She promised me a pony. She swore I'd get a pony. She brings me a little paper bird on a stick from the circus, you know, the kind that you have to twirl around your head to get them to tweet.
Then she tells me if I'm a good girl, a really good girl, God will turn that paper bird into a real one. Which I believed, because, why would a mother lie? So every day I'm being very good and praying and looking for any sign of life, and becoming very attached to that ridiculous paper bird. So you can imagine my heartbreak when one morning I find it dead.
They say "gay" if a guy can sing the entire score of Gigi. But a six-foot-three, 200-pound married man with kids who likes to dress up like Dorothy Lamour, I think you have to go with "queer."
We just have to remember, it's not the clothes that make the man; it's the man who makes the clothes ... Oh God, he looks like he died in a Benny Hill sketch!
Seems like I'm always mad at my brother Phil. I was mad the day my parents brought him back from the hospital. I thought he'd take their love away from me, and instead their love expanded and we felt more like a family. I was mad at him when I was ten and he was four, and we moved to a new neighborhood. I was mad because he always made new friends more easily than I did. And I'm mad today, because I never wanted to give the eulogy at my kid brother's funeral. I'm mad because he died, he didn't have the wisdom to know that family members shouldn't allow themselves to grow apart, because when this day comes, they can no longer tell each other how much they care. If he'd had that wisdom, he could've shared it with me and I would've known the hundreds of memories I have of just the two of us, eating ice cream on the stoop of our building, or going through the drawers at Grandma's house, or dressing up like the Bronte sisters. How those memories fill me with joy! Why didn't you have that wisdom, Phil? Why didn't you give us a chance to tell you how much we loved you?
Well, let's just say you didn't want to park your car under their oak tree. No, Ingmar was different. His mother used to say he brought shame to the House of Hausenfeffershtuledunker. Anyway, you're all wondering where this story is going. So I'll skip the part where he ran up the stairs and down the stairs and up the stairs and down the stairs and up the stairs...
Sorry. The point is, it was shame that kept Aunt Katrina from loving slow Ingmar. And it ruined her life. Oh, don't let that happen to you, Sophia. Let go of the shame. So what if he was different? It's okay that you loved him.
[in tears] I did love him. He was my son. My little boy. But every time I saw him, I always wondered what I did, what I said, when was the day that I did whatever I did to make him the way he was.
