About a month ago I had this great idea. The muse called to me. Assemble a family tree. Come to understand your ancestry. It is time to confront your lineage.

-What the hell, I thought. Who am I to fly in the face of the daughters of Zeus?

After all wasn’t it Mneme, who in a dream, gave me leave to explore my memory?

And wasn’t it Urania who gave me a vision that I would live for a time once again at 1533 Maple Avenue in the house that my father built?

And how about old Thalia who lead me down the comedic path to Lackzoom Acidophilus?

So which of these lively lovely ladies called to me?
I just hoped it wasn’t Melpomene, the songstress of tragedy.

It started simply enough. I purchased a piece of software and started to fill in the blanks. Begin, the help file counseled, with yourself, the biggest blank of all. Further, said the help oracle, when compiling your genealogy, always find the best documentation that you can. I grabbed the old lock box off the top shelf of the bedroom closet. You all have one. Tan, maybe gray, painted metal with important papers inside. The registration for the 1961 White Ford Falcon. A copy of an insurance policy that you cashed in thirty years ago. Birth Certificates and copies of Birth Certificates. A cross earned, like military honors, at First Holy Communion. Inside, under the papers, an unused key that looks as if it might work to lock the box. A small silver circular lock on the exterior looks like, if you actually used that key and then lost immediately, it would not sustain one large blow from a hammer or an insistent crack from the long blade of a slot head screwdriver. Nor is fireproofing one of its virtues. It is there, as we shall see only to keep the prying eyes of your children from “the whole story”.

I found War Ration Book Four from WWII. Cards with pictures of Saints and Prayers, my father’s demobilization papers, honorably discharged in 1943 form the Army Air Corps, Thank you. A Plan of Property, Social Security information and MYSTERY #1.

My father’s Birth Certificate.

Born May 20, 1911 one Guiseppi Generoso Coluccio.

Who?

See my name is Joseph Anthony Coluccio Jr. on account of my father is Joseph Anthony Coluccio Sr. Honest it says it on my birth certificate.

Attached to the document is a letter dated February 9, 1942 signed Concetto Coluccio, who is my father’s father, stating that his son’s “right and proper” name is Joseph Anthony Coluccio and not Guiseppi Generoso Coluccio. You would have thought that in 30 some years someone would have noticed the mistake.

And now for MYSTERY #2.

My parents wedding certificate says that they were married on May 11, 1946.
And, by gum, they celebrated that anniversary every year.

I was born on December 31, 1944.

I know in this day, an age where people have two children from one marriage, another born after a passionate weekend trip to Connecticut with a psychotic movie star, one adopted from the USSR and one created in vitro and implanted in a surrogate, that being issued a couple years shy of a wedding certificate is no big deal.

And truly it doesn’t bother me. Although at work they are having a field day pointing out that they always knew I was a bastard, so why should they be surprised.

But it did give me pause in the second or so of recognition and realization. My mother and father have passed away as have all of their brothers and sisters. What made me hold my breath was that there simply was no one to ask. No one to explain what had happened. I was too stupid to ask when someone could have answered.

If, of course, I had known.

I hope I can paste the pieces of my life together for my children. I have vowed to do so. It will look more like a cubist collage or perhaps a ransom note cut from newspaper print, than a coherent picture, but what answers I can supply will be there.

Asterisk and all.

With all respect to the artistic excellence and the depth of emotion shown by Jorgi Jorgenson:

When did Holmes return from his deadly tumble over the Reichenbach Falls.
The birthplace of meringue, if you can believe
In the Springtime, my dear compatriot

And Whan was it that Aprille with his shoures soote,
bathed every veyne in swich licour?
I believe the same April that
bred lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing memory and desire,
stirring dull roots with spring rain.

When is the resurrection of Christ
When is opening day for baseball
When can I open my inside world to the outside

Spring is that time of year that has a lot to proclaim. It’s a little like Friday afternoon just after work when a whole world of the soul is possible. The Pirates, as I write at 1 and 7, have me for a month, maybe two, maybe all the way to the All Star Game. I watch Angels in the Outfield (Do not even ask which version, there is only one version and yes Spring Byington is in it, as is the Gulf Station at North Craig and Bayard) with a clump in my throat and tears in my eye. It may be the closest I come to a Fundamental Christianity all year.

Yes, there is sans doute a spring in my step. There I’ve said it for all the world to hear!

And when I was just a youngun’, the event of the year would swing in the spring. It was better, I promise you than, Christmas morning. More spirit filled than Easter. It always happened on the Friday around May 20th, my old man’s birthday, which we would celebrate on the veranda of a stately cafeteria while smeared colored lights and hot oily smelling machines hummed.

The Penn Hills School District would quit an entire Friday this miraculous day. Long rolls and booklets of tickets went on sale in the classroom in early April for the school picnic at discounted prices.

Long suffering, the Catholic Church wasn’t nearly as accommodating. Oh the sin of meat on Friday more deadly than the sins of bacon frying! Standing on hot black top next the mechanical grind of Looping Loops, forced by the evil spirit to forgo the dull pasteboard taste of Mrs. Paul’s. That first bite, the saliva provoking, deep red, rouge of the hot dog. A verbal prayer as slap across the forehead “Oh my God, I have most heartily sinned, but honest I forgot it was Friday and I’m so tired of macaroni and cheese, mea maxima culpa and yes ketchup on the burger, buddy.”

There is an amusement park, east side of Pittsburgh reborn each spring of the year after the dead tracking cold of winter and ice that even an Eliza blast furnace city side couldn’t melt. Deep in the industrial maw of America the park was created circa 1898 so that the power companies could create a destination for under utilized electric trolleys on the weekend. It was purchased from the Kenny Family. It was named Kennywood. Each year it rises brighter than Camelot out of the brown shallow waters of the Mon River.

Just today, my jacket rakishly open in the parking lot at work, my mind clicked stop, a small silver bearing dropping into a roulette slot: 1958. Just a kid formulating the universe in my own peculiar image of twirling stars and galaxies in the back yard, chilled despite the early warmth, and romance a plenty. All time sprayed before me. I see myself then seeing myself now.

First it’s the Jack Rabbit, then headin’ for the Pippin and after that a penny for a post card of Linda Darnell, her long hair to her shoulders, that creamy creamy skin.Silver Rockets elegantly swinging over the lake. The crazy gypsy lady in the glass booth from a thousand centuries ago swings her finger my way says, “Got you, darling.”

I almost smile.