I want to be that old

She said she would be arriving in Rome from Frascati by train and would meet us at the station. Termini. 

She'd be wearing black. Or, black and red.  And because we had never met, she added, "I'm old".

Passengers got off the train. Flora arrived by chariot. Not because she's ancient.  Because she's special.

For the historical record, she was wearing black - and red. 

A black cape was canvas to a thick, broad, wool or cashmere stripe of bright red that ran from left shoulder down to her shoes. Think: Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.

She must have thought we wouldn't recognize her otherwise.

Not a chance. You'd recognize Flora if she was only an extra in the now faded, silent movie version of Ben-Hur.

 She volunteered to show us Rome. More than volunteer, Flora was excited to show us Rome. Her Rome. 

The Rome that gets glossed over, these days. The way a Presidential debate is no longer a debate but a high school prank. The way we're all off to the next thing. The way Cliff Notes will get you by, fast food is ok and sugar is good until it kills you.

You see, Rome may be eternal but many of Rome's secrets are not. They stop breathing and disappear forever. They die. 

The secret is that Rome's secrets are human. They're not made of concrete.  (As Flora will tell you, a concrete formula that was lost until Thomas Edison figured out what it was).  

The secrets are made of knowledge. So they're much more delicate than the Colosseum and The Forum.  They're even more delicate than the Cosmati floor and the 5th century nave mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore.

But let's get back to old.  Flora is an older woman but she's not old. Not in the way you might think. 

Flora is old like the travel writers of the nineteen-fifties. They don't make them like that anymore.  

Travel writers of the fifties didn't write for the mass traveler audience.  The mass travel audience wasn't born yet. 

They wrote for themselves.  And, they could write.  They were well-educated. They got their education in good schools, not factories with desks.  The colleges they went to weren't glorified high schools.

They didn't just throw out factoids anybody could get by googling Gaul.

They could think, they could paint with their words. With their brains. They created, they critiqued. Their writings were as much a work of art as the art they were bringing to light.

They were of the nineteen-thirties and much maligned nineteen-fifties. Not the children of the sixties - the marketing department to the world.

Their way of looking at the world didn't make them money like, say, Bill Maher.  Most times, it cost them. Like, say, Lenny Bruce.  Notice the use of the word - like.  First over-used by the beatniks...of the fifties.  I digress.

Flora is of the aforementioned higher order:  She can think, she can talk, she teaches, she paints without the aid of a brush. 

Flora took us to her Rome.  She told us to look down when everybody was looking up.  When we got tired - Flora doesn't get tired. Exhaustion energizes her - we sat, rested and ate at a place that's not just uncommon by today's standards. It's one of a kind. 

There were times I thought my guide was my hero, Eleanor Clark who wrote my favorite travel book, Rome and a Villa.  Why? Because to call Rome and a Villa a travel book is to denigrate it.  

It's literature. It's poetry.  It's not Must See TV.

It's like so many books of that era that are improperly placed in the travel section at Barnes and Noble.  Put there by someone who has never, while in a trance, fondled paper pages.

Some of her little secrets we didn't have time to visit in our whirlwind day. But, as tired as we were, we visited. First thing - the next day.

Again, we were rewarded.

It was a privilege and an honor.  Something that doesn't happen every day.  And if we keep going the way we're going - if we don't stop and get deep, instead of just broad, my experience might be ancient history. Like a piece of ancient Rome you can only hear about and not see because it's gone. Forever.

And, so, as so many of the essays I write here these days just naturally end, this one reaches its conclusion in much the same way, only different.

Thank you, Flora. I wish I was that old.

Opportunity blogs

What goes around comes around.

I knew if I kept writing the good stuff, putting it out there something good would happen. 
Well, it did.

I have the opportunity to develop a property into a full-blown story. 
Book? For sure. Movie? Stranger things have happened.

