My Father I Haven't Met

I see a family resemblance to the 20-year old guy on the far right. 

That's my actual father, Ralph Onofrio. This band was called The Beret Trio, he's the drummer. 

Here's me at eighteen. What do you think, am I an Onofrio?

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My Mom Will Make Me Take This Down

This beautiful picture of my mom was taken by my Aunt Sharon, at a funeral a few months ago. Grandma Lombardi died. If you're thinking, "Leopard print and red, at a funeral?" you'd need to know that Grandma Lombardi would have loved this look, right down to the red lipstick. The old lady had pizazz and, I think, always liked my mother's style. That's another thing that's great about my mother: style for days. Happy Mother's Day, JoAnna.

I told Joe that this year I'm incorporating him into the blog more in a section called The Joe Chronicles. He's so funny and talented and I love his writing.  Here's what he wrote about my parents.

JOE KOWALKSI 

They're the coolest/ sweetest. When I first met them it was over an extended holiday trip visiting first my family and then hers. By the time we were arriving at their place in rural CT, it was getting late, we'd had some traffic, and were overall pretty tense/ stressed. (Who has two thumbs and is pointing at himself? ME!) Before we even got to the front door, the door was open and they were calling out lovingly. When I got to the door, I got huge hugs, a glass of red wine was placed in my hand, and a pipe of fragrant green was offered. Within a half hour we were all laughing and talking and drinking and smoking and relaxed and I was playing their piano and her mom suddenly said, "You know what? That's your piano! We're giving it to you! We'll work out the details, but it's yours!" And that's how I got my antique baby grand piano from my wonderful in-laws.🥰

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Some Blogs I Didn't Post in 2019 (Happy New Year)

First there's the round-up of "Shittiest Twitter Takes," where I post tweets displaying the dumbest shit I have ever heard in my life. Like when Donald Trump Jr. threw himself into the Pocahontas attack on Elizabeth Warren by feigning wonder (unconvincingly) as to why people aren't protesting Disney, too. He was trying to push the idea that Disney is just as offensive as president Trump because Disney made an animated story of Pocahontas. Then there's world class boneheads Diamond and Silk, defending their idiot president on the matter of racist terms he used. These two clowns are suggesting that the dictionary must also be racist then, as it contains the same words that Trump used, so they'd like to challenge us based on "Is the dictionary racist, too?" There's about ten more of these shitty takes, but five or six of them are related to our embarrassment of a president, and I don't want to waste my time with words about him. So I didn't write that "Twitter Shittiest Takes" blog post.

Another blog post I didn't write is my round-up summary of all the ways people use Facebook and how there's one particular style of Facebooker that I find interesting. It's all the people who rush to write a post every time some little thing goes wrong or is inconvenient, it's like they cannot WAIT to tell us all about their hardship (they got the wrong coffee order, or the car needs a new tire) and these outrages are often marked by an exuberant FML or TFW. Everything else is a piece of news, a sweet photo, an adorable anecdote, or a lovely memory. These are like micro newsletters.Taken all together, their posts comprise an authentic micro-blog. Coming back to Facebook, I see how much I've missed. I didn't know Adam and Maureen got married. I didn't know Brian moved to LA. I didn't know Lisa switched to a new job, or has a podcast. I didn't know Walter has become slim as a blade! Inspirational! I didn't know Max has had poems published, how big Archer has grown, or that Cynthia has a new book out. I didn't know Amy is baking amazing breads. Scrolling back through posts, it's a composite, authentic sketch of how your friend has been doing. It's not practical to sit and write letters back and forth to each other...we are not permitted that kind of time anymore. Facebook posts take the place of correspondence, and I find it a bit nice. So now I'm torn about deleting my account as planned. Fucking Zuckerberg. I'm having a moral dilemma over walking out on this twerp?

I didn't write the blog post about returning to therapy last May and all that entails. As it turns out, I still need help. I'm on a new medication since October, actually on two new ones...three if you count trying out Prazosin. That one's for nightmares. It didn't seem to work for me at all, so I stopped taking it. There's been a lot going on with my mental health this year. I miss my brain. I'm tired. I'm broke. I can't focus, I can't work. I need help.

