My father, a nephew, a niece and a sister all have April birthdays. Following Dad’s lead, my sister believes in celebrating the entire month for her birthday. As a matter of fact, our paternal grandmother started celebrating her birthday twice a year. When she filed for social security, she saw her birth certificate and realized that the birthday she’d celebrated all her life was not the one she was actually born on. From then on, Dad’s mom celebrated both.

Dinner Theatre

A series of Dad’s health crises changed my belated Christmas present to my parents into a birthday gift for my sister and her son. As much as we enjoyed the event, my sister had already had a birthday celebration, which was funny since her birthday is at the end of the month.

Wine Flight

As a matter of fact, I believe she had a total of 5 celebrations, with two occurring on the weekend of her birthday. Fortunately, I attended the Friday and Saturday dinners, starting with one of my favorite libations: red wine.

As inviting as the flight looks, not all reds are created equal. The second one to the right was barely drinkable, which was why I left most of it in the glass by the time I was ready to leave.

Not that I was planning ahead, but for the second dinner on my sister’s actual birthday, the restaurant didn’t serve alcohol, so it was a good thing I’d had 4 different wines the day before. Yet, that didn’t stop me from trying to shake things up. When the server asked for my drink order, I asked for lemonade with a shot of vodka. When she informed me that they didn’t serve alcohol, I said, “I know.”

Everyone laughed, but what’s so wrong in getting confirmation? And making everyone laugh is a priceless gift.

When my sister announced she was planning to take a road trip to a convenience store, I laughed. Not that I doubted her motivation, but because the convenience store was a Texan chain, which I never visited the entire 14 years I’d lived in Austin.

So here was my chance. Not that it was on my bucket list even though I’d lived a shorter drive from the location that boasts of being the largest convenience store in the world since everything’s bigger in Texas.

I’d not known that this convenience store had a slew of the cleanest bathrooms, far more gas pumps than a typical gas station and the largest collection of souvenirs outside of an amusement park.

My sister is like Mom…loves to shop. I’ve been downsizing for years, but I still eat. All my purchases were edible. I practically inhaled my chopped brisket sandwich, which I washed down with the cheapest bottle of water available. (Next time I will bring my own since there is no dining area and one has to either eat in the car or take it back home.) I’d also bought two flavors of beef jerky and two bags of the most popular branded sugary snack. I figured if it was that good, I’d want another bag or give it away. Besides, I knew that nothing would beat the box of assorted fudge I bought.

I was correct on all counts!

Next time I visit, I’m going to stick with the brisket sandwich, sliced brisket next time, and the assorted fudge. All the rest was OK, but those two were the most impressive. The jerky was a good addition in a ramen bowl I made days later, but not a necessary addition.

Although my sister was down to return to the touristy convenience store the following weekend, I suggested that we do something else. After all, her 60th birthday was the following weekend. I can think of all types of things to do rather than that.

Christmas 2022, I observed a nonmaterialistic practice for my family. For everyone except my parents, I gifted an indoor skydiving experience. Since I’d heard Mom gush about going to an out-of-town dinner theatre for several years, I made that experience their gift.

Due to their weekend schedule, the soonest we could make it was the Saturday before Easter, which was two days before Dad’s 85th birthday. Even though Christmas was long gone, at least we could enjoy celebrating a milestone birthday for Dad.

We braved through the rain and arrived in an empty parking lot 45 minutes early, which ticked me off because Mom had rushed us out of the house much earlier than I thought was necessary. Turned out, the whole endeavor was moot.

Three other cars had arrived after the fact. One guy got out, walked around the building with his umbrella and made a definitive conclusion that we’d all reached. The show had obviously been cancelled and no one had bothered to inform the four of us.

On Monday, their customer service rep told me some bullshit that they had reached out to me about the cancellation, then doubled down on the bullshit by saying that the miscommunication was no one’s fault. I informed her that I definitely hadn’t received a call and neither had the other three cars.

I’d originally planned to get a refund, along with $40 worth of gas money for the wasted trip. I got the refund, but no gas money. However, I got something worth even more than gas money, a free show for the following weekend. After confirming with Mom, I agreed to take the free show as well.

After all, what difference would another week make?

That following Monday, Dad turned 85. Two days later, he fell and broke his hip. The next day, Mom called 911 to have Dad taken to our nearest military hospital, where they performed a partial hip surgery.

Durning the evening when my sister, nephew and I returned to the dinner theater while and after Mom had left the hospital for the night, Dad had a stroke. By that time, one of my cousins had concluded that Dad’s lung blood clot had probably made him faint, like it had done back in 2016.

The biggest difference was at that time, he’d been sitting down, but this time he hadn’t. Either way, he would’ve needed medical attention. And he wouldn’t have been able to go to the show. Unlike the weekend before when he was comparatively vibrant.