The plan is for me to write my guts out in the seaside town of Lerici, Italy a walking trail away from the area known as Cinque Terre. I mention this because Lerici overlooks The Bay of Poets. Thoughts that pass through my fingertips and spill unto the word processor along with my morning coffee will have been edited, if not inspired by Byron, Hans Christian Andersen and Shelley.

She left me at the silent time

When the moon had ceas'd to climb

The azure path of Heaven's steep,

And like an albatross asleep,

Balanc'd on her wings of light,

Hover'd in the purple night,

Ere she sought her ocean nest

In the chambers of the West.

She left me, and I stay'd alone

Thinking over every tone 

(from Lines written in the Bay of Lerici

-Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Already...already I have little control. 

Luckily, my merely rough-hewn carpenters

hands will be guided by those who have

been there before. 

In Lerici. 

At the birth of the perfect thought. 

The better angels of the written word.

This journey to where I do not know is scheduled to begin mid-September. My deadline is November 1st. 

Gulp.

Bistro Chairs exceeded my readership goals - and a lot sooner than I expected. I am happy to report the number of you reading along in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America is already in the thousands.

Meanwhile @TheDailyNovel: A Tall Tale in 140 Characters or Less is successful for a different reason. I started it for fun and ended up learning something: How to turn out a perfect sentence a day. An exercise I recommend to both aspiring and perspiring writers.

Bistro Chairs: Writing and observing the human condition over coffee...make that a cappuccino will continue. Moving more into fiction as I weave pieces of my life into the tapestry of this new assignment. 
Your participation and encouragement led to this new adventure and I thank you.

Until next time….

Good Old Joe Young

Good Old Joe Young is the story of an aspiring, young writer who doesn't quite achieve his dream but becomes a perspiring obituary writer for a minor newspaper in the days when newspapers were the news. The days when managing editors and their readers both got ink on their hands. When daily commuters struggled to fold their reading material on crowded subways and buses. When moms and dads trained the pets their kids wanted so badly on newspaper they spread across the floor. 

With a good heart and a proclivity to become easily bored, Joe makes the life-changing decision to turn perfectly ordinary obituaries into great fiction.  He becomes a hit with both the living and the dead.

After forty some odd - some would say, very odd - years, Joe is squeezed out when the obituary section of his newspaper is outsourced to India. The new writers believe in reincarnation.  And Joe doesn’t do sequels.

With more time now to enjoy life, Joe decides instead to travel - through his own life. And you get to read along as he's jotting it all down.

People have been following Good Old Joe Young a tiny morsel at a time @TheDailyNovel on Twitter. Type yes in the comment box below if you'd like to pull up a chair and get your daily fix at Bistro Chairs in larger doses. If you want to get up to speed, go to the archive and click on Tweet Week and Tweet Week ll.

Life is short. So are obituaries. Coincidence? Joe doesn't think so.

Please, sir, I want some more

I have regaled you with stories of the famous, the near famous and not-at-all famous people. I have jogged your memory, refreshed your page, helped you look back and see the glass half full. I coaxed smile from the stress on your face.

I might have bored you here and there. Maybe I was a little too sweet for your taste. A little too pie in the sky at times. 

But I didn’t see a reason to plant my two feet on the ground considering the audience.

You have not had to endure a single pop-up ad for all this. I have asked for nothing in return. 

I was respectful that I am a guest in your house. Until now.

Please sir, can I have some more?

More Moe of the Three Stooges singling out the only quiet little boy in the crowd outside a movie theatre and waving to him from the Stooge Coach.

More running into Janis Joplin years later by accident and Pearl offering me “Want an f’ing drink” from the bottle of Southern Comfort that was in her hand?

More of after asking Mickey Mantle  for three autographs to John, I asked him for just one more for my father-in-law. He smiled and half-believing me said, “Ok what’s his name?” I answered, John. It really was. He smiled and took my pen.

Can I have some more, sir, of my son who keeps in touch and up to date almost every day by phone. I didn’t try to be his friend. Only his father. And we ended up being friends.

(Less of when the other kids, even after being downgraded to text messages, don’t text me back.)

