When you grow up in a large family keeping track of your
siblings’ birthdays becomes a major undertaking. You can cheat when you still
live at home because Mom worries about all of that-and in this case, probably
still does-but once you’re gone, you can never come back when you’re out of the blue and into the black.
We grew up under one roof, or more precisely a series of
different roofs, as six children in the same family but closer to being two
clusters of three children reasonably close together with a pregnant pause (pun
intended) in the middle (that may get me a pop on the nose from one or more of
my brothers and sisters).
Evan Dolores, Kelly Christopher, Kara Melissa, Jill Marie
and Adam. My mother hadn’t run out of middle names by the time she got to Adam,
but the check engine light on whimsy was burning brightly. Mom loves to tell of
the day Adam, whose birthday we celebrate today, was being baptized and Father Stosh
expressed (mild) surprise at his having but one name. Our mother
explained to the good priest ‘he was God’s first and he’s my last. Pour the
water.’
I’m not sure any of us kids gave any of that a moment’s
thought. Adam was another Kenny Kid to be piled into the Chrysler Newport
station wagon that was eventually replaced by a Ford Country Squire because in
the pre-fab sprout era of America, what else could hold that many children?
I am inordinately fond of my youngest brother and make no
apologies for it. I have my reasons and they’re not mine if I tell you. We look
nothing alike but I suspect people guess easily that we are brothers (so much
for the element of surprise). I'm the more handsome but also the more modest, while he has the talent and the wisdom (to not argue about the looks and modesty).
Adam has all the brains some of us older children suggested
might be genetically possible without actually realizing. We were the promise, he was the performance. He
was my wingman at Rutgers College-too young, yet, for school himself, I took him with
me to courses sometimes every day for a week or more. I never asked him what he
made of his first college experience (he is a devoted RU football fan, despite
being a CU Buffalo Alum) or what, if anything, he got out of listening to music on eight track cartridges in my
Pinto, at max vol, rushing cross-town in New Brunswick (before its renaissance)
to classes on the various campuses.
I lied to him later, not so much a lie as pulling his leg,
when I promised him an armadillo when I was going to Air Force basic training
in San Antonio, Texas, or later, as I assured him I’d bring him back a penguin
from my assignment in Greenland (I think he had long known penguins were found
only at the other pole; I learned that only after having purchased a pigeon in
a tuxedo six months after arriving at Sondy.)
The six of us kenny kids are a rambling, shambling assortment of
aspiration, inspiration and perspiration but as long as we all continue to
practice respiration we’ll never lack for company. I'm not sure what our spouses make of us and we rarely enough ever get together so the danger of that is minimal. Adam and Margaret are still
getting used to living in a house with an echo, which is what parents
everywhere earn as a result and reward of doing their jobs. That might make
today’s birthday a little different in terms of third-party help when it’s time to blow out
the candles, but I think my youngest brother will do just fine. Take a deep breath and have a Happy
Birthday, Adam!
-bill kenny
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