Amalia's Story, Chapter Sixty-Seven
= Amalia Angeloni Jacobucci
1000 Characters About My Mother #20:
"My father took a shower with me, and I turned out just fine!"

"What?!"

"What?"

"What you said?"

"I didn't say anything. Where were we?"

"Where were who? When?"

"Where were you and I, on what date did you and I leave off last week? In our chronology of my mother's life story? Keep up!"

"Um . . . July 1966. The Cub Scouts."

"October 13, 1966 . . . The regular meeting of the Go-Getter's Mothers Club will be held Oct. 19 at 8 p.m. at the elementary school . . . Apparently there was a mothers' group in place of a Parent-Teacher Association . . . the Go-Getters Club . . . Mrs. Louis J. Jacobucci will be the speaker of the evening. Mrs. Jacobucci Is district executive of the Cape Cod District of the MSPCC. This will be an open meeting and promises to be an interesting one. Guests are cordially invited to attend from any of the surrounding villages."

"So? What of it?"

"Mrs. Jacobucci Is district executive of the Cape Cod District of the MSPCC?"

"I'm sure it's just a typo. Move on."...

"What?!"

"I didn't say anything."

"How can you say such a thing?"

"I'm not going through this again."

"What do you mean?"

"All this -- denial. I'm done. I'm just going to say exactly what happened as I remember it."

"It never happened!"

"The reason I know it happened is that I renember it. I was eight years old. My brother was twelve years old. I was able to recover the date because I remember at some point in the week preceding the event, our father for some reason had told us, I'm going to be speaking at the Unitarian Church this Sunday at 11:00. It did not seem weird to me at the time, because he was always out of the house anyway. Plus all he used to when he was home was harangue me, so good."

"You lie."

"In fact, I remember thinking, it made sense that he would get something going on Sundays, because that was the only time he was ever even around anymore. Weekdays he was working, of course, and weeknights he was always at one of his many, many important community activities."

"You are delusional."

"Then, I found this article, and it all ...

"I have a thesis. My thesis is: In any woman's life, having children would have to be the most significant event. So, in my mother's story -- "

"Her family wasn't really any different from any of the other families."

"Yes."

"In what way?"

"She and her husband were both very active in community affairs. Both her children went to school."

"What else?"

"They were both boys?"

"Anything else?"

"No. That's it."

"So you said, that one way in which your mother's family wasn't really any different from any of the other families, was that she and her husband were both very active in community affairs. Can you tell me a little more about that?"

"Oh, sure. There was always something going on. Cub Scouts, she was like Den Mother of her older son's Cub Scout Pack. Pack 54. Plus the Comedy Club. Plus I'm pretty sure, she was involved in the kindergarten. She and her husband both. And politics. It was the Sixties."

"Just normal 60's Mom stuff."

"In any case, it's time to forget the past."