First, though, nostalgia. Easter Sunday, when I was growing up, was a lot of fun. Usually we went to my aunt’s house, which entailed an encounter with most of my father’s family. When I was younger I didn’t care for that side of the family. I much preferred my mother’s people. But the older I get the more stark the reversal. My mother’s relations were kind of haughty, kind of taken with themselves. My father’s family, on the other hand, was so unapologetically fucked up that I have come to admire them almost unconditionally. One of his aunts, who reminds me very much of one of my brothers, was so outrageously audacious that people simply let her have her way. That was easier then arguing with her, because really, where would you even start? Unfortunately, the result of that approach was that this woman owned everything, and it wasn’t until she nearly killed herself in a fire and lost her mind and came to live with us at the age of 90 that anyone ever told her no. Also unfortunate is the fact that the person who did that was my mother. Then there was Jack and Marie: they would show up for Easter breakfast, Jack’s big black car gliding up the driveway as if they were part of a procession. Jack was one of my father’s cousins, and Marie had been at one time married to someone’s uncle, some guy with only one leg whose name nobody can ever recall. They went on trips together, tours, as Jack called them, to places like Hawaii and California. “San Francisco!” Jack slurred once. “Now that’s my kind of town!” My aunt, my father’s sister, and her family would switch rooms around at least once a year, so that what was considered the living room the year before would, by Easter morning, have been designated as the new dining room. When we were really little my cousins and I would take turns sliding down the laundry chute, which started in the upstairs bathroom and wound up in the downstairs one, which did not have a door. Once, my oldest cousin, who had epilepsy, had a seizure while taking a bath upstairs, flooding the room as well as the chute, and after that we didn’t play in it anymore. That cousin is now a big deal in Vermont accounting circles. My aunt used to yell at her husband “Go to your room Dick!” at some point during the gathering. One of my cousins is mentally retarded because she had spinal meningitis as a baby, and when her temperature went up she called a priest and then called my mother, who told her she really needed to call a doctor. One Easter, after breakfast, one of my cousins – who is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen – pierced her ears with a needle that had been dipped in rubbing alcohol. I held the ice behind her earlobes.
Fortunately, even though that branch of the family is hopelessly Catholic, there were never any priests at the table, or lurking in the bathroom, or out back behind the collapsing garage. I’d be lying if I said I am not enjoying watching the latest unraveling of what I consider the greatest show on earth. I don’t care what the pope knew, or when, or what he did or did not do. I don’t care about the church official in New York who has called the latest series of revelations “petty gossip of dominant opinion.” I don’t care about the case, in Oregon of all places, that was covered on the news this week and referenced “the perversion files,” a term that is really way too good to leave alone, a term that would be an excellent title for a Broadway musical: The Perversion Files. What I do care about is that there are millions of people around the world who continue to surrender their brains – and their money – to this tax-exempt drag show. Especially this week – the holiest of them all, which makes me wonder why this, instead of Christmas, isn’t the grand slam of holiday seasons – when the news went round the world that in the U.S., the Catholic church has created a program to help people recognize early warning signs of child sexual abuse. That’s almost as magical as dead people rising up out of the dirt.