Finally, I was thinking of writing a blog post about Family. Lack thereof, more specifically. My grandmother Maggie had eleven siblings which would have been my mom's aunts and uncles, and they all had kids who would be my mom's cousins, who have kids who would be my second cousins, who have kids who would be my second cousins once removed if I understand how that works. In theory there's a big rollicking family on my mother's side who don't know who I am or that I even exist. As a child I had met few of them. But as I sit here, I don't know their names or where they live. Why didn't I get to have that family? I don't know the answer to how did that happen? Isolation from the family has never been adequately explained to me. I feel robbed of this thing I never had. In addition to that, then there's the two fathers and their families, these relations I can't even begin to explain. Most I have never met. More recently, there has been Joe's family, who don't really like me all that much, but at least they go through the motions, more than I can say for the vast family who didn't know me, didn't want me, never attempted to even try. Before this expanse of relations, I stand alone and confused and wonder if there's anything I could have done about it, but fret what would that have possibly been? 👪
Image: coloringpagesfortoddlers.com

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Throwing back to...maybe 1974?

There's a story to go with these photos, but I don't feel too good right now, for writing.It's me as a little scamp in the hospital, and that's my aunt, who dressed as a clown to come see me. I have no memory of this event. Sharon just emailed these previously-unseen photos. This is amazing. I'll come back to fill in the how-come later. Be well, friends.

Old Family Photos

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My brother was the original "left shark"

I changed my Twitter photo to the one of Halloween...likely 1979? Michael's just a baby. I think I'm wearing my first school uniform, before they changed in 5th grade. I bet mom took it right after I got home from school to find my brother so excited for Trick-or-Treating that he wore his Jaws costume all day. You could say I have no costume, or viewed another way you could say I'm dressed as the lead in "Tales of a Fourth Grade Skeptic." ✞

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Get Yourself A Fairy Godmother

Today I talked with Sharon for nearly three hours. 

"AUNTIE Sharon" is what she'll say to that sentence. Yes, Aunt Sharon, in that she is one of Louie's little sisters (there's a load of other aunts). But Lou is my mother's husband, not my "bio dad" nor my "on paper" father at all, and regarding that fact, the Lombardi family (including those other five aunts) never let me forget it. Not for a day. Except for Sharon. Beautiful, sweet-smelling, musical and creative, Sharon was the first "grown woman" that I knew, besides my mom, that carried a kind of tanglible energy. I don't know if there's an English word for it, but it's like a light...it's a kind of light of love...it's a luminous energy that women know how to exude, and receive, and carry forward to other women. It happens when we hand someone a tampon in the ladies room, or when we catch each others' eyes across a crowded train whenever one of these guys starts acting up (y'all know what I'm saying.) It's how your friend takes your kids after school so you don't go insane if you hear "mom? mom? mom?" one more time, and how your sister-in-law instinctively knows you will take care of her baby. It is like a luminous energy river flowing. So when I was a little girl, Sharon is the first female person, who wasn't my mom, and in fact bore zero relation to me in any way at all, whose flow joined mine, wordlessly. She danced with us, she colored and drew pictures with us. She introduced me to music, art and books that I still own today. Even though I was just the deformed, unwashed little runt that Lou's latest "girl of the week" brought around the house, Sharon had my back, even though she was, actually, just a girl herself.  A teenager when her big brother knocked up my mother, who herself had been a teenager when she'd had me. They were all so young that it boggles the mind to consider what life was like? When Michael was born, Sharon became his cummari. That's pronounced "goomba" and it's Sicilian for "godmother." Michael called her Auntie Sharon. I called her Sharon ("AUNTIE!") but what she won't know until she reads this is that I thought of her as my godmother, too. Because her flow of strong energy was so tangible to me, I knew, if anything ever happened to my mom, Sharon would have taken care of me, too. The Lombardi family made sure I didn't forget I was not a blood relative, but the covenant of a woman's love has nothing to do with blood. Thank you, Sharon. ("AUNTIE.").  ⾎

You May Also Like: If It Ain't One Thing It's Your Mother

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I'm a Blogger On My Mother's Side?

We do not have your typical mother-daughter relationship, JoAnna and I, to say the least. If I tell most people even one thing about my mom, they think I must be making her up. Like my weird and awesome imaginary friend. But she's real! What we lack in tradition, we certainly make up for in...well I don't have a word for it yet. Take today's realization, okay? You guys will get a kick out of this. This is bananaballz. And this could not possibly be more fitting a discovery on Mother's Day.

