The Idea: the sobering reality of a drunk conversation.: Familial Epiphany <body><script type="text/javascript"> function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) { if(window.addEventListener) { window.addEventListener('load', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false); } else { window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }); } } </script> <div id="navbar-iframe-container"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> gapi.load("gapi.iframes:gapi.iframes.style.bubble", function() { if (gapi.iframes && gapi.iframes.getContext) { gapi.iframes.getContext().openChild({ url: 'https://www.blogger.com/navbar/24213778?origin\x3dhttp://itstheidea.blogspot.com', where: document.getElementById("navbar-iframe-container"), id: "navbar-iframe" }); } }); </script>

Familial Epiphany

Posted by Steve Bagley

I’ve been away from home for some time now and fondly anticipate the dinner my mother is preparing. Upon stepping in the house I feel as though I almost need to duck to avoid the verbal crossfire that has been triggered by what surely began as a spirited debate.

My sis is fighting with my parents—about her new haircut, I think--and the windows are wide open and my mom is simultaneously screaming, baking chicken and cooking sausages and sauce; and these succulent, heady smells are wafting out the windows like musical notes from a cartoon piano;

—And I know our fat puritan, fearful America—shush-in-the-library neighbors across the way are frowning in utter disapproval of the racket—however being holier than thou, and fatter than thou, like I said--- they are surely jealous of the Mediterranean olive-oil frying pan breeze drifting benevolently outward from our windows— the essence of sausage and sauces with peppers and tomatoes and onions, garlic, and baking chicken—all dancing from the old-country ancestral brick oven, carried outside by the breeze like a conga-line of holy-cooking-food dancing softly and seductively to accordions and mandolins—tomatoes, chickens and sausages shaking their asses to the beat as they parade by the noses of the disapproving—And then my sister’s vocal display cuts through the foody musk--

“But Mommmm! But! But! But Mommmmm!” And that screaming--back and forth! These people! Despicable! No peace and quiet coming from these ones…

--and back in the kitchen Dad is yelling and reading the front page and Mom is still screaming and cooking and stirring wooden spoons, and Sis is screaming and jumping and Papa… with huge glasses on an old thoughtful face—is observing my sis emphasize the last word of each screamed-out sentence with punches and kicks to the air; and my Dad is looking up from the paper at random intervals to bellow at the top of his lungs—and now its Mom’s turn to scream—and check the oven—and scream once more--And sis! Now everybody at once! And all this time Papa is still watching this fiasco with great sincere interest—waiting patiently for the food—and everyone's screaming and cooking and reading and waiting for the food to be ready and I’m sitting here in the middle of this—all this—and all I can think to myself is wow, after all these years, it is us. We are the neighborhood guineas.

“Familial Epiphany”

  1. Blogger Ben Myers Says:

    when the moon hits the eyes like a big pizza pie... that's amore