Happy Birthday

It was my eighth. On December twenty eighth. A day no one remembers or cares to celebrate. Three days after Christmas, and three days before New Year’s Eve. Mom and Dad are broke. My large family is tired, and with two of my sisters and an uncle who lives with us, having birthdays the week before…well…no school kids to celebrate with either…holiday vacation. This could’ve been the worst day of the year for me…but it rarely was, because…

I am at Aunt Easter’s house, my dad’s mother’s sister….born Easter Lily Kelly. She had the name of a Hollywood starlet, and from my eight year old POV, the life of one too……

Today, we are getting all dressed up for my party. It’s not just any party either. It is a pajama party, and that means I get to wear something from my auntie’s special closet….the one that holds all of her “Fredericks Of Hollywood” lingerie! I couldn’t be more excited….I learned all about that man Frederick from his commercials he put on right after “Let’s Make a Deal”.

My Aunt Easter Lily is my Godmother. She was not able to have children of her own and she said many times that being childless almost broke her and Uncle Sam, her husband up, until I came along......her joy. I feel so special here…seen, paid attention to…and encouraged to be my oddball self.

“You are my joy too Aunt Easter Lily…. of the Valley......hahhahhaha.”

Before me, her only children were her two cocker spaniels, Muffet and GayGirl. They do not need to dress up because they are already parti-colored……..haha……black and white sprinkled about their faces and soft bodies, fluffly ringlet curled long ears that are always held back with a pink silk scrunchie when they eat, and a happy, curious nature that brings a smile to those they take a liking to. (I find it a revelation that I ended up the same way…no children, an artist’s life with a music man named Tom, and two cockers (Dash and Molly)…huh….funny, this cycle of life….)

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We are greeted at the door with the girls donning fancy bejeweled collars, pink fluffy angora sweaters and party hats that say “Happy Patricia Day” that my Lily ordered from a catalogue. Auntie has one on too! I feel so special, and the party hasn’t even started!

My Aunt Easter’s house is SUPER GIRLY.....pansies everywhere, the Lily’s favorite. Ruffles and Lace and Purple......but not fussy, just feminine. The table is set with her beautiful purple pansy china, at here sterling silverware that she kept in the “good box” with a latch and only set out for special days like today. It was set for seven, with special booster seats for Muffet and gaygirl. They always ate at the table at 6pm sharp, in the formal dining room with the big stained glass windows like at church. The table is long and oblong….a term I learned in school and a rhyme…hahaha.

We would start with cocktail hour as we did every day at 5pm. After The Mike Douglass Show and The Price is Right….Gramma…my dad’s mama, who lived with us, and I, crossing from the wrong side of the tracks to where all was right.

We started off with a greeting from Uncle Sam, smiling his tobacco stained smile from the pipe that never left his lips, violin under his right arm, rolling the shiny maple cocktail cart in for a drink to start us off…..

Gin and Tonic for Aunt Easter, Vodka Tonic with lime for Gramma and for me Diet Pepsi

‘on the rocks’ (that means with ice) with a twist (that means a very skinny slice of the skin of a lemon in the shape of a smile). You twist it over your Pepsi before you drop it down in, as a reminder to add a little unexpected fun to your life. I can understand that, because why else would you want the skin of a lemon in your Diet Pepsi?

Gramma and I then took our tails, both the drinking and the 4 legged kind, and climbed the mahogany spiral staircase to Aunt Easter’s special closet to ‘pick our poison’ as gramma would say.

Aunt Easter has lots of neat stuff from her life in Chicago when things were good in the world…..

We have looked in here and ‘lived’ in it’s stories many times, and since it is my eight birthday, the luckiest one of all of my childhood Auntie told me… I get to pick out any one I want.....and she knows, and I know, which one it will be.

It was my Great Grandma’s....Aunt BumBum.....we called her BumBum because she only had one leg on accounta her diabetes and she’d go down the long spiral staircase on her bum, one step at a time, bum, bum. I am not sure why we called her Aunt though. Maybe Great Gram BumBum was ‘too full of the mouth’.

I only seen her in this one, in old photos. Aunt BumBum was always ‘dressed to the hilt’ my mom would tell me, and I know this to be true because even sliding down the stairs on her bum, she would have a nice dress and hat on.

….at the final bummmm she would hoist herself up with her sculpted biceps into her glitter and rhinestone laden wheelchair to roll into the kitchen to eat her lavish breakfast…..

Ahhhh…..staying overnight at Aunt Bumbums was like a page from Gone With The Wind….beauty and drama and family….lots of family…..and where there is family….there is food…….and in the morning…the food was……as it should be “a hearty meal to start the day”….scrambled eggs, crispy bacon with any unruly fat cut off, 2 pieces of town talk white bread toasted to a golden brown and marmalade….in a desert rose side bowl with a sterling silver tea sized spoon.

Back to the closet….this one, my favorite one, was purple, both Aunts’ favorite color, and VERY FRILLY. It had chiffon straps and was cut in a V with a ruffle for under your boobs when they grow in. It hung straight down from there in a soft silky way with another pretty ruffle around the bottom.

