1. “The Birthday Party: A Cast of Characters”
A stranger looking at the 8” x 10” black and white photograph would probably guess
incorrectly which of the eleven children sitting across from each other at the rough
improvised table is the star of the day. One would probably point to the round-faced,
slightly chubby girl with neatly braided hair wearing a cute sundress. She is sitting
at the front end of the table and looking brightly into the camera. Or maybe the
birthday girl is the pretty young lady with the stylish dark hair who is seated at the
other end biting serenely into one of the homemade cupcakes. In truth, she is the
one hunched between the pigtailed girl and the biggest boy. She is looking forlornly
toward the camera with a serious expression on her little oval face. There I am, and
it is my seventh birthday.
It is a warm day, September 3, 1950. We are outdoors in
the side yard of the once elegant, now slightly shabby,
Victorian house where I grew up. Designed by a noted
architect in the mid-nineteenth century as a “country
home” for a wealthy Boston merchant, the
neighborhood around it had changed character over the
years and was, at the time of the photo, a built-up
enclave of Irish and Italian working class families. A few
tired balloons are dangling from a large apple tree, one

2. of the many my uncles pirated away from Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where they worked as teen-agers thanks to a New Deal program
aimed at keeping young people occupied while they learned life skills during the
hard times of the Great Depression.
The adults – my parents, two aunts, and a neighbor holding a baby - are all linked to
the children who are guests at the party – my relatives, close friends, and their
siblings. The women are wearing cotton dresses, one checkered, one striped, one
solid-colored, and one with a peasant top and somewhat gaudy printed skirt. It is
the onset of the fifties, and women were not yet accustomed to wearing jeans or
slacks to special occasions, not even informal ones like my birthday party. My father
is smoking a Pall Mall cigarette and holding up a glass bottle of root beer. No real
beer for him, a recovering alcoholic; the cigarettes would be his undoing. He died at
age sixty-two in the bed where he had been confined for a long time due to the
ravages of emphysema. My little brother, not in the picture because he was not yet
born, was alone in the house when our father fell into the sleep from which he
would never awaken.
Some of the guests at the party continued to be significant players in my life story
for many years to come. My cousin Richie, who is next to me at the table, had a
greater impact on my life than anyone else in the photo, save for my parents and my
angelic looking but rough and tumble brother, third back on the left looking straight
into the camera. Richie was eight years my senior, a future graduate of Boston Latin
School and Harvard University. He introduced me to the young man who would
become my husband and cultivated my studious inclinations. We played a lot of
Scrabble games under the apple trees and listened on the radio to our beloved Red
Sox lose, and lose, and lose.
I have lost touch with Joan, Jane, and Judy, the three “J’s” who lived next door, and
also with Janice, my best friend, seated in a place of honor right beside me in the
photo. I did contact her a few years ago when I read that her mother had died from
Alzheimer’s and sent a card to the address in the online obituary. So ironic because
the most vivid memory I have of Mrs. Riley is that she was a voracious reader and
walked a mile to and from the public library carrying a stack of books several times
a week. So much for brain training and exercise to stave off dementia.
Lawrence, the little boy sitting next to Richie, served in the Vietnam War, a fearless
tail gunner, who came home emotionally fragile and who died prematurely from
liver cancer. My beautiful cousin Alice, the tall girl, sitting in second place on the
bench across from me, with her perfect features and silky black hair styled in a
Dutch clip, is still lovely and keeps in touch via email and an occasional lunch. My
Aunt Nita, after whom I am named, is holding up an unidentifiable object along with
her ever-present cigarette. She suffered a stroke at mid life and died from a heart
attack a few years later. The most long-lived were my dignified and gracious Aunt
Abbie in the solid colored dress and my smart, loving mother, who is next to my dad

3. and smiling broadly for the photograph. They both enjoyed satisfying, productive
lives and died in their nineties from natural causes.
My brother Arthur, peeking out on the left behind Alice and Jane, is four years
younger and as different from me as any two family members could possibly be. As
cautious and proper as I was, he was wild and free-spirited. Although when children
we argued and fought as all young siblings do, in adulthood we developed a strong
and supportive friendship. He was my baseball buddy, my telephone pal, and my
link to the past we shared growing up in Dorchester in our amazing extended family.
When I lost him this summer, a part of my past went with him.
The shy looking child with the serious eyes, the birthday girl, is now a widow, still
grieving the loss of her beloved companion of forty-eight years – a retired
grandmother whose story is not yet done. If the first seven decades are an
indication, they will be purposeful, and tinged with both sadness and wonder.
~ Splitends
Summer 2016