“Hi God, it’s me, Rosa. I want to thank you for giving me my family. My Daddy and my Mummy, but more for my Daddy because my Mummy gets grouchy when she doesn’t have her coffee in the morning. And for my sister Julia without whom we would all die because she does the cooking, and my brother Timmy because he’s my brother, but not for my aunty Elizabeth or my uncle Jeremy because they’re weird. That’s all, amen.”

The nest was finally quiet. Everyone, with the exception of Sybil, were either on their way to school or work. George as always was running late. He barely had time to take a bite of his toasted bagel with butter before he was chased out by Sybil who was sure he would be late for his first meeting of the day. Timmy had left for school and as always with plenty of time to spare. He was the most organised of the Blau children. Timmy laid out what he was going to wear to school at the end of his bed the night before. So, when the alarm sounded, all he had to do was follow a well established pattern.

It was a gloriously warm April Saturday morning when George stepped onto the balcony which led off the dining room and looked out over the Atlantic Ocean. There was a slight breeze blowing as was usual at that time of the day, and the waves washed ashore in silence as the tide was going out.

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” shouted Rosa as she flew from bedroom to bedroom waking up everyone. And as the occupants groaned Rosa pulled the curtains aside. She then flew into the living room and opened those curtains as well because the occupant of that room Elizabeth, was asleep on the couch. She groaned the most and tried though unsuccessfully, to pull the quilt back over herself. “Wake up! Wake up!” Rosa continued to shout and Elizabeth who had fallen asleep on the couch after drinking too much the prior evening, had been allowed to stay the night, instead of having an overly eager Jeremy walk her home.

“Don’t princesses become queens?” asked a concerned Rosa as she sat at the dining room table trying to finish up her homework.

“Not always,” replied Elizabeth upon whom the day’s duty fell to make sure that the three Blau children finished their homework and helped them when they needed it.

Rosa never asked for help and so unlike her brother and sister, she constantly got into trouble at school. But to Rosa, that was part of her charm.

“Then why would someone want to be a princess?”

“I don’t seem to be getting any better, Mummy,” groaned Rosa as she lay in bed and again pulled the thick quilt her mother had made for her a few years ago around her neck. She let out a big sigh and added, “maybe I have the bird flu!” Sybil laughed for a brief second. “Yes Mummy. It’s all over Asia and we aren’t that far away from there.”

The day Rosa fell ill was a day of great consternation in the Blau household.

The normally exuberant young bird, who constantly flew around the nest explaining to her siblings and parents how life really was, was now laying on her back in her feather bed groaning. The general feeling was that Rosa was no where near as bad as she made herself out to be and most of what she was feeling was in her head. Thus, the name the Blau drama queen.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” Rosa sounded more excited than usual before she hugged her father asking him how much he had missed her and before walking down the hallway to say hi to her mother.

“Yes, Rosa dear?” asked George.

“I want to sell Girl Scout cookies.”

George let out a slight laugh. “Why is that?”

“Because Rebecca is, and you can make millions of dollars doing it.”

“Ask me a question, Daddy,” said Rosa swinging on the arm of the chair George was sitting on while reading his newspaper.

“What sort of question?” George was always up to entertaining his youngest daughter, especially after a tough day at work.

“Ask me how I slept,” replied Rosa still swinging on the armchair.

George pretended not to be bothered, even though he was. “But I know how you slept. I asked you that question this morning.”

“But ask me again!” Rosa was insistent.

Richard was horrified. His wife of 35 years Amy was horrified. Even their trusted Black Labrador, Smoky, who normally was content laying by the front door looking at the birds digging for worms was horrified.

“Hi Mom and Dad, this is Evelyn.”

“Dad! Rosa just told me you said I was gross.”

“What!” Exclaimed George, who at that moment was busy reading the Sunday Sandpiper Daily sitting in his favourite chair on the balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. “I never said any such thing.”

Timmy had walked up to his father and stood next to him looking for an explanation. “Yes, she said because I was listening to rap music, I was gross.”

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” shouted both Julia for whom that was unusual and Rosa for whom that was standard, as they ran through the front door of their nest, bypassing George’s open wings and throwing their school bags in the direction of the far wall closest to the kitchen, where Sybil stood to avoid any collateral damage from Rosa flying into her father’s arms. But on that day, it was different.

“Mummy, daddy guess what Yehuda got for Christmas!”

Sybil and George simultaneously put down their knives and forks and looked aghast at their eldest daughter, Julia. George looked at Sybil and Sybil returned his lost gaze. It was up to one of the two adults at the dining table to ask the simple question. “Who’s Yehuda?” followed by the other obvious question asked by Sybil, “I’ve never known a Christian boy with the name Yehuda!”

Over the course of the two weeks I stayed with him, I watched him begin to eat more and to begin to enjoy life more. He was like a child waiting to open a Christmas present when I bought some beer. He always had a drink in the evening around 6pm followed by dinner at 7.

“Is it 6?” He asked the first day I bought the beer.

“No, dad, it isn’t.”

He thought for a second, “what time is it?”

At the urging of my sister, I left my home in Pennsylvania at the end of January 2019 and travelled to my father’s home in a small village which lay in the foothills of the Himalayas. Burdened with the daily stresses of Western life, I had last visited him in May 2014, nearly 5 years ago.

“Daddy, daddy, daddy I’m on fire!” cried Rosa dramatically as she threw herself at her father as soon as he walked in the door from work.

“What?” asked George looking over at his wife who as usual stood in the doorway of the kitchen, even though it was a place that was off limits to her due to her inability to boil water without burning it. “Rosa, you feel fine to me,” George was still baffled by her behaviour. Sybil merely shrugged her shoulders. George put Rosa down and held her at wings length. “What are you talking about young lady? I don’t see you on fire.”

“Mummy tells me you had one of the bagels Pawo’s wife baked.”

Rosa turned up her nose at the mention, while Timmy smiled and Julia replied, “yes dad they weren’t bad, but yours are much better.”

Something George liked to hear, obviously. “Why didn’t you like the bagels Rosa?”

“Well first of all, they had bugs all over them and who’s heard of a Buddhist baking bagels? They have to be Jewish……”

“I see you’re left-handed.” Ralph looked at Craig a little confused. Craig continued, “you, you, put your car keys in your left pocket.” He hesitated for a second. “I notice these things especially because I’m left-handed as well,” and without saying another word, he reached into his left pocket and pulled out his keys, “see,” he proudly waved the keys in front of Ralph, who happened to be standing in a small crowd in the foyer of their office building busily discussing their relevant team scores from the weekend.

“Once upon a pasta noodle…..”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, surely it should be once upon a time, not once upon a pasta noodle, Rosa dear, who told you to write that?”

“Nobody daddy. But once upon a time doesn’t make sense.”

“And once upon a pasta noodle does?”

“Exactly daddy! If once upon a time doesn’t make sense, then I’d rather write once upon a pasta noodle.” George shook his head and laid back in his chair.

Arthur was never quite sure what his goals were in life. They seemed to be a moving target. When he was very young, the daily commuter train which rattled at high speed behind his home held his interest, until he heard the whistle sound one day and put an immediate end to that goal.