More, sir. I'm hungry for more of the slow food movement and more of the Anti-FaceBook people.

More of the instant gratification that is the struggle to write. More of the instant gratification that is in the joy of cooking.

More communion.

More because we all have more to offer you - and each other.
More feelings, sir or madam.

More feeling, kind sir.

More being on your own. Needing nothing. Nothing to lose, not a thought to the consequences. The good parts of nothing.

More, not of man-made entitlements but what we’re all naturally entitled to. Parents who teach us how to fly and, then, show me the door – and the way – but not before we’re ready.

Teachers who believe in us. Tell us we can do it and help us believe in ourselves.

Friends, or maybe just people in general, that give us a sense of we’re all in this together.

I’d like more of these things. I know there’s more than enough to go around.

Tommy, the flatulent tugboat

Camera toting tourists used to yell, "Tommy, say cheese". Now, it's "Who cut the cheese?"

They painted a face with a smile on the stack so it didn’t feel like work whenever they went out. They might be called upon to go out almost anytime, day or night.

That was the day Tommy the tugboat was born. That was a little over a year ago.

These days, the only day off Tommy has is Sunday. The regular crew has Sundays off and one other day during the week on some sort of rotating basis that I don't quite understand. Tugboats must have a better union than tugboat workers.

Tommy trolls New york City's East River. Pushing, pulling and cajoling the larger boats and barges up and down the New York waterways.  Sometimes he goes west and works the Hudson River, sometimes he stays on the east side of Manhattan Island and smiles at the tourists walking above on the Brooklyn Bridge as he swims underneath them.

In the engine room they have a little frig and camping-style burner where Captain Joe McCarthy cooks for the guys or just for himself if the crew was hung over from the night and can’t even think about food lest they heave overboard. But a lot of times they just order out.

Sometimes Tommy gets rented out. He doesn't like that. He doesn't like being a funky, friendly tourist boat for groups of four or more. 
Tommy, you don't have to put on the red light.

Someone walking along the dock near the South Street Seaport recently said he saw Tom's smiley face chewing something that looked a lobster roll that he washed it down with a sasparilla. If that was true it was probably from Luke's Lobster, a few blocks away.
The passerby also said - and it's a matter of public record - that Tom’s stack billowed white smoke for a few seconds later. And then...
"Burp"
"Hiccup"
"Fart"
Excuse me, but the fart part I don't believe. 

To paint a face on Tommy is one thing but to paint him flatulent, a polluter of our waterways is quite another. Now, every time a foul order rises from the East River or the Hudson for that matter, Tommy is looked upon with suspicious eyes. Even by little children. It's no longer, "Tommy, say cheeese." It's "Yuck, what's that? Who cut the cheese?" 

Pardon the pun but that stinks. Even if it was Tommy so what? We've all been there, done that. Isn't that what Britney Spears was singing about in "Oops, I did it again"?

Let it go for God's sake. It's all enough to wipe the smile off Tommy the tugboat's face for good. Or, worse, turn it into a frown. Nobody wants that to happen. 

That said, the maritime commission does say that as a safety precaution every tugboat in the city must have an auditory device to signal other ships in the harbor. And I don't remember seeing a whistle attached to Tom's stack.  

Maybe you shouldn't book Tommy for your child's next birthday party. Toot, toot. 

Toot.

City of the Written Word

 

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.
                                        -Seamus Heaney

The night before, I read that in Dublin there's a writers museum. A writers museum. I’ll say it again, a writers museum. The Dublin Writers Museum, dedicated to Irish literature throughout history. To me, Irish literature is the history of literature.

I bought a plane ticket, packed a bag and bolted from the Charlotte Street hotel in London. I headed for 18 Parnell Square, Dublin.  

If you want to know about a city ask its statues

It was last minute and haphazard but something - or someone - told me to go. Like when the old country blues man just shook his head and told me he can’t play unless the spirit is there. Or, like whenever I give in to such feelings and am rewarded with the sweetness of life.

