Always the Last to Know

My life in the dark

Pierrot by Jean-Antoine Watteau

I have a lot of aunts. I’m only related to two of them, and one of those is dead to me. The others are my mom’s longtime friends, including a bunch from high school.

There’s Aunt Linda, Aunt Geri, Aunt Kathy, and several others. About 20 years ago, my mom happened to mention something about Aunt Gidelle to my brother and me.

“Who’s Aunt Gidelle?” we asked in unison. This was new information, in terms of Gidelle being both an aunt and a name.

Gidelle turned out to be the younger sister of one of the other aunts; she’d joined the group at some point in the past. You can’t just spring a new aunt on an adult like that. Those should be locked in early, ideally before the age of 10.

I’ve never met Gidelle, and I haven’t seen any of these other aunts since my 20s, but my mom has lunch with them regularly and gives me in-depth accounts of each of their get-togethers—when and where it was, along with who was there and what’s happening in their lives.

It’s tough to keep the players straight or remember all the storylines. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that this level of detail, with the aunts and otherwise, sometimes comes at the expense of information that would actually be useful for me to know.

One afternoon, my mom had finished her briefing and we were talking about something else when she said, “Your father and I are going to wait until after his surgery to deal with that.” I had no idea what she was talking about.

You may think, “She probably assumed your father had told you.” I can assure you she did not. My mother is the Family Crier. It doesn’t matter whose news it is; even if I’ve heard about it from that person, she’ll tell me too. If she were on social media, her handle would be @hearyehearye. And since you brought it up, no, my father didn’t tell me he was having an operation, but we don’t have time to unpack that here.

Another time, she tossed off a remark about how she and my dad were packing for their trip, as if she’d already informed me of their vacation, when in fact the most recent reports concerned her veggie wrap and Aunt Somebody’s possible drinking problem.

I’m sure there are families where things like health or vacations aren’t discussed out of lack of closeness, privacy, or some other reason. That’s not us. My mom makes sure of it. She’s the nucleus around which we all revolve, and I appreciate her greatly.

I do try to keep minor ailments to myself, however. It’s the oddest thing, but whenever I catch a cold, my mother comes down with a case of amnesia, having no memory that I’ve had many colds in my life and am up to date on the benefits of hydration, medicine, and rest. It’s like Groundhog Day with mucous.

One of the most egregious examples of my being left out of the loop wasn’t my mother’s fault. It was about 12 years ago. I was at home on a Sunday afternoon when she texted me:

“Are you coming?”

I stared at the text for a few seconds, racking my brain. Nothing.

“Coming where?”

“Danny’s birthday party.”

Danny is one of my nephews. I’m his godfather. I’m very close to him and his brother. It wasn’t Danny’s actual birthday, so I wasn’t thinking in that direction.

“No one told me about it.”

The phone rang. She was incredulous. But it was too late; I was in the middle of something else, and by the time I got cleaned up and drove over there, things would have been winding down.

Obviously, it wasn’t her responsibility to tell me. My brother and sister-in-law forgot, and they felt terrible. My mom was just the failsafe. It was a freak occurrence, like a skydiver’s parachute and reserve parachute both failing.

There’s one instance of my being kept in the dark, though, that hits harder. Many years later, I still don’t understand how it could have happened. I hesitate to even share this, but the story needs to be told.

My brother’s family and I were at my parents’ house for dinner. Everyone had left the table except for my mom, my sister-in-law, and me.

One of them mentioned something about the procedure my younger nephew, who was an infant at the time, was going to have. I, of course, was oblivious.

I asked what was going on, and my sister-in-law told me that my nephew needed to have a second circumcision because the doctor didn’t do a thorough job the first time.

“Oh, wow,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just like his Uncle Chris.”

(Beat)

“What?”

I turned to my mom with an expression of shock and horror, like I’d just seen a ghost’s penis.

“What is she talking about?”

My mom burst out laughing, and my sister-in-law followed suit.

“I had to go back in for a touch-up? How is it that you’ve never told me about this? And why did she know before I did?”

“I figured I must have told you a long time ago,” she said, still in hysterics.

By this time, I was laughing too.

“Well, I’m glad to hear you two are having such in-depth conversations about my privates. That’s just great.”

It’s one thing to forget to mention a party or a loved one’s looming medical procedure. These things happen.

But this? This was a situation where my most vulnerable moment from the past was brought to the fore, when I had some real skin in the game. The betrayal cuts deep. Then it cuts again.

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Do you like insanity? Check out the latest episode of “Funny Story,” which I do with fellow humor writer Shelly Mazzanoble. We each surprise the other with a bizarre item from the news that we then mine for every last laugh.

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