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47 Trips Around the Sun: An Observed Life

Two Aprils ago, on my 45th birthday, I penned a semi-serious list of 45 Things I Know as a way to commemorate the occasion. People seemed to like it. I suspect the reason why that particular essay was met with such unilateral applause is that most of my friends assumed I'd be dead by now.* The thing about writers is that we live an observed life. I have whole scenes in my head, as do most writers I presume, that vividly recall events both major and insanely minor. In these scenes, I often see myself, and hear my own voice supporting these visuals with mental notes. It's about the way a writer's mind experiences everything ‒ noticing, probing, capturing textural details, mentally applying a narrative moment-to-moment and making sensory connections from this moment to others, in the past, placing a tab to come back to later when another, related experience happens. Novelist Anne Tyler worked this phenomenon into her book, Saint Maybe, one of my favorites of hers. When we meet Ian Bedloe for the first time, he's in high school. 

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If It Ain't One Thing It's Your Mother

Today is my mom's birthday! I called her first thing this morning to wish her a happy day. Because it's a Saturday, Louie doesn't have to work, so she has the whole day planned. But first, out to breakfast, so she had to get off the phone. We set a time to talk next week. When we do I'll ask how today's plan turned out. There is always a story. 

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Any Other Sunday (re-dux)

  Saturday, June 16, 2012

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Father's Day. My day to reflect upon the fact that I've never turned any man into a father. Certainly not a daddy.

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Happy National Siblings Day!

March 2011 - TT the Bear's Place, Cambridge, MA
(Photo: Randi Millman)

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Happy Birthday, Mama

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Christmas Day

Uncle Joe and the girls waiting for pie.

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My brother was my left shark when we were little.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
Don't be stupid!

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Happy Mother's Day

My mom.
Isn't she a dish?

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It's National Siblings Day? That Sounds Like a Made-up Facebook Thing

1998-ish?

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#Throwback Thursday: the 1970s

Waterbury, CT
Some of the cousins at grandma's house.

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Cherry Hill, NJ
(Photo: Joe's Aunt Donna)

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"What am I, an a**hole?" and other Mom'isms

When I was a kid growing up in a blighted burg in the least interesting part of Connecticut, my mother's take on the world was also my take on the world. She had me when she was just a teenager, and I was super plugged into her.

Never at a loss for words, mom kept up a running commentary on our lives using a particularly colorful lexicon of expressions. Only now that I've opened the door to my 40s have I gotten an appreciation for these mom'isms. There were many mom'isms, but none matched the intensity of "What am I, an asshole!"

"What am I, an asshole?" 

"What am I, an asshole?" is the exclamatory footnote to unthinkable rudeness. Loosely translated, "I am not some idiot, a lowly servant, some slave here to cater to greedy users who take the mile once given an inch, and at the expense of my family." "What am I, an asshole?" happens whenever someone acts inconsiderate, or rudely takes advantage of her warm generosity, or tries to pull one over on her by lying to her face. Let's make it plain: the in-laws tried it all the time. For example, that one aunt who showed up to a sit-down dinner with four extra people. FOUR. STRANGERS.

"Can you believe her? What balls! I've never in my life. Who does that? Without asking? What am I, an asshole?" 

$55 via Paypal

This would be a rant that could go on for hours. Sometimes just inside her head, even. A whole afternoon could pass without a single word...as she went about the house, scrubbing this, sweeping that, the extra-loud slam of cabinets and a ruthless attack on the baseboards with the vacuum gave away that she's silently stewing. Then out of nowhere, "ALSO," as though appending a sentence she'd just said a moment before. "ALSO, she never even THANKED ME! What am I, an asshole?"

The rant had phases. First, the act itself. That would be, for example, to boldly surprise my mother by bringing four strangers to a sit-down dinner. Consider as a metaphor that the event itself, the dinner fiasco, was a big rock heaved into the middle of a pond. It makes a sound, it makes a splash. It's startling. Then it gets to be old news. By the time it's just a wet slap on a frog's rear end, the only person still ranting about that Thing That Happened is my mother. She has told EVERYONE by now. Everyone except the Offendor. That's who she really wants to tell off, but that never seems to happen until it's way too late and then BOOM !"What am I, an ASSHOLE?!"