After touching down, from a flying taxi I passed statues of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Mary Lavin, Yeats and Shaw. Not wartime generals, writers. Statues carved by pen. Dublin, city of words.

If I was lucky I’d get there just in time for the last guided tour. I was lucky.

Portrait of an Artist as a Tour Guide

My guide took me through the two main rooms and the portraits in the Gallery of Writers. He pointed out the little people's room. I had forgotten Gulliver’s Travels was Irish.

Everywhere there were the original manuscripts and notes. Typewriters that were there when the words were pounded out and when labor was slow and painful. Pens authors must have held to their lips in thought.

A feast for the eyes but I could hardly keep my eyes open. I didn’t sleep much the night before and had been in route since before dawn.

Out of the blue, the tour guide (a writer. I could tell) recited by heart Digging by, the poet and playwright, Seamus Heaney.   
I was awake now.
As dark as a pint of Irish stout. Straight and crooked at the same time like a shillelagh. With a rich man's command of language and humble like a rotting thatched roof. And, brilliant. Because it was both of of those things at the same time. Digging was past, present and future in a few sentences. And, in the end, brash, confident, and hopeful. Irish.
I didn’t catch the writer's name – it sounded strange, stranger than when you see it in writing: Seamus Heaney.

The Importance of Being Earnest

I would talk to my guide and tell him that in an embarrassingly miniscule way – a life as an advertising writer - I, too, was a writer.

The Great Hunger - Patrick Kavanagh

But first I explained my drowsiness.  I told him all it took to even get to there and all it meant to be at the museum now. I’m not sure it helped my cause. He was a real writer.
Then, I asked about the poem and where I could get a copy.

He told me it was Digging by Seamus Heaney. "Can you say it again?" "Se-a-mus-He-a-n-ey." 

The Dubliners

Hungry but no longer tired. My clothes even felt wrinkled. I ran downtown where I found bookstores everywhere near another holy place, Trinity College.

Inside one of them, I interrupted a college student who was leafing through a book.  "I will dig." "Like my father." "With my pen." "Do you know it?" 

She knew it. Instantly. As if I was asking, Is this a bookstore?" She was nice enough to find the book for me. I still have it.
UNESCO refers to Dublin as The City of Literature. Which means this wasn’t a dream. (I told you I was sleepy). According to my passport it happened on August 26, 2006. 

City of words, city of writers, city of readers. Dublin, city of people who build statues to their writers. The writers who live there in the museum.

Lead-in excerpted from Digging, part of Death of a Naturalist (1966), Seamus Heaney.

"Please excuse, John" -Reggie Jackson, #44

Exhibit A

June 18, 1977. Yankees - Red Sox, Fenway Park. Starting time, 2:38pm.

In the sixth inning, Reggie Jackson, is taken out of the game. He walks in right field, steps down into the dugout and takes on Billy Martin, the Yankee manager who just pulled him out of the game. They're in each others  face. Chests bump. Hands pump in the air and on national television. Neither is backing down and they have to be pulled apart.  Elston Howard plays ump. Scratch that. He's more like a ref and pulls the apart. If I knew more about the technology I'd put a widget right here so you could look at the tape.
Reggie, Reggie, Reggie.

April 17, 1978. Reggie - Barnes & Noble, 5th Ave & 49th ST, NYC. Game time, noon.

“Hey, Frank…”

“Yeah.”

“Reggie Jackson is signing books at Barnes & Noble today at noon.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go.”
"Let's go."

Memo to the staff:  I would like the entire agency in the Conference Room at 11:45 A.M.  –Bob Schmidt.  Bob is one of the owners of the ad agency I worked at. He's kind of like Reggie. He even wears a lot of pinstripes.

 You don’t want to crowd Mr. October at the plate or in a bookstore.

