6 - FUNERALS ARE FOR DANCING - Chapter Three - What Was It About Being Seven?

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Chapter Three – What Was It About Being Seven?

The most wonderful thing happened at my seventh birthday party.  Actually, birthday parties in our house were nearly always just immediate family however, there were times when grandparents, aunts, uncles and/or cousins would join in.  I don’t remember parties where friends were invited.  Being one of six kids, there were always enough people to make it a party.

  

We always got to choose our birthday meal so, depending whose birthday it was, there was a different celebratory menu.  I think mine was steak.  That must have stretched the budget for my parents.  Steak would be my last choice today.  

Mum would have made a special cake.  It was the only time I remember being allowed to drink pop.  Colourful streamers would have been strung and then there was the ice cream to go with the cake.  Back then there was ice cream in a brick form that would be sliced rather than scooped.  Party Brick was a favourite.  It was like Neapolitan ice cream with its three flavours … strawberry, chocolate and vanilla … except vanilla was replaced with a layer of orange sherbet.  It was a family favourite and ‘they’ don’t make sherbet as good as it was in Party Brick.    

I don’t remember Mum ever hiding treasures in the cake as others did.  Probably a good thing for our teeth we didn’t crunch into a coin wrapped in waxed paper.  What we always did was make a wish on our candles as we blew them out.  On my seventh birthday, my wish came true almost instantaneously.  I had wished that our Uncle Bill would be there for my birthday.  No sooner had the candles been snuffed than a knock came at the door and there he was.  It was like magic. 

Later in life, somewhere in my forties, I was on the proverbial shrink’s couch trying to change a needy behaviour that was wanting to be improved.  When I was asked when I thought I’d begun this behaviour my answer shot out right away, “Seven, I was seven.”  I then went on, as I sometimes do, to wonder aloud why I’d said seven. 

“Don’t worry about that,” I was told, “just tell me what was going on in your parent’s life when you were seven.”  After some head scratching, events started to come to mind. 

“Well, my mother’s Dad, my Grampa Tom, died when I was seven … and it was around that time that my mother had a baby die a couple of days after she was born … or was it then that she had a gallbladder operation?”  My dear psychiatrist just sat quietly and waited for the lights to go off, which they did big time.  I remember having the sensation of being drilled back into my chair and ‘getting it’.  How could a parent give the attention needed by a child at times of such stress?  So, it’s when our parents are distracted by the stressors of life and we feel ignored that we start behaviours that later need to be changed.  Just an aside - I believe that sooner or later most of us need to do our ‘work’ on the couch to make sense out of ourselves and our lives.  

Here I was in my forties with two young adopted children who’d been there when I was dealing with a threatening pregnancy followed by the birth of our son, Dana, who lived all but ten days of his life in hospital for the short eleven months and four days he was given on this earth.  Had I been there emotionally for my young children’s needs during all those ups and downs?  I doubted that very much.  Physically, I’d been there as much as was humanly possible, visiting the hospital during the kid’s afternoon naps and after they went to bed at night.    

It’s pretty easy to forgive parents when such a light shines itself onto one's psyche.  So why do I tell you this now?  Am I getting ahead of my own life?  I think it’s important to know that my inner being felt ignored from the age of seven.  I believe that feeling would temper my feelings into the future especially when you think I was the youngest child of three for five years before the second set of three children were born bringing our grand sibling total to six.  That feeling of being ignored did not disappear for decades … maybe it still exists to this day in spite of the fact I learned from whence it came about thirty years ago?  Whoever said life would be easy?  For me, life is a continuing game of mental gymnastics ... always trying to get it right.

Emails welcome at funeralsarefordancing@rogers.com.