By 1970s standards when it seemed like even rich people were poor, four people REALLY is a lot of extra places to set and that really is a thing to talk about. The headlines for a few days went big like "SHE KNEW I WAS SERVING SHRIMP DOES SHE KNOW WHAT A POUNDA SHRIMP COST" But by day five we were well below the fold with "AND she wore those red shoes! She only BOUGHT those shoes because she saw them on ME, and how did she know I wouldn't be wearing MINE? I should have KNOWN not to tell her where I got those shoes! What am I, an asshole?"

I mean, it would get super intense.

Other Mom'isms

"You can't bullshit a bullshitter."

"Oh, PLEASE."

"My fucking word!"

"You don't know because you haven't lived." How that one, in particular, would rile me.

"You don't know because you haven't lived" was just for me. A mom'ism that emerged in my pre-teen years right after Barbie dolls, but before dating. Eleven, twelve. You know, when we know absolutely everything about everything?

Whenever I was mouthing off about some social issue, "you don't know because you  haven't lived" would throw gasoline on my fire. We lived in a pretty rough neighborhood in Waterbury, Connecticut. My mother was on full alert to shield me from making mistakes, mostly concerning which people I should trust and which people I should avoid, or if not avoid, at least be wary of; naturally, being an expert in all subjects the world over, having met at least, oh, 30 or 40 people by then and having traveled in the backseat of the family car over 75 miles away from home that one time, I would haughtily inform her that she didn't know what she was talking about. Turns out she knew was she was talking about. Which, if you think about it, is astonishing. She got pregnant with me when she was 17 years old. She was a baby when she had a baby. Mid-20s and she was dealing with two kids, serious money problems, family on both sides crazier than ten lunatics riding pink elephants in hell, and on top of it all, that bitch came over with four extra people and gobbled up all the shrimp, AND SHE IS WEARING THE SAME RED SHOES.

Oh yes, the red shoes. Those red shoes were a big deal. HOW DARE that bitch go out and buy the same red shoes! THE GALL. I must have heard this red shoe story for about six straight months I swear to God. Shoes, though, right?

My mom might have fucked up here and there, definitely used me far too much as a housekeeper when I should have been studying, making it really hard for me at school to keep up. And she made an unholy  mess of the "sex talk" like you wouldn't believe. And she had zero sense how to budget or handle money and if I'm honest she's still a mess in that department, but not the worst, and she somehow makes it all work. But you know what. Bitch, here I am. I'm educated, I'm well-read. I have the best friends a person could have. I have the courage of my convictions, that's pure Mom. And I have a rock solid, super strong work ethic and a deeply held belief system made of respect and love. That doesn't just happen, does it? She done good.

Now that I'm in my forties, I know for a fact that I would have stumbled a lot more if I'd had to walk a day in her red shoes. I would have fallen flat on my stupid face on a daily basis. Damn if she didn't manage to pull it off, the fiery, stubborn little thing.

No mom, you're not an asshole. Those shoes, by the way, they were more of a deep burgundy, with gold heel detailing. Stiletto. Christian Dior. Yes, she should have paid the oil bill or the rent instead of buying them. But they were fucking fabulous. 👠

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RIP Grandpop Kowalski

Cherry Hill, New Jersey

Joe's Grandpop Kowalski passed away, so we got a Zipcar and drove to Cherry Hill for the funeral.
I didn't get a chance to get to know him,
but it's clear that Joe's got a lot of the old man's qualities.
The service was in Polish, but even the Polish-speaking family members
said that they couldn't really hear what the priest was saying,
the way his voice was distorted by the old church's echoing sound system.

The final goodbye was at the cemetery. The Kowalski family and friends paid their respects.
I'd never been to a funeral honoring a military man. 
Young people in full uniform attended, and after lowering the coffin into the winter ground, someone
folded the American flag and gave it to Joe's mom.
It was moving and beautiful. We all cried.
Afterwards, everyone met up at the Adelphia, a big restaurant and function hall, for a luncheon that Joe's dad had arranged.
Friends and family told funny, sweet stories about Grandpop Kowalski,
made each other laugh, and they toasted his memory a lot.

What a fine and noble send-off. 
I think I'd have liked Grandpop Kowalski quite a lot.

Requiescat in pace, sir.

Edward Kowalski, Sr. (c.1940)

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