We're standing in line.  After about an hour we're at the head of the line.
Batter up.
John: Hi Reggie. 
(I'm not sure if he said hello or if even looked up)
Reg, I risked my job to be here. (I show him the memo) Can you write me a note and get me out of class like they do in school?

Barnes & Noble security: Mr. Jackson is only signing books, books bought here today. 

Reggie looks at the security person like he threw at his head.  Nobody tells Reggie Jackson what he can, or cannot do.

Security: Give him a book to sign or move along.

Strike Two

Reggie glares at the pitcher of that sentence. He digs in. (My take has always been Reggie has a healthy problem with authority.)

Reggie:  Give me that thing.

The security guard takes the piece of paper out of my hand and hands it to Reggie.  He’s dazed – security, not Jackson.

It’s not that Reggie is The Bambino and I'm Jimmy, the kid in the hospital with two days to live. It's just that no one tells #44 what to do.

So, because he was told not to, 'The Straw that Stirs the Drink', as he once stirred up trouble by calling himself, asks me, "What do you want me to write?" As if he's asking me if he should take the next pitch or swing away.
Go for it, Reg. You're the guy who got us here. I give him the sign.

He writes, "Please excuse, John"  -Reggie Jackson #44
As in 44, the gun. As in the 44 Caliber killer.  
(see Exhibit A)
Like Jackson does, I watch the ball head for the stands. I trot around the bases and tip my hat...all in my head. But that's ok. I'll take it.  It's a home run anyway you look at it.

The security guard told Reggie he couldn't sign anything but Barnes & Noble books.  That's what opposing pitchers did, they dared him to hit the ball. We know how that worked out.  Now, the security guard now knew how that worked out, too. 
The opposing team's manager came over, took the guard out of the game. He headed for the showers.

Safe at home. Frank and I were excused from the meeting, since going to see Jackson was a quirky thing to do, since Reggie was a Yankee, since the Yankees are a dynasty and are New York, and since we asked Reggie if he'd give us an autograph for Bob, the fellow who wrote the memo about the meeting in the first place. 
We got that autograph. And Frank and I got a story to tell. About the time Mr. October hit three home runs on three consecutive pitches in one World Series game at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore. In April, no less. 

 

Ms. Write

My sixth grade teacher came on to me.

Not that way. The way good teachers turn kids on and change their lives forever, for the better. 

Ms. Pezzolano: "Class, I want each of you to write a story about anything you want and I’ll collect your stories tomorrow."

Years later, when I was paid to write advertising, I always got two weeks to turn in an assignment.  Then, again, I was getting paid for those.

Write anything?  Sometimes, it's easier when you have fences, borders (parents, take note).

We never got an assignment like that before. But, this was the sixth grade. The big time, the show. Write anything you want? Isn't that what real, grown-up writers do? Write anything they want. 

I went home, did my homework and the next day she collected our stories.

I wondered what she was thinking as she read mine.  

I starting second guessing myself, "I went too far. Why did I have to write about me being a midget matador? Wasn't a Matador a dorky car from American Motors? Worse, why did I write that I told the bull joke about something being red all over?

Kurt Vonnegut was only half right. Life isn't high school. It's the sixth grade. If you're lucky it's high school, too.

The next day is when it happened. When she said, “Mr. Russo ('Mr.' usually meant I was in trouble), this is really good".

Then, she added, "Maybe you should be a writer.”

Ms. Pezzolono seemed happy. Even proud. As much, if not more, than I was. 
Six words in the sixth grade that meant the world. And, as it  turned out, changed my world forever, for the better.

She asked me to read my story to the class. I did. They laughed.

I was out there. Living on the edge. Untethered. Like when being called  'Mr. Russo' meant I was in trouble.

I may have told my parents. If I did, they took it in stride and went about the business of being busy. Not too busy for us, busy raising us. They had two other kids, three jobs between them, and dinner on the stove.

There hasn’t been a year I haven’t thought of Ms. Pezzolono.  If anyone ever said they liked something wrote since, it never meant nearly as much.

A good teacher makes as much of a difference as a good parent. 

