Easter 1947 was on the sixth of April. My mother used to tell me she had been sure I would arrive that day.
I didn't.
Nor during the snow on Easter Monday, nor any day of the rest of that week. The next Sunday's mass was interrupted midway by an urgency now familiar, there being two girls and a little baby boy already next to her in the pew. She said she knew she would have time to get everyone back to the house on Newman Street and get Dorie from next door to watch over the little ones while she and Pop headed over to the hospital.
I was red, dark haired and fat. um. Loud. Yes. I was loud, the healthiest of all the babies they had already had. M. was so sick her first year they counted every day she lived as lucky. A. was skinny and in turns fussy, hard to feed and then, a golden child of wonder. B., the boy, was a hard birth, no forceps scars, but his little arm was broken as he emerged and because of that lived his first months wearing a tiny sling.
So, that was 1947 and I started counting my first years. Do you remember the first time you realized that you were a certain age? Most kids remember being four, some even remember being two. I read about a guy who claimed he remembered lying on a kitchen table having his diaper changed and looking first to one side out a window then turning to see a white plate with fried eggs on it to his other. huh. I remember sitting in my father's big red chair and waiting. I waited for as long as I thought possible, then I would climb down and walk into the kitchen where my mother was cooking dinner and ask "How manys am I now?"
"You're three." she'd reply, "The same as you were ten minutes ago."
That was disappointing. Now that I was three, I really wanted to be four, but that, it was explained several times to me, would take a whole year. I went back to my father's chair. I could wait. Boy, I could wait.
I'm sorry to tell you that if you've read this far you've been tricked. This isn't really about me. Well, it is and it isn't. It's about me in that, although I've been around since 1947 April 14, I turn five tomorrow. That's right, not four, but five. And I was wondering how manys are you now? All the realists and people not afflicted with any sense of the poetic or the ironic will say "sixty-three" or some other equally ridiculously high number, but they are only dealing with what's real and not with what's possible.
I say it's possible for you, even though you were born in 1947, to be five this year. I'm going to be. See, five years ago, I hit the re-set button on my life. I started beginning and really I haven't really started anything else but beginning ever since that time. Everybody knows the story so I won't bore you with the details of dropping ninety pounds and going from someone who nearly died if he had to doubletime a few yards to catch a bus to being a two-time marathoner. I'm just starting, I'm only five. I've got a lot more to get done, but my question is: how manys are you?
If I hadn't already picked five, I would pick one. And not necessarily mean one year, I mean, maybe you would pick one and mean one year and that would be fine, but I think if I was picking a place to start I'd pick one as in one day. Here it is: day one, the first day, opening day, inaugural day. Man, I feel the energy from that and it's not even my pick.
Of course, you don't have to pick day one, but don't stick with sixty-three years unless, and this is possible, unless everything has flowed your way for all those sixty three years and if it has ---good on you. But I think most of you have had a moment where you began all over again and all I'm saying is that's the day you ought to celebrate, that's the date, the moment, the turning point and that's the date from which you should count your manys.
The funny thing is, it will make you feel different. I'm not going to go into all the different ways thinking you are sixty years younger will change how you see the world. I will let
you tell
me the next time I see you.
Because, after we hug hello, I am going to ask you "How manys are you now?"
