Birthday Boy

Today is my brother Vincent's birthday. He and I are the 3rd and 4th children of four, so we are naturally connected by birth order.  I was (am) the nudgey little sister who always wanted to be part of the action with he and my older brother Joe whether it was playing army men, navy men, wrestling, running, dodge ball - the activity didn't matter.  Like a horse at the starting gate, I just wanted to burst onto the track and get in on all that I saw in front of me. 

So, today I celebrate the sibling who is directly in front of me as he completes his six decades around the Sun because I have been a beneficiary of his big heart and passion for life all these years.  Vincent has always taken his role as big brother to heart.  Our grade school parking lot was the 'playground' at recess and the boys and girls were separated by a white line - woe to anyone who crossed it. (Can you guess it was a parochial school?)  Vincent would regularly stand on that line and send an emissary to get me and check if I had lunch money, snack or whatever.  Of course I would huff in exasperation as I was pulled from my friends to answer his queries but I loved that he cared so much. 
 
His best buddy in high school, Tom,  stood well over six feet tall so when I finally became eligible to attend the Saturday night mixers, I was shadowed by my brother and his posse which was easy to identify because of very tall Tom.  While my friends loved the attention of older boys, I was irritated by the glaring intrusion into my gaggle of girls.  One friend noted that her brother always ignored her at the dances, and, well, everywhere else.  The sting of her statement translated clearly for me.  Outwardly I would sometimes be annoyed by Vincent's attention, but inside it felt good to know he was watching out for me.
 
Ironically I attended the same university as Tom, so Vincent came a callin' on my college campus - same deal, different location.  By then I had accepted that this was the painless cost of being Vincent's younger sister.
 
When I picture Vincent in my mind he is always smiling.  His grin, while often a sign of joy, can also be a sign of nervousness and this became no more clearer than when he became an altar boy.  We all attended one of the first Masses he served alongside our brother, Joe.  Joe knew the ropes and had a somewhat serious nature, so pairing him with Vincent proved interesting.  As the brothers rounded the sacristy together Vincent's smile overtook his face for the entire Mass.  It still makes me giggle.  Joe kept telling him to stop smiling which of course had the opposite result.  Vincent caught the wrath of the nun in charge of altar boys and so emerged his relationship with authority.  The tale is a family favorite.
 
Just as I finished up my four years away at school, Vincent packed up his things and moved to Hawaii.  (Or as my mom describes it, referring to its distance from home, the Moon.) He heard the Siren's call and actually answered it.  I wonder how many of us really do that?  Thirty-five years later, he nurtures his family business on their organic sprout farm as he doggedly seeks better soil health as a small farmer/activist. He lives his passion with no stop button.  As he says repeatedly, "It's all about the food."

I love that his legacy, so far, is one of love, humor, and big-heartedness.  Vincent is a wide open door to Life.  I deeply admire these qualities especially because boys/men don't necessarily go first to these emotional places with such gusto.

Here is his TedxMaui Talk titled "Soil: Having a Sense of Humus" given on Maui in 2012.  It says everything about who he is.  Happy Birthday, dear Brother - Vincenzo no ka oi!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAbhN3SESpI

That Suit

"If there is a single item that captures both the shame and the violence

that erupted that day, and the glamour and artifice that preceded it,

it is Jackie Kennedy’s bloodstained pink suit,

a tantalizing window on fame and fashion, her allure and her steely resolve,

 the things we know about her and the things we never quite will. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/fashion/jacqueline-kennedys-smart-pink-suit-preserved-in-memory-and-kept-out-of-view.html?ref=style

 

The Kennedys arrive in Dallas 11/22/63.

 The recognizable pink Chanel suit with matching pillbox hat.  It was a soft feminine touch on a day that would land like granite in our American hearts.

 

The NYTimes article which recently noted the blood stained suit's whereabouts joins the chorus of media outlets focusing on the five decade anniversary of JFK's assassination. The First Lady's well known suit has been packed away in a National Archives storage site in Maryland where it will be kept from public view until 2103.  This decision made by Caroline Kennedy in 2003, provides rare privacy to an otherwise overwhelmingly public family.

 

I used to dress my Barbie doll as Jackie Kennedy using colored tissues and leftover fabric pieces from my mother's sewing box.  I would tape and pin what appeared to my 7 year old brain to be striking replicas of the tailored skirts and dresses worn by the First Lady.  My guess is that her youth and beauty made her more reachable to my little girl sensibilities unlike Mamie Eisenhower or Lady Bird Johnson who seemed more grandma-like. 

 

I distinctly remember asking for pink colored Kleenex so my Barbie doll could be appropriately dressed in that sad November of 1963.  Playing with dolls was such a favorite pastime for me; something I did way past the acceptable age for such childhood fantasy.  When history slammed into our collective living rooms that year, one way it translated in this little girl's life was as Barbie morphing into Jackie in a pink Chanel suit.   
 

As a second grader in 1963 at the now shuttered St. Philomena parochial school, I have a crystal clear memory of hearing the news about the assassination.  Class was interrupted by the principal speaking over the school PA system. I was seated at my desk as the unusually shaky voice of Mother Pasquelina stated the President had been shot and killed.  There was silence and then some sniffling from a few classmates quick to feel the universal pang of sadness.  It is a stabbing, singular memory.

 

In the following days my family, like so many others, sat transfixed to the television reports.  Time seemingly stopped on 11/22/63.

 

My brother Vincent's birthday is 11/23.  The national mourning ran roughshod over his tenth birthday. His memory is one of a sadness that especially consumed the adults 
around his special day.  John Kennedy Jr.'s birthday was 11/25 - the day of his dad's funeral.  Days of gift wrapped grief collided with what should have been happier times.

I'm glad the Chanel suit is packed away, unseen for another 90 years.  While it may add allure to the iconic Jacqueline Kennedy, the deliberate privacy tenderly reminds us that loss is first a personal experience, even if you were the First Lady.