Well, yesterday was a glorious day. Yim and I had Prantl’s burnt almond torte for breakfast with coffee. It was left over from Yim‘s birthday celebration on Tuesday. After breakfast we ran a couple of errands together. We went to Home Depot for anchors and to Market District for lunch meat, rolls, Gerolsteiner and . . . Kennywood tickets! (Yimmy loves it when I refer to Giant Eagle as Market District! But, hey, my friend Alyssa calls it Hot Man Mecca!)
While I made a picnic lunch for us, Yimmy re-mounted my mailbox on the front of the house. I’d given the mailbox a shiny new coat of black paint. Incidentally, the mail has already come today, and the mailman opened the screen door and dropped the mail inside again, without any notice whatsoever of my newly painted and mounted box.
Once the chores were done and the picnic lunch was packed, Yim and I headed out to Kennywood. The weather was phenomenal; clear, bright blue sky, dry warmth under the sun with wispy high clouds up above and a cool air circulating just enough so that one never felt uncomfortably hot. The occasion was Yim‘s boy’s school Kennywood day and all three of his boys went there with their mother. We shared the responsibility with her, trading off between the older and the younger so that everyone had the opportunity to ride.
Throughout the day Yim and I were prone to our own memories of childhood days spent running the park, from ride to ride, with our friends. We didn’t leave until the park closed at 10pm and when we got home I collapsed on my bed, feeling the same satisfied exhaustion as I did at the end of a day back when I was 9 years old and had spent the hours running, laughing, riding and eating funnel cakes with Elisabeth. I fell to sleep fast, with physical heaviness but mental levity, dreaming of all good things.
And so it was a great day, but there is more!
Yesterday marked the last day in the house of the Earth sign Taurus, which, other than my own Capricornian sign, I love the most. It seems that so many of my favorite people have been born under the sign of the Bull: Zia, Lord Mycol, Yim, and my brother, Rock. If you follow the philosophy of the stars, it’s no wonder why. Consider the following:
Also, yesterday was, indeed, Rock’s birthday.
Before I get into wishing Rock a belated birthday I’d like to point out that I seem to have developed a habit of birthday posting, which puts a new kind of pressure on a person. I no longer merely have to remember to check the calendar and get a card off in the mail, but now I must come up with some sort of brilliant tribute to the ones I love, lest any of them feel jilted. This all started with a ridiculously fun post I wrote, a roast post, if you will, for the birthday of Elisabeth’s husband Dag. It was one of the easiest and most fun things I’ve written to date. On that day my blog stats reached their highest rating. This created a two-fold reason to continue writing birthday blogs: 1) so as not to offend the others, hahaha, and 2) to strive towards beating my personal best where my stats are concerned (I’m talking about daily readership, folks). This week I won some and lost some. Let me put it to you this way; I beat my personal best on Tuesday, May 18th with “Feelin’ Good”. That’s right, Dag, my post for Yim surpassed my post for you! If I were a statistician I’d tell you by what percent. On the other hand, I failed to put up a post for one of my most cherished Taureans, my brother Rock. And so, short and late as it may be, without further adieu . . .
I’d like to tell you all the truth about how I feel about my brother. I used to wish he was a sister! I remember telling my mother that I wanted a playmate. In my recollection of the past, like she’d waved a magic wand to grant my wish, the next thing I knew was that she’d gotten herself pregnant with a playmate exclusively for my sake. Imagine my utter horror when, after months of giddy anticipation, she came home from the hospital with a boy-child! What had gone wrong? It went down like this:
One day my mother was so swollen with pregnancy that she could not find the energy to play with me. I had no one else to play with at all. I played imaginary games all by myself with my wooden farm set on the coffee table while she lie big on the sofa with heavy eyelids. Then, in the dark of night in the middle of a spring rain, we had to leave the house. There was a mild urgency – do you understand that? From the back seat on the way to my grandparents’ house I peered at blurry street lights through the rain drops on the windshield, glowing white, red, yellow, green, intermittently through the slash of the wipers.
It was likely 4 days later when Mummy returned from the hospital. It was a sunny spring afternoon. My grandparents lived in a 3 story large Victorian house and my mother came in through the back door to the sun-lit kitchen carrying the swaddled babe. The excitement and joy expressed by those around me could not befog the circumstance. There’d been a dirty trick played and this was not my requested playmate. As I ran up the dramatic staircase in the entry hall, I stopped two-thirds of the way up, stuck my little head over the banister and screamed past the chandelier, “Why didn’t you tell the doctor we wanted a girl?!”
Oh, the follies of youth. I’d like to tell you now that I would have it no other way than to have my playmate be my brother Rock. Despite a fight here and there we got along marvelously. I love him so much.
In the winter time when we were confined to playing indoors a lot, we used to take his crib mattress and prop it against the bedroom wall. We mimicked Muhammed Ali and Leon Spinks, sparring with the mattress, fancy-footing around the room and sticking our faces in the mist from the humidifier for the dramatic effect of profuse sweating.
We have been playing together since he could walk and talk and the fun has never come to an end. There is only one person in the world who really understands what my childhood experience was all about and that is him. And vice versa.
Still, I did dress him up as a girl and call him Rebecca for about 4 years, until Mummy made me stop. There is photographic evidence to support this claim. I suppose you’re wondering which years, as from 12 to 16 would be rather strange, huh? Don’t worry, he was hardly big enough to defend himself.
I called my brother yesterday and wished him a Happy Birthday and he told me it was his second best to date, the first best being the day he was actually born. I am so glad his wishes came true. He met one of his idols, Dave Matthews, who, ironically, shares his birthday with mine. You see how Taureans and Capricorns love each other? Rock and his wife, Luvy, were granted a backstage audience (with photos) with Dave, Tim Reynolds and Jane Goodall before enjoying the show up close. An ecstatic experience for my brother and I am happy for him.
Happy Birthday, Rock! I love you, brother!
Two things.First,I think Zia and I,a Taurus and a Leo respectively,get along great and understand one another. But I also must add I’m not a great believer in the astrological genre. Secondly I expect a birthday blog! Third,I wish I had known you guys when you were kids. More blogs about your childhood would be appreciated.
You are so right! We are a great bunch of bulls!But Rock is the very best.He has brought us all such joy from the day he was born. The greatest joy was the joy he brought to his grandparents. Happy Birthday Rock!Love you!
I love it. A family that is truly “full of Bull(s)”!
I’m with UB.
Thanks E-beth! For once someone agrees with me!!