Birthdays.

1950 June

The house wasn’t much to look at yet. The clapboard sat where one day a driveway would hold Buicks and Fords. The great oaks that would drop itchy balls making barefoot children playing kick the can yelp had not yet been planted. But the framing was ready to announce this spot as the kitchen. Nel insisted that Bernie and his father put away their building tools early enough to celebrate. The men welcomed the excuse to quit before sunset. Four Roses and Chesterfields tasted better before dark. Today the oldest of 9 children, Dorothy, would plop pudgy one-year old hands into her chocolate birthday cake in the first kitchen she would ever know. 

1975 October 

Nel struggled to find words these days. The stroke had stolen them. When the candles were lit and she told her 1st grandson to “Turn off the car” his youngest aunt, Clare, would take his hand, push the kitchen light switch down and start the chorus of happy birthday to his two-year-old sister, erin. No one corrected Nel though they sang a little sadder as if maybe they knew this was the last birthday Nel would see in her kitchen. She had seen her last Christmas and wouldn’t need her words much longer. Bernie’s Chesterfields and Four Roses would soon be his only loves. The hearts of all would be broken. 

2025 October 

There was more ebb than flow in the guests in the kitchen at this 30th birthday party. Seventeen gathered for the only of Nel’s granddaughters to live in this house.  Willie who had dropped the “ie” outside these walls many years ago.  The family he grew here with his wife. 4 children who slouched home with significant others, married, engaged, and newly developing. Bernie who kept the “ie” but no longer needed the jr. arrived with his branch of the family tree from wife to grandchildren. Erin and erin who had also shared the elder’s 30th birthday as she nurtured the best gift she ever gave over 21 years ago and for which Clare used her name. 

Though erin cannot reach her son many states away for his 30th birthday two days from now. She can sit here celebrating her cousin in a living scrapbook, remembering 2000 when they shared their 5th birthdays in this kitchen. She’ll know that the roots of love sowed here will reach him. 

400 words- culling edits