The Oddball Archives

   Yesterday, I became a Great-Uncle for the first time.

   One of my many nephews, the middle son of my late Big Brother, became the proud papa of a baby boy, named Gabriel Charles. I knew it was coming and it’s not the only one. I also have a neice, daughter of the same brother and younger sister of the new papa, who is also expecting in the coming weeks. While I am crazy happy for the new families, it has proven a big enough event to make me stop and pause to think.

   This is the first time I’ve been officially labeled a Great-or-Grand-anything. I know it’s not exactly the sign of my personal Apocalypse, but it feels like it’s making the turn down the home stretch. All of a sudden, the gray hairs are grayer, the wrinkles are deeper, the eyes are droopier, the penchant for yelling at kids on your lawn is getting up steam, the earlobes are just a little bit longer (especially the one with the earring) and the ear-and-nose hair is coming out in droves.

   In short, I feel old...no, ‘old’ doesn’t cut it…ANCIENT AS HELL!

   It was the day my brand new baby sister, Melanie Jean, came home from the hospital. Out of three brothers and three sisters, her birth was the only one I clearly remembered.

   Mom and Dad spent a few days at the hospital in preparation, leaving a nice lady named Ms. Dean to look after us. I’m not exactly sure what she, or her young son Roger, had in mind when they agreed to watch us. The money must have been good enough to qualify for covering medical expenses or combat pay. What I remember is she left with quite a bit less hair than when she came in and Roger acquired an Archie Andrews-type criss-cross pattern on the side of his head after falling/tripping/being pushed onto our floor heater.

   The memories of who did what are a little fuzzy and I’m sticking to that.

   There was a bassinet against the wall of the living room, in which the newest and last member of the family was delicately placed. The three oldest could look in (I was already starting to outgrow Kevin), but the others were still too short.

   My sisters were beaming with pride after the disappointment of two brothers in a row. That’s the pattern in which the family grew…’1-2-1-2-1’ A sister, two brothers, another sister, two more boys and little Melanie rounded out the equation. Of course, most of the kids couldn’t pronounce ‘Melanie’, so for the first years of her life, she was known as ‘Mimi’. She would eventually grow to hate that name and became simply ‘Mel’…you know, after the cook from the TV series ‘Alice’, played by veteran actor Vic Tayback.

    I can honestly say each of us had, and still has, a degree of beauty unique among each of us, but little Mimi outshined us all. She had the most beautiful light blonde hair bordering on the gold-platinum scale that came down in long lazy ringlets, sparkling blue eyes and the most infectious smile. Even when the ravages of life came in the form of fender-bender that left a scar right between her eyes around the age of three or four, it somehow melded into her face and gave it even more beauty.

   I don’t know how or when it exactly started, but she developed somewhat of an empathy with all of us early on. She started to tune in to our feelings like an old ham radio, with both good and bad signals. When she was five, I broke my left arm trying to mix karate with football. I made one long scream from the front yard to the dining room before I settled down, but I would swear she cried more than I did, sitting on the floor in the living room near the front door. I spent most of my time waiting for Dad to take me to the hospital trying to calm her down. She didn’t like seeing anyone in pain or in any mood other than happy.

   This is not to say everyone was infected by Mel’s demeanor. One girl in elementary school delighted in going out of her way to push, prod or punch my little sister, yet another reason I have zero tolerance towards bullies. Thankfully, my two younger brothers had already gone into their discovery of all things physical and, with two beefy bicep-flexing behemoths on either side, no one messed with her for some time.  

   As siblings go, everyone fought with everyone at some point. Having nine people in a house with one bathroom will do that to you. Even after we moved to Conway to two extra bedrooms and (oh joy) a second bathroom, the wars continued, but with a different slant as each of us were feeling our own ways into the world. They became briefer, but more intense. By this point, Dad was all but gone from the picture and Mom could only adjudicate when she got home from work in Little Rock.

   On one of those occasions, it was ‘Everyone’ against ‘Me’ in a No-Holds-Barred Grudge Match. I don’t know how it started, but it wound up with me firmly grasped on my bedroom doorknob pulling to keep it shut and four or five siblings on the other end pulling to open it and kick my butt. In a flash of inspiration, I quit pulling on the knob and instead, shoved to open the door faster than the others were pulling. This resulted in giving Mel a slight concussion because her little face was planted right next to the door. The fight was quickly forgotten and we all tended to her. That was pretty much life in our family for a while.

   Practical jokes were another commonplace event in our house, but every now and then one got out of hand, one in particular at Mel’s expense. It occurred on a Thanksgiving night as we were all sitting watching ‘Oklahoma!’. We had a pet Chihuahua named Taco who was well engrossed in the twilight of his life after many years of being a fidgety, nervous, twirling, barking machine. By this point, his tail was almost always firmly tucked between his little hairless thighs, his eyes getting more and more opaque with blindness. He still had a sense for where the food was and was entrenched under the table waiting for the occasional morsel to fall. Mel gave him a piece of dark meat, which he took to the laundry room to savor at his own pace. After about two hours, with Gloria Grahame singing about being a girl who can’t say no, someone went back to the laundry room to drop off some clothes and discovered the sad remains of the little dog in his little doggie bed, a chunk of meat still lodged in his mouth. Everyone knew that his time was already close at hand, but it still didn’t stop some little voice (I swear I don’t know who) to joke, ‘Mel killed Taco’.

   Of course we all knew that wasn’t the case, but I don’t think she ever got over it.

   Mel was not only beautiful, but also hung out with beautiful people. Several of her beautiful friends, unfortunately, had all but placed me in the ‘weird and ugly’ pile, which, as an admitted fan of Black Sabbath and a former member of the Kiss Army, I can now see with a little clarity. They didn’t like me and I couldn’t stand seeing them in the house. I told Mel so, which led to the usual ‘I’ll invite whoever I want’ and she stormed off. Later on, in an unusual fit of clear thinking for my part, I apologized for my behavior to her. She responded with something I really didn’t expect. It was like ‘I didn’t really like them, anyway’. That was the first time I saw her as something other than ‘one of the siblings’ when she let me in on her motto, ‘If you like me, then you better like my family, too’.  

    The feelings and drives that developed in her about our family became strong and nigh unbreakable. That feeling was put to the test when Dad passed away, and then Kevin a few years later. She confided more than once that her only drawback of being in such a large family was being the last survivor. She couldn’t stand to see all of us go before her and, truth to tell, I can’t see being anywhere without her.

   She has carried that strong sense of family to her new life as wife and mother of two boys. It has seen her in the middle of the Great Plains, to the shores of northern Europe and back home again, across the street from her big sister where she lives today. If her sons know anything about her, they know she is the coolest mom in the world, has a love for them that knows no bounds and if anyone messes with them, they mess with her.

   And Heaven help anyone who messes with Mel.