Does this mean we need to put an asterisk by your name on the family tree? – Steve Coluccio

by

in

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.