Characters

Brian was born 15 months before me. It’s fair to say he was the most beautiful child to come from parents’ prolific union — big blue eyes and black curls, the outward appearance of what was a most loving disposition. There was no one Brian came across who was not his friend, including the worms he found in my mother’s garden. Many of those friends made it into the house — human, animal, or imaginary.

Kevin was three when I was born. He was a precocious child — small but as smart as a whip, as my grandmother would say. When my mother dropped him off at his classroom on the first day of kindergarten, Sister Maria Gloria said, “Isn’t he C-U-T-E?” Kevin looked up at my mother and said, “Does she think I’m S-T-U-P-I-D?” Kevin was, and still is, an undaunted human being. He achieves whatever he sets out to do.

My sister Maureen was eight when I was born. She was the runner up in the beautiful baby contest with soft green eyes and coal black curls. She was also my guide in life. She took me to the library and let me withdraw Steinbeck’s The Pearl when I was eight. We read Kahlil Gibran together, out of earshot of my parents. About that time, she told me that I should listen to my parents, and then make up my own mind.

Missy was my parents’ oldest daughter, beautiful and sharp-witted. She always seemed confident and self-assured, although I’m not sure that was always the way she felt. When her ring fell off and dropped into the mailbox down the street from our house, she called the post office. The retrieval became the subject of a newspaper column. That was when Washington, D.C. was a quiet — nearly southern — town. Missy was affectionate, always up for having a child crawl onto her lap.

Joe was fourteen when I was born. He was a runner, a practical joker, a hard worker, and a great storyteller. Sometimes, Joe would invite some of his high school track teammates over after meets, which ended up in them joining us for dinner. “FHB” (Family Hold Back) would spread from sibling to sibling, ensuring there’d be enough for several extra teenagers. Joe’s athleticism also allowed him to leave the house from his third-floor room with ease, hanging from the roof and dropping down to the roof below, and from there onto the front porch.

Dennis was the oldest of our brood. He was tall, handsome and bright. When I was in first grade, he had already graduated from Georgetown University and was teaching English at a local Catholic high school. Sr. Roberta Marie asked our class one day if any of our siblings went to St. John’s. I raised my hand and said my brother taught there. She corrected me twice, saying, “You mean, he goes to school there.” So I gave up. Maybe she had been teaching first grade math for too long.

Mom grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. Her mother died of sepsis when she nine months old, and Midge was raised by her father’s sister Mae and Mae’s husband Seth. She sang in the church choir and played the violin. After she got her degree from the University of Nebraska, she came to Washington to work on the Hill. When she had a home of her own, everyone and everything was welcome: friends, neighbors, dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, etc. While I was growing up, at least three friends of my siblings came to live with us. 

Dad was first generation Irish American from PIttsburgh. His father, Peter Reilly, had come to America at the turn of the century. Peter received his education, illegal for Catholics in Ireland at the time, from priests hidden in the hedgerows along the road. Peter worked two jobs and went to school at night to get his bachelors in engineering. By the time Dad was eight, two of his siblings and his father had died in epidemics. When Dad was 19, the stock market crashed, and his family moved to D.C. Jobs were scarce. He got a scholarship to law school and worked as a soda jerk at Peoples’ Drug Store to help pay the bills at home.

Gram was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. She and her husband Seth raised my mother after her mother died when Mom was nine months old. Gram was divorced her husband when she was sixty, and she came to live with her family a couple of years later. She had a kind and loving woman who regaled us with stories of snipe hunting on the prairie and driving her electric car through town. She was especially good-natured about being dropped down into this big, crazy family at a time when she probably thought her life would be slightly less exciting.