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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I handed Anyu some Mother's Day presents after I got her to settle down and
put on some pants. After dealing with
last year's drama, I decided to give my mother a GIANT bottle of Arbor Mist to help her relax during our weekend "vacation" at the LBI Bible Camp. Sure, it's totally against the Camp regulations to bring alcohol on the premises...but if the management tried to sleep next to my mother, they might pour themselves a glass, too.
"Oh, tank you, Stephie," she said, admiring the bottle, "Did you bring dah cups?"
"Yes, I have them," Irina chimed in. She pulled out several wine glasses from her bag. It was actually her idea to "drug" my mother with fruity wine.
Anyu made a face and sniffed them. "Are dese clean?"
Irina rolled her eyes, "Yeeees, Ildie, they're clean."
"Are you sure? You didn't just pull dem off the shelf from dah Dollar Store and put dem in your bag, did you? People probably touched them."
"NO, Ildie, I brought them from my kitchen cabinet."
Anyu thought for a moment, "Your kitchen cabinet is probably dusty. I'm gonna vash dem."
We both rolled our eyes as Anyu washed all of the...
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My cousin's son Attila has what I would call "Green Guilt". Every time he receives any type of food or gift that has packaging, he immediately asks, "Is this recyclable?"On our last family trip to "Bible Camp", my mother threw a plastic bottle into the garbage can in our room.
"Auntie, Auntie!" Attila yelled, pointing at the trash."We need to put this in the recycling bin OUTSIDE!"
"Nope, I do not recycle," said my mother.
"But you have to put it so we don't pollute Mother Earth," he whined.
"Eh, I don't feel like it."
"But why noooooot?" He pleaded with his big blue eyes.
"Because I am lazy," she laughed.
"Okay, then I can go outside and put it in the bin!"
Her expression changed from amusement to horror. "NOOOO!" she screamed. "You can't go recycle, somevon will steal you!"
Don't worry, I fished it out of the garbage can later and took him to recycle it. I'm trying to keep his childhood scars to a minimum.
Photo by Sanja Gjenero
