That was my Daddy. Well, still is my Daddy in my heart. This week was always a big family week in our house. It is also the week my big brother Rocky and my big sister Heidi were born, on the same day 8 years a part. I think it was 8 years. I was one of the babies. I know my attention to the blog has waned a bit but my enthusiasm has not. I owe you readers a Bailey's cupcake and tomorrow is the day. First I need to unload the thoughts that are on my mind. This time last year I was spending my days at my Mother's bedside. I had my big sisters, my little sister, my blessing sister (she married Rocky) and my big brother. We spent this week saying our good byes and remember our lives as the children of I.T. and Lee Van Patten. So to remember them and to love my family here I go remembering birthdays and life in our home.
I will always remember the way we celebrated birthdays; it was your favorite meal, your favorite cake and dinner in the dinning room. We would eat the fun stuff for birthdays. Mom would always make fondue or crazy Italian dishes or scrumptious Mexican. (Mexican before it was available off the grocers shelf!) For really big birthdays like 13 or 16 we would get dressed up and have dinner at the Princess Anne Country Club on a Sunday evening before the birthday. There was not a "friend" birthday every year were there are too many kids and too many presents. Just good food and family. As we got older these dinners were the norm when we would come home from college or just to for visit. We would gather at home and sit around the dinning room table and enjoy fondue, or peel shrimp and pick crabs. We would discuss politics. We would hash out my latest misbehavior. There would be planning for graduations, weddings and the holidays.
Mom worked hard at making us remember birthdays by bringing us together for these celebrations even after we had moved out of the house. For me this meant I got to bring a new roommate or boyfriend and try him on the family. Jon stuck! He loved those boisterous meals at the Van Patten's were he was first initiated over peeling shrimp and picking crabs. He grew up in a family were the table was fairly quiet..never at the Van Patten's. There was always an extended family member around our table and in our home.
Mom was always gathering a stray family or friend. She once met a woman and her girls at the grocery store and became fast friends with her. They joined us for these meals. I find myself having a hard time saying I am sorry you can't stay for dinner to this very day. I was raised in an enviroment were everyone was welcome. Sometimes I feel like Strega Nona with her magic pasta pot. It is the enviroment that my mom created and Daddy watched over that was unique. They never appeared to be flustered. Not even when I was 23 and had Elvis from Hell play for a keg party in the back yard.
I did live at home for a brief time in my twenty-somethings. I know for sure that it must have tried my parents patience. It just never appeared that way to me. I was always eager to be welcoming to friends at any hour. Jon remembers fondly one of the first times he brought me home to my parents house with my buddies Koggie and Susan. I tempted him in the house with the promise of an omelet. The free show from Koggie was a bonus!! I was in the kitchen banging around with pots and pans when Daddy saunters in the adjoining den right next to Jon and says; Ma-r-g ar-eeet I th-i-nk it i-s time for your fr-i-en-ds to go home now. Now I have hyphenated the text here to exemplify how daddy would talk with his slow sweet southern draw. If you ever heard it you would never forget it. Just as Susan or was Koggie and I will never forgot the time we thought we had out smarted him. We had come home at the "curfew" time and snuck back out the window for more fun! I was legal at 21. Yet when we returned some hours later he had locked the window and had called the police to complain of a disturbance in his driveway. There was no way out but through the front door and the doorbell.
It was always an understanding of the right and wrong that Mom and Dad both allowed me to push. Many times while at home I was not their favorite child. I loved our home, the place were Mom and Dad lived. The love that surrounded you and the hospitality to all that grace the front stoop. The education they gave me around the dinning room table; about life and love. I enjoyed it so much. This is the week that our Mother chose to go and be with Daddy. It had been five long years on this earth with out him. Some of that time pretty mad he had left here first. In my heart I think she left here on this particular week in March to share another family celebration with Daddy. She did not choose to go on his birthday. As she then could not bare to leave on a landmark birthday for Rocky and Heidi . So she stuck it out a few more hours and let the birthdays pass. This week she is with Daddy and we are here celebrating in our own familial ways with love they taught us to share without making a big deal out of your birthday.
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