw Astroboy!"

I was too young to remember any of it, I'm not sure I was even born at the time, but it's family lore, and I know the story well. My mother told it once more, for the record, before opening the other gifts.

My sister gave my mother a Maple cup, with a matching lid, that she turned herself on her boyfriend's lathe. "Oh, it's the Holy Grail," my mother said. On the bottom of the cup, my sister signed her name, "Laura was here," which led to my mother reminiscing about my sister, and how, as a young girl, she wrote her name on any and everything: "Laura was here," occasionally adding a date or a figurative scroll underneath.

My gift had a sentimental edge, too. When I was a kid, I destroyed a lot of my mother's things. One, in particular, was a pin that a friend of hers had made and given to her as a gift. It had a turquoise stone in the middle of it, which I decided I wanted for a project of my own. I pried the stone out of its bezel, leaving behind the twisted pin for my mother to find in her dresser drawer. She was furious, as I recall, with good reason, and she didn't need to wonder who was behind the destruction. Over the years, my mother's anger subsided, but she never forgot about it and often tells the story as a way to illustrate the kind of kid I was. I never did anything with the stone — I was probably too afraid — but I hid it away in a small box with other precious, magical, boyhood things. I asked Deborah if she could set the stone for me — make it into something to give my mother for her birthday. Deborah was able to make it into a beautiful silver necklace.

"This gift requires a little explaining," I said as my mother began to open it. "Do you know what that is?" I said.

"Well," she said, "I know what it represents."

"That's the actual stone," I said.

She couldn't believe it — couldn't imagine I still had it after all these years.

"You'd be surprised at what he saves," said Deborah, who has actually seen the box of magical boyhood trinkets for herself.

My mother suffers from a rare condition called polymyositis, which slows her down (though less than it probably should), and since she plays a better mother than she does a patient, she had a hard time sitting back and letting everyone else take charge of the preparations. In the midst of barking orders, she put her hand to her mouth and stopped herself. "I sound like my mother," she said. My grandmother, who was frustrated by severe arthritis, would often sit in a chair and direct my mother's attempts to make dinner, telling her what to do or what she was doing wrong. "I told myself I'd never be that way," my mother said. But she couldn't help herself; it was in her genes. She continued to direct everyone, couching her orders as gentle suggestions. You might want to do this, and why don't you do that?

"You can put a lid on that," she said to my sister, who was standing over the stove cooking meatballs and sausages. My sister heard her, but was juggling several things at once and didn't respond. Aside from maybe my father, who was grilling burgers in the backyard, my sister was doing the most work and, as a result, receiving the most direction. "Laura," my mother called, a little louder, "you can put a lid on that."

"You can put a lid on it too," my sister snapped, slamming a lid onto the pot with a bang before huffing away into the other room.

The next day, I walked in on a conversation between my mother and sister, where they were talking about the incident and a few others like it. "We're all too sensitive in this family," said my mother. Again, my mother remembered my grandmother's behavior and my mother's tendency to snap in reaction to it.

"Impulse control," said my brother.

"I guess so," my mother said. "Saying things before you have time to think."

"Not to mention it was a good setup," I said.

"What's that?" said my mother, who wasn't aware I'd been listening.

"I said it was a good setup. Laura's line was a funny one, and it would've been a shame to let it pass."

"I guess that's part of it too," my mother said. "We're all too funny for our own good."

A few smart aleck remarks here and there are to be expected at a family party. Things could be worse, as Deborah was quick to point out. She always marvels at how low-key and generally even-tempered my family is. When Deborah called her parents during our drive home to Brooklyn, she had to hold the phone away from her ear several times and ask her father, "Why is Mom yelling in the background? What's she yelling about?" After she hung up, she shook her head and sighed, "You're so lucky," she said. "You have no idea."

I have some idea.