Easter

"No one's going to this Easter dinner that's not packing heat."


This is what my father tells me over the phone after confessing that yes, it's nice Mongo wants all of her boys at her house for Easter. As long as Danny doesn't decide to shoot us all, he adds. Which was exactly what I was thinking so it was weird to have a moment of psychic dad-ness. He's generally not the type for that.

So here you have an elderly woman with Alzheimers, and six middle aged some-of-them-almost-qualifying-for -medicare aged sons and nearly twenty five years of repressed hurt and anger. In at least one of them, that anger and hurt could be reaching a boiling point that will explode over all of them. I am hoping this is not an explosion that involves ammunition of any kind. But I know my family and responsible gun owners that they are, they are heavy drinkers and frankly I don't think an Easter day massacre is out of the question. And since apparently they're all packing heat I don't think they do either.



When I was an infant and my parents were still teenagers moved off to upstate New York, apparently there was a phone call from my grandmother saying my grandfather was threatening to line up the family and shoot all the boys in order of age, then the dog, then my grandmother, then himself. Grandpa was a manic depressive and apparently not having a good day that day. I heard this story at way too young an age and I've never questioned the story or what happened to avert disaster.

I can't help worrying that history- even history that is legend and not factual- will repeat.