Angels & Skunks: Highlights From the Life of Michele Roby Eastman

Angels & Skunks:

Highlights From the Life

of Michele Roby Eastman

by Jeff Roby

Copyright 2013 Jeffrey A. Roby Publishing

All Rights Reserved

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ebook version published by Jeffrey A. Roby

at www.Smashwords.com

email: jeffroby@aol.com

webpage: 1michele.yolasite.com

ISBN: 978-0-9847783-2-4

First Edition, July 2013

October 1985

I am the big brother, oldest of four children in a Midwestern, middle-class family of the old-school variety where Dad works (sometimes two jobs) yet still manages to be involved in our lives and Mom makes home and her children her job, focusing on getting us clean, fed and educated. That's all well and good but what I really want is a respectable existence with a degree of elegance and style. Evidently I'm asking for too much.

Case in point––my sister's wedding. It's the first sister in my immediate family so it's a huge event. My father has no hesitation in paying for the ceremony including a big reception at a nice hall and my mother has spent months assembling a custom, hand-made silk bridal gown with satin and beaded effects and a nine-foot train, plus ALL the mauve bridesmaid dresses. In the last three days she has baked and decorated a massive cake that, with bridges and fountain, is big enough to feed three hundred plus people. My brother, the other four groomsmen, and I are decked out in traditional English gray formal day coats and the chapel is bathed in candlelight with classical organ prelude building to a crescendo at the precise moment when the bride on my father's arm, will enter through the glass doors at the back of the church.

All was going well leading up to this day and now we've seated the packed house of family and friends (and people I've never seen before). A minute ago the organ increased it's volume and pace, signaling the ceremony will begin. Even a second ago all seemed perfect when my brother and I marched to the altar, leaned down and grabbed the white silk rope to unroll the wedding runner along the center isle. We turned around toward the congregation and with soldier-like precision began our march toward the back of the church, towing the pristine runner which would be the virginal carpet for our sister's anticipated grand entrance.

And then it pulled loose from the altar step.

It dragged behind us like a lawn roller for about three feet until we realized it was not unrolling. It became a huge Saranwrap-like tube that refused to unroll. We jostled it about in good Stooges fashion, while smiling big and trying to maintain a degree of serious-ceremony formality, all the while frantically pulling at the stuck edge until I somehow managed to get it started; but then I realized it couldn't be re-attached to the altar step without tools.

So now, at this instant, I am standing on the loose end, unsure whether my face is accurately showing the level of embarrassment that I'm feeling, as I face the the entire smiling (some smirking) congregation. I am acting as ballast to hold the runner end in place on the floor while my tech brute brother pulls, re-positions, tears and swears at the runner roll while he slowly backs up the aisle, trying to get this damned thing on the floor so the bride can enter, with all the screaming pipes of the organ proclaiming the magical moment has arrived.

And if my brother utters a frantic SHIT! one more time I'm gonna throw one of my shiny rented patent leather size ten shoes at his head, which looks kinda bloodshot already. So much for respectability and style.

During the twenty-second eternity that I filled my memorable roll as Ballast Boy, my mind wonders back through family weddings and I can't think of a single instance where a disaster like this took place. My brother's wedding went smoothly, at least for me as they didn't give me anything to do other than walk, smile and look sharp (I'm pretty good at that). In the swarm of cousin weddings I couldn't think of any catastrophe other than the one where the groomsmen all wore their favorite leisure suit––but that was on purpose I was told. It was a Catholic wedding so it lasted forever and kept those clumsy coarse-woven jackets lumbering in our eyesight long enough to be blazoned on my memory. It was a Crayola color collection paying homage to one of the fashion world's biggest blunders––a boxy unlined less-than-casual jacket designed without style. With matching pants sometimes. Or worse: CONTRASTING pants in wide checks, loud stripes, or florescent fleur-de-lis.

Somebody had the groomsmen in another gathering all wear white dinner jackets with tiny black bow ties. I liked that. Must have been in the early sixties. I have numerous older cousins so the collection of events in my head runs the gamut of colors and styles back when people had taste. The leisure suit show must have been in the mid-70s.

As a young child I remember the earlier weddings of uncles and aunts that all seemed to be in elegant black and white. I don't think tux shops had colors back then. But they were sweetly simple monotone ceremonies in rustic little country churches back when we were youthful, innocent kids. We loved the gatherings. Especially because there was cake and fruit punch involved.

Now back to the present reality (or horror) and I'm silently swearing that I will never be in another wedding––ever. But I WILL because that's what big brothers are for. So five years later in my second sister's wedding (1990) we did it all over again. Same church, same mother making all the dresses and a monster cake, same father paying for everything and giving his daughter away, same gray English day coats and tiny gray bow ties. And worst of all, another tightly rolled runner that refused to cooperate. My baneful existence has come down to this nightmare again. There I was, deja vu, standing at the head of the church isle, facing all our family and friends (and a new family of in-laws), arms twitching at my side and a big uncomfortable smile on my face while my brother, pretty much the same except for an additional twenty pounds and more sweat, backed himself up the isle fighting with the runner roll and muttering mild obscenities. This time I was serious: I will never do this again.

The humiliation quickly dissipated though and we had a great time celebrating the wedding of the baby in our family. The center of our world, the ten-year-after-the-kids-we-planned sibling who came marching into our world and quickly took over. Since I was the oldest I got saddled with the expected added responsibilities of watching out for the baby and serving as built-in babysitter; so in many ways I have always felt a more parental relationship with my youngest sister.

Before Michele was born I was the oldest of three; my brother Chris was one year and four months younger than I and twenty-five months after him came our sister Cindy. I have a vague memory of the day Cindy was born. I was three and a half years old so it is hard to believe that any memory exists from that early day but I DO remember. We lived in a rented farm house about a mile from my maternal grandmother, which is where my Dad took my brother and I early on that August morning, 1963. His explanation started with Mom going to the hospital, followed by some jumbled murmuring which I didn't understand, and concluded with us getting a baby sister. We were too young to celebrate (or object) but we were happy to be going to spend the day with our beloved (and over-indulgent) Grandma Beck. There would be plenty of eating and then the big rocking chair in the front room with her singing us off to nappy land. To this day I sit in a rocker, hear her sing-song, humming drowsy voice and feel the fast bounce of the old rocking chair. It's a comforting feeling.

My only other memories from that time period include playing in the yard with cousins and our Collie-mix dog, Rusty. I remember being terrified on Halloween when the girls from down the road came to our door in costumes (I hid behind a chair while they looked at the new infant sister). And I remember causing a lot of laughter when I chased a turkey from a neighboring farm out of our yard with a plastic baseball bat. I guess I've always been the territorial alpha dog of our family.

Within the following year my parents bought their first house and we moved to Highland Drive in the Times Corners neighborhood of Fort Wayne. I thought it very cosmopolitan to be moving to the city. The dog and turkeys stayed behind.

For the rest of the 1960s we grew, attended new schools, new Methodist church, became Boy Scouts (and Girl Scout) and developed a fun progressive life while Dad continued his desk job in the Government Projects division of Magnavox Company along with a part time job at the Sears warehouse, assembling bicycles and kitchen tables and stuff. Mom worked hard at being a homemaker while generating extra income baking cakes and sewing alterations for neighbors and friends. We thought it pretty cool that she set up her own business in the house and became successful from the spreading of word to