After some
minor technical issues,I arrived at my cousin’s house. I clumsily fumbled with my luggage and keys trying to get through the extra-narrow corridor. Luckily, I don't think anyone heard me because the crazy cat lady next door to my cousin fell asleep with QVC blaring on her TV again. I could hear Vince Offer screaming about the ShamWow® until I was well inside the apartment. I threw my melty cookies on the table, checked a few e-mails obsessive-compulsively, and passed out around 5:30 a.m.
It felt like I only closed my eyes for a moment when the phone rang. "Hello?" I said, trying to remember where I was.
“Oh, lazy, Stephanie," my aunt said over the phone. "If I didn't call to vake you, you vould have slept until noon."
“What? But I was up all night with-”
“So, are you comink to dah barbecue, Princess? Or should ve send a chariot for you?"
I didn't have it in me to argue. "Yeah, I'm coming."
I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into a piece of charcoal-grilled hot dog. I could already smell the scent of shish kabobs mingled with green grass and sparklers....
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"I have an idea", my cousin announced over the phone."Oh, yeah?" I couldn't hide my concern. Usually when anyone tells me they have an "idea", it's usually time to reach for the aspirin.
"In all the years we've been alive, we've NEVER had a family BBQ at the house. Let's have one for this 4th of July. I would really like to make some good memories for the boys."
I wracked my brain for "good memories". To me, 4th of July was filled with the sound on my mom screaming in terror every time my neighbor set off fireworks. Every time she heard the slightest "Boom", she would run to make sure that the roof wasn't on fire from "dah ashes from dah firevorks".
Despite the fact that I had already made plans, I decided that I would find some way to cancel them so I could spend time with my family. I want my cousin's children to have happy, non-traumatic memories , so I if that means I have to make sure that my mother doesn't get naked in front of them
like our last vacation, so be it.
"Great idea. I'll...
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Nichole Remmert writes:
Hi there - I love your blog and tweets; I remember bits of my own childhood when I read your stuff.
My own nagymama died before I ever knew her, when my mom was just 14. Her father was always at work (and not Hungarian), and The Uncles (her mother's brothers) saw to it that she would be raised a good little Magyar. My mother was rebellious though, and when The Uncles would tell her she wasn't behaving to their standards, she'd bait them saying that we were, "... nothing but a bunch of gypsies..." THE HORROR! (in reality, the family was nemes - noble - and The Uncles were fiercely proud; so much so that even eating corn was rebellious for my mother, as she'd grown up forbidden to eat such peasant foods).
Funny how people become their parents (or in this case, their Uncles) when they have children of their own. While mom remained a fan of corn, I was always sternly warned that if I wandered off, I'd be captured by wild bands of gypsies, who'd kidnap me...
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