The good teacher I had in the sixth grade did. 

The Pez asked me to read The Bullfight a second time to the class that afternoon. It died. The class didn’t find it nearly as funny the second time around.

That day I learned another important lesson:

Quit while you’re ahead. The end.

People are reading bistro chairs all over the world. I'd love to hear from you. At least, tell me where you're from in the comment box below. 

  

Tweet week ll

What you missed if you haven't been following @TheDailyNovel on Twitter lately.

That’s what Old Joe Young did for a living. Wrote obituaries. Sometimes he changed the dead the way a plastic surgeon changes the living.

And, like a plastic surgeon, sometimes the change was for the better. But most times it was bad. Can’t move a facial muscle bad.

The grieving family would phone in the basics. And, Joe, aspiring writer, would liven up the obit if it sounded deadly.

The older they were, the nicer he made them. At 57, he didn’t care for the expression ‘the good die young’. It made him self-conscious.

In obituary writing circles – and there are obituary writing circles, even obituary writing awards – Joe was well-known for his style of writing called the death sentence. 

Joe was quick to laugh. The problem was that nobody could make Joe laugh like Joe could make Joe laugh. 

Joe once won an award for the best obituary under 25 words. And was the life of the party when he kept his acceptance speech to under twenty five words.  

Under 25 words, including “I’d like to thank Mom and Dad. I couldn’t have been this total failure without them”.

Joe collected old baseball cards, a kind of sports obit.

He would bring his “doubles” to work when things got slow and trade cards and obits with himself. 

A trade might be, for example: A 1927 Babe Ruth for two local elderly women named Babe or Ruth who passed away in Atlanta, the National league . 

If someone who died was tall, well then, he or she played for the Giants. If a deceased person did something amazin’ then, he or she, played for the ’69 Mets.

A rookie card and an obit card make up a set. Not easy to find, rookie cards usually get tossed. They get their value from the obit card.

To prove he was truly independent, Joe never took his Lipitor on Independence Day.  Besides, didn’t all the grilling defeat the purpose.

He remembered the screeching of chairs on the floor in the classroom as they were pushed back. Good...Mor...ning...Miss...Pezz...o...lan...o.

Then, came the Morning Prayer, followed by the pledge of allegiance. How he longed for those days.

At work, they put laxative in his coffee. And when he was in the bathroom they moved his office furniture. That was his thanks for 40 years service.

@TheDailyNovel: A tall tale in 140 characters or less a day. On Twitter.

Mugged Hamburger

Mugged Hamburger Full of Baloney 

Great line, not mine. It's the headline that ran on the third page of the NY Daily News when you could buy a block of homes in Queens for what one costs today - attached.  
It ran a week after this headline appeared in the same paper: German Cop Mugged in Queens.

The burger wasn’t a ¼ pounder from McDonald's but a 210 lb. police officer from Hamburg, Germany who thought he'd visit N.Y. because he was a fan of Baretta and Kojak with Telly Savalas. Two police shows on the telly and set in the city.

A few weeks before, along with his underwear - maybe in his underwear - Chris Mann packed his Beretta. No relation to the aforementioned Baretta. Beretta with an 'e' is what Agent 007 shot Russian spies cold dead with during the cold war.

Now, Mann was at the 112 precinct in Queens saying he was mugged in Central Park. Robbed of all his money and gun. 

First responders, even then, New York’s Finest passed the hat for their broke, homeless and a long way from home, fellow officer. The story under the first headline went on to say Chris was moved to tears.

The Steuben Day parade was that weekend and Officer Chris Mann was made Honorary Grand Marshal. He marched along 86^th Street – an area that used to be called German town. Walking along side the Mayor. They both smiled, waved and went for a couple of beers afterwards at The Hiedelberg. Soon, everything would turn into something more like the Hindenburg.

If the first headline caught my eye, the second headline caught both eyes. I know this guy. And I know he's never been outside the 718 area code (Queens & Brooklyn) except for a few times he went into the 212 (Manhattan). 