It was Aunt BumBum’s originally, her very best nightgown ordered from the “Fredericks of Hollywood” catalogue.

Someday I wanna go there and dress up just like the movie stars. They even talk about “Fredericks of Hollywood” right after “The Price Is Right”. The models on that show wear their clothes and now I WILL TOO!!!!!

“You can wear it this year, you are old enough now that you are eight.”

I feel soooooo grown up and special on this day. I beg my Aunt Easter to dig out the picture with Aunt BumBum in the purple night gown, and to take one of me in it with her new Polaroid Camera. She promises to, right after everyone is dressed. Next my Gram comes in, she picks a pink satin one. It fits her body tight and it’s shiny. My Gram looks BBEEAAAUUUTTTIIFFFUULLL.

“She has the body of a teenager”, our neighborhood romeo says.

Lastly, Aunt Easter chooses. She follows proper Ann Landers Etiquette and lets her guests go first. Aunt Easter Lily chooses a very girly one with pansies on it. It is full like a summertime party dress.

”I love looking down at their little faces smiling up at me”, she says, taking a sip of her vodka rocks.

We put our cocktails down on pansy coasters on her fancy dressing table and we slip into our party dresses. We are ready for our pajama birthday party.

Aunt Easter gets out the party hats.

Then….hair, makeup, and her big, bold jewels.

The unusually short and somehow dainty yellow grandmother clock, next to the fireplace in my Auntie’s bedroom chimes five times, and we are ready.

I look in the full length mirror at myself in her favorite purple number on my eighth year here. I look sad, but beautiful, a glimpse of the good life I would work hard to have….no matter what it took, or continues to take… I see hope here. Yes, hope….that is the biggest gift I was given from my auntie.

We descend down the same staircase that Aunt BumBum used in a regal procession and we look awesome. I know this because I can see us in the mirror through the banister on the wall across from the staircase. My Aunt BumBum put it there so she could always ‘check herself’ before greeting anyone for the day.

The cockers are up on their purple velvet flowered love seat as we enter the living room, and sit straight up like ballerinas before a plea’. They look sooooo cute in their hats!

My Aunt Easter Lily sits down at the shiny black baby grand piano, and My Uncle Sam puts his bow on the strings and they begin to play.

Gramma and I dance, cocktails in hand, singing and swaying and laughing and swirling. The dogs join in rubbing against our legs and our soft party dresses…… and before long, Uncle Croakus, emerges from his “do not disturb” basement bungalow… singing opera, yep, believe it….Uncle Croakus, the opera singer…

Uncle Croakus always liked coaching my singing….he was very picky and loud, and would turn red when he corrected me. He had ‘the voice of an angel’, the newspapers said, and I loved singing with him.

Sometime my Aunt must’ve stopped playing and snapped a polaroid unnoticed of Gram and I at my eighth birthday party. I look at this snapped shot and I see ME ......happy.......I see Aunt BumBum, before she was Aunt BumBum, when she was GreatGram Elizabeth in her Fredericks of Hollywood Best. I feel her confidence, her specialness, her life........I am HER. I see Aunt Easter Lily, on her honeymoon, the purple Fredericks a gift to wear....a gift from mother to daughter…….something borrowed for a young newlywed. I see her in Chicago in her big life in her big city apartment in her cocktail hours in her Fredericks purple…. before her pansies set in.....I am a LILY like her and her mama before that.

Ahhh……those cocktail hours….mind travel……. it was always fun.

It seemed like hours….in actuality, it was 4 to 5:30pm…then we’d have to scurry back to the wrong side of the tracks to make sure dinner was on the table for my Dad by 6:15 on the nose…..always the military man, he liked order.

I thought this is what everyone did…..we were happy for one hour and a half every day….and when the party was over, we went home.

On this, my 48th birthday, I put on the purple beauty that my boobs have grown into perfectly. I glance in the mirror and the young girl grown old. I take the gown off, sad from the hope of a different life. I take it outside to my garage sale. The Fredericks Of Hollywood Purple Special hangs on the very hanger my great grandmother made for it. A hanger that would not ruin the fabric. A hanger that is older than anyone at this sale could imagine.

“How much?” The little girl from across the street asks.

She is holding it up and looking at her reflection in the clean car door.

”Well, let me see. That is a VERY SPECIAL item. Come here.”

I take out the pictures, three generations of Fredericks in Purple......and on I go sharing stories of Lilys and Muffets and Grams, Great and Fun.

I hand it to her, hanger and all.

She takes her free prize excitedly across the street.

”THANK YOU SO SO MUCH MISS TRISHA!”

I smile and wonder what new stories will be created with her prize, and if she will remember and pass on mine. I hope so, like My Aunt Easter Lily of the Valley, my Godmother, I have no children of my own.....just my things and the stories they bring with them, enriching my life with their joy, their depth, their resilience, and on this day.....a bright new beginning.

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