Twelve Bound Pages

And a piano.

“Don’t forget the envelope Auntie Nancy left for you,” my mom said to me as I entered the kitchen, and I turned to the piano next to the refrigerator.

The piano was humble, shining in a smooth varnish with a layer of dust over the deep oak.

It was a Baldwin.

But I didn’t know this as a kid; Baldwin was engrained in my mind as a sequence of foreign shapes until I learned how to read. I would sit on the wooden bench with small chubby fingers reaching up and over the keys, tracing the letters. As I did, my chest collided with the keys and a spattering of notes would ping through the air.

That day, I stood in front of the piano, looking over to find the large manila envelope my Great Auntie Nancy left for me over the holidays. I was living at college so she couldn’t give it to me in person at the family reunion that year. The envelope was on top of the piano next to candles and knickknacks of log cabins.

Like on everything she gave to us, Auntie Nancy had written my name in her familiar bold and friendly penmanship.

As a Sister of Notre Dame in a pleasantly Catholic family, she ran most of the family get-togethers. She held this responsibility not because she was a nun, but due to having a nurturing personality. It was a role she accepted, being the organizer of such a large family, making sure everyone met up at least once a year to stay in each other’s lives.

Inside the envelope was a laminated calendar.

My eyes grew wide as I stared at it. It was our family calendar. The calendar that everyone received at Christmas family reunions. That year I had been at school when the Simonds family, my mom’s side, the Hogan’s and the Courtney’s met in a hall for the reunion, probably in Woburn where most of them resided. When from Woburn, like both my parents’ families, one often believes that the whole world revolves around that four-leaf-clover Catholic hub.

And I received one.

At twenty years old and in my second year of college, I had received a family calendar. It was a thing reserved for adults, the head of families that got one every year from our dear Aunt, the thoughtful nun that had baptized most of the grandchildren and beyond. It was the Christmas Reunion calendar…the shockwave that sparked my sudden realization of a strange fact I never thought I would have.

I was an adult.

My eyes blinked, uncomprehending, as I looked back at the piano with the calendar still in my hands.

If I opened the piano, a surprising amount of dog food that the mice had smuggled in would surely fall out.

A picture, placed inside a curved simple wooden frame also sat above the dusty keys. It was of two small blond children at about three or four years, chubby palms pressed against the glass of a front door, looking out into the yard. Cool condensation from the pane made our fingers slip slightly as we peered out into the rainy day, unaware that his mom, or my mom, was behind us snapping the picture that now sat on my piano. I was the chubbier child with tight blond curls, like a rounder and squeakier Dorothy with black Madeline shoes. Beside me was a scrawny boy, one of the family friends I grew up with.

With our little hands pressed on the cold smooth glass, our only worry in the world was when it would stop raining. Or how much mud would be left over for us to play in.

But there were also the times we played at my house and banged on the keys of the piano, under the letters that would later read Baldwin.

Another identically curved frame showed the three smiling faces of me, and my two siblings, at the first night they ate dinner with us before their adoption was official. The pretty social worker that my brother adored had brought them over and we all ate spaghetti. I had hardly met them before then but we were all goofballs together, being the ages of almost six, five and three respectively. When we finished eating, and my brother had been cleaned off from the amount of red sauce he had spilt on himself, we let loose. Giggling like mad sprites, we ran around the dinner table in the enclosed dining room with woven coasters balanced on our heads. The amount of laughter coming from our small bodies was unmatched, sharp squealing reverberating through the two-story house where we spent an approximately two or so years in after that. When we tired of our dancing and balancing game with the coasters, we had lollipops that stained our mouths and lips red as we growled at the camera like wild animal cubs.

And in the next room sat the piano, probably stained with finger paint, overhearing all the blissful chaos.

I remember adults. Like the ones situated on the front page of the calendar that was still in my hands. They always wore thick Christmas sweaters to the family reunion party with bright colors of red and green, depictions of bells and trees and snowmen on each of them. If they didn’t have Christmas themes, then the sweaters were of cream Irish wool that the elderly great Aunts and Uncles always wore. I remember looking up at them and sitting in their laps, poking at the thick wool with a small finger, tracing the designs as I munched on sugar cookies or pretzels. Most of my relatives stood at above six feet, looming giants with bright red faces and pleasant smiles as they looked down at me, tousling my strawberry blond curls and complimenting the cute dress I wore that year. Whatever it was, it was always a dark color of purple or green, and made of a fuzzy material that was indefinitely scratchy underneath, even if it was fun to run my hands over the outside.

It seemed everything I wore to family reunion parties was scratchy.

Auntie Nancy was the orchestrator of all things Simonds, assigning each family to bring certain food, and gifts for their kids that they placed in a large red velvet bag that Santa would hand out at the party. The kids would know when Santa arrived because Auntie Nancy would go behind the curtain or a back room and shake Christmas bells, escorting Santa into the main hall. One of our uncles always played Santa, it changing occasionally every couple of years just in case us kids caught on. I always suspected, especially as a preteen, which was probably too old anyway, but I enjoyed waiting with the hoards of cousins for presents.

The gift giving got awkward when we grew to be teenagers, little six year old me remembering the time when my older and “cooler” cousins had to sit on Santa’s lap. Looking at family videos I saw my cool cousins, with strange striped sweaters, braces and acne stepping begrudgingly up to Uncle So-And-So to lean on the chair he sat in or be forced to sit on his lap a few seconds, their cheerful parents snapping pictures. They would sometimes slip and call Santa “uncle” while the other parents would hush, laughing loudly as they always did in such large congregations.

As a six year old those cousins, only teenagers, were the equivalent of adults, cool and wise cousins who had a taste for what the outside world of adulthood was probably like. And the adults were giants, the uncles and grandfathers being kind and friendly giants who wrestled with you and had shiny red noses, glistening eyes, and white hair. The aunts and grandmothers were portly, in bedazzled and sparkling sweaters and short hair, dark gray or all white, skin soft that squished when they hugged you.

Growing up to be those teenagers, I realized that my cousins were far more awkward, but to a six year old me there was no cooler group of people than they.

At twenty years old with a flimsy stack of papers I was suddenly hit by a wave of realization that I was, indeed, an adult. At those reunion parties I would be that giant with a simple sweater, a figure that six year old me would have considered a “cool cousin” between the teenage phase and that of the giants with Irish wool sweaters. Twenty year old me was the adult who helps hand presents to the littler cousins with bows in their hair, and fuzzy dresses that were scratchy underneath and made them sweat uncomfortably. I was the adult who sat at the table with the giants and talked about politics or family gossip while the kid-cousins scampered under the table, playing with our shoelaces or rolling on the hardwood floors.

The adult who had a calendar, the family calendar with the image of several dozen posed individuals on the front.

Kids sat cross-legged on the floor with the elderly great aunts and uncles in chairs behind them. The taller older cousins, their parents and not-quite so elderly family members stood beyond.

I realized the small girl in the pictures of her childhood friend and the spaghetti dinner no longer sat on the cool wood floor, but stood in back with the giants who were smiling or held a crying baby in their arms.

I was an adult.

And who better to witness this realization than our trusted Baldwin piano? For throughout my life it has watched me evolve from running around with squealing innocence to becoming an adult.

Of all the objects situated on that piano, the Christmas cards, graduation portraits, and my High School diploma, none cut so deep as this singular folder had.

An omnipresent piano passed the torch of adulthood over to me through a humble manila folder.

I had a calendar.

The calendar.