Background check:

Didn’t the Chris Mann I knew love James Bond movies?

Didn't his family move here from Germany when he was two? That's awfully young to be a policeman. Maybe there's no age requirement for cops over in Germany?

I knew the mugged Hamburger Full of Baloney when he was just a slice of baloney.

And I knew that growing up, Chris had an active imagination - to  say the least.  
If you asked him what he had for lunch, he's say peanut butter and jelly, even if it was ham and Swiss. If he said ham and Swiss, you knew it was baloney. To paraphrase something I once read, every word he said was a lie, including "and" and "the".

Now, Chris had told a whopper about being a hamburger. Using a German accent. No lie.
You can't make this stuff up. 
And I won't make up some story about his subsequent arrest and deportation. I don't know how things ended up for Chris. Which reminds me, I've changed Chris' last name - he may have kids by now. 
Or, he may just be telling people he has kids.

"I have to call 911...

                                         ...what's the number?"
                                                                                        -Ring, ring 

What do you want to be when you grow up? And "I live to see you teach"

The first time my mother's oldest sister, my Aunt Mary asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I didn’t know what to say. I was only three.

“You can bet those three year-olds from Korea know what they want to be when they grow up.” My Aunt's thinking may have been narrow but it was global. 
Every visit was the same:

Hello, Aunt Mary.

Hi, Toots.
Her arm levitates. Thumb and forefinger come together and squeeze my cheek like one of those crane games. She twists and shakes my pained expression. My lips are contorted, my neck wants a chiropractor. "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
I'm older now. I can speak. But my words are barely decipherable since I can hardly move my lips. I hope the numbness goes away before we're ready to eat. I waited all week for fusilli.
"I don't know, Aunt Mary" comes out "Y won't yow, Waunt Wammy."  She understands exactly what I said. And gets mad.
Mad, like when she switches from English to Italian when she's bad-mouthing someone so the kids don't understand. (Like we're interested or paying attention).

“What do you mean, you don’t know?  Get with it.  You can bet those little bastards across the street know what they want to be when they grow up.

After awhile, she didn't need to finish the question with 'when you grow up' because I had grown up.  
I was about to graduate high school and still didn't know.  A career in anything that involves smiling was out of the question. Due to damage done to my right cheek.
A few teachers along the way told me I should write but writing, as a career, was something that happens to other people. That’s what I thought anyway.

My mother used to tell me to try and work with my head and not my back. But creative writing didn't seem like something you could count on like accounting.

I would have told Aunt Mary I wanted to be a priest. It was worth more at Christmas and on birthdays - but priest was taken. One of my brothers grabbed it early. 
No one would have believed me anyway since I was kicked out of the altar boys for laughing at the sound of
Ad idem qui la ti fi cot. I still think a room full of boys saying Ad idem qui la ti fi cot - not knowing what they're saying is hysterical.

One day, when I could no longer bobb and weave as in my youth and my cheeks had lost their spring I said uncle to my aunt.
The Crane broke me. Or, did she. 
Name:  John (She already knew that)
Rank:   Nephew (Now, I had her trust)
Future occupation: Teacher (I lied) 
Mary was ecstatic.  I rope-a-doped. 
I live to see you teach

Later, when I was in college, my grandmother, on my father's side, asked me what I wanted to be.

I said teacher. But just because I didn't want to disappoint such a wonderful person. And I've been glad I did ever since.

She was so happy about my answer. As if it made her trip across the Atlantic when she was a young woman all worthwhile.

Several times in broken English, I remember my grandmother smiling and saying, “I liv-a to see you teach”.

She never did get to see me teach. I didn’t teach until years later when I taught creative advertising at Syracuse. The students said they enjoyed the class and that they got a lot out of it. 

My grandmother would have been proud.  My aunt would have grabbed both my cheeks at the same time until they hurt like hell and said, "Where's my kiss?"
But it would have been impossible to pucker up.