I offer a variation of this every year on this date. So if you've read it before, you are either a glutton for punishment by making a repeat visit to this space or are REALLY unlucky at reincarnation.
Today is Saint Joseph's Day, the feast of the husband of Mary (Mother of God) and (sort of) Jesus's stepdad. I always imagine a dinner-table exchange between the Son of Man (as a child) and Joseph where he says, "Then go ahead and ask your 'real dad' for a new bike. Let's see what happens." And then The Curia or the Legion of Decency show up at my house and slap the cuffs on.
As a grade-school child, I missed the subtlety that went into the talk-around as the Sisters of Charity explained 'the Annunciation', and when I got older, and it smacked me right between the eyes, I admired even more the cool, collected response Joseph seemed to have had to all of that.
Today, Saint Joseph's Day, is when the swallows come back to Capistrano. I love the story as much now in my seventies as I did hearing it as a child. I find it reassuring, and while my belief in a Divine Being fluctuates wildly, I hope (in a faint-hearted, wimpy sort of way) that Paley is right about the Great Watchmaker.
I have known two very dear people who shared Saint Joseph's Day as their birthday. They are both from long ago, at the time when I knew everything (and everything better) when I worked for American Forces (Europe) Network and Bob was my first (and very best) boss in Radio Command Information (together with Sara, Marge, Norm and Brian) while Gisela was the record librarian of the most amazing (and amazingly organized) collection of vinyl in the world.
Bob was married to 'local color' as I was to be as well (GIs who married citizens from the country in which they were stationed; usually guys marrying women but NOT always). He and his wife, Erika, had no children but loved as if she were one, a stray dog they took in and kept all its life, Sandy.
Erika and Sandy passed away pretty close to one another, leaving a hole in Bob's heart that never healed, filled with a pain of which he never spoke. Bob himself passed some years ago, and I see him at this very moment in my mind's eye in a beaten beige long coat with a beret he wore in every kind of weather.
Gisela was my translator when the letter of permission from the Standesamt of Offenbach am Main (where Sigrid and I hoped to marry) arrived, and I raced frantically from office to office in the building trying to find someone to be my eyes (I was illiterate auf Deutsch and vowed to never be that guy again).
Gisela put her glasses on near the edge of her nose and would read a line and then look over the tops to give me the English translation. I still recall the shine in her eyes and her warm smile as she reached the conclusion granting us permission, and she clasped both of my shoulders and hugged me in congratulations.
I remember both of them today, maybe more so than Saint Joseph, perhaps because I don't know how many others remember them, and I'm sad when I think about what happens to you when the last person on earth to know you dies.
So, today, I tell a little of the story of their lives, as I knew them, to remind me to celebrate their lives and hope the day comes when we can laugh together about all of that and so much more.
Happy Birthday, Bob und Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Gisela.
-bill kenny
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