My other sister, her adult children, aunt, uncle and cousins came to town on Tuesday. My sister had planned to visit on the weekend, but felt she couldn’t wait that long. No one used the term “death bed,” and I wouldn’t speak it out loud either, but writing seems somehow OK.

Three health crises in a row would be challenging for anyone to overcome. I think about how Dad survived the Vietnam War and 85 years of being a Black man in the United States. Dad was born in 1938 the same year Superman was created; therefore, he’s my real-live Superman. He still has the firm hand grip to prove it.

The day after my out-of-town sister, her children, some cousins and one of my aunts visited Dad, I was moved from ICU. As a matter of fact, Dad recovered his voice while they visited.

On Dad’s first day of physical therapy, he stood up, took a few steps, then looked at Mom and said, “Bring the car around.”

Don’t blame him for wanting to go home. However, during this short walk in his room, he overexerted himself. His eyes rolled back, showing nothing but the whites, which caused my sister to run out of the room in search of a nurse. Whoever my sister found, they alerted the others and Dad’s room swarmed with medical staff. They believe that his blood pressure had dropped.

Later that same day, my other sister shaved Dad’s hair, beard and trimmed his mustache. No matter when Dad’s going to change locations, we wanted him to look presentable rather than some grizzled man who’s no longer part of this world. We’ve rallied to keep him in this world for as long as possible.

The road to recovery will be much slower paced than any of us want. Plans that had been made for this month and the next are scrapped. He’d do well if he could attend Mom’s family reunion the last weekend in June.

For Sunday dinner, my family either goes out to eat or some combination of Mom, my sister and I make dinner. OK, so I’m not often part of that cooking combo, but at the same time, I’m the only one of us who works full time and happily orders takeout on the weekends and shares leftovers for Sunday.

Waiting for a Table

We all have our favorite restaurants. As fate would have it, Mom’s favorite buffet style restaurant is my least favorite on our usual rotation. If Satan needs ideas about how to run a buffet, ze can look no further than the dirty floored, amok children, generally bland food of this popular national chain family style buffet restaurant.

Years ago, a wise person advised me to never eat at a restaurant that has the word “family” as part of this name. That’s the only thing missing from this particular loud-ass restaurant that Mom still loves for the variety of its offerings.

The Bride

By some minor miracle, my sister convinced Mom to have our Sunday dinner at a Mexican restaurant. With all the offerings available, she still chose for herself and Dad a Tex-Mex taco salad with the edible bowl. I only mention the edible bowl because Mom kept reminding Dad to eat his bowl as he ate the salad inside of it.

For my part, whenever I see a coconut margarita on the menu, I order it. Nowhere on the menu did it say that their margaritas were the size of a carafe, served with a very long straw. Everyone at the table helped me with that drink. My nephew was the clean up crew since he sucked it down like a vacuum cleaner because he knows nothing about sipping an alcoholic drink.

I’m not quite sure what Mom didn’t like about the restaurant, but she announced days later that we could return without her…already have that in the works for Cinco de Mayo, which conveniently falls on a Friday this year.

Once again, a privileged white man, who made his riches in one narrow area, comic stripping, now feels qualified to rant from his ivory tower. Based on the so-called results of a facile-worded poll question, “Is it OK to be white?” Dilbert creator claimed that that convinced him white people should live apart from black people.

Of course, I call bullshit. No one, not even a mansplaining privileged white man, is so easily convinced of such a radical position because of the result of a mere poll question. More than likely, his racial animus was well nurtured and brewed until it boiled over.

Since the concept of race is a pseudoscientific social construct of oppression, I’ll address all my questions to the fictional character, Dilbert. And why the hell not? The so-called basis for Dilbert’s creator’s call for racial separation is also based on fiction. The only difference is his fiction is far more dangerous.

• 1. Who should mixed-raced blacks live among? There’s no dilemma among those of us who identify as black, but would you allow blacks who identify as white to live among you, regardless of their skin tone? I imagine you consider yourself not racist, so would white-identifying blacks be able to live in your all-white society? Would they be allowed if they are culturally white and pass the brown paper bag test?
• 2. Is whiteness based on skin tone or cultural adherence? Would you allow those blacks who are so “articulate that you forget they’re black” to live in your all-white society? Or do they need to be on-sight white, regardless of how well they speak, hard they work, or how much money they make? Who gets to shield themselves under the umbrella of whiteness, sparing them from the debilitating drench of racist exclusion?
• 3. Would any other race of people who are also richly melaninated, but not black, be permitted to live in your all–white community? Would South East Asians, Pacific Islanders and Latinos be allowed to live among whites if they can easily pass a comb through their hair, regardless of if they can pass for white? In other words, how dark is too dark for people who cannot sport an afro?
• 4. Does a Jewfro count as an afro? Would you allow Jews to live in your all-white society, regardless of whether they can naturally style their hair into a Jewfro or not? Or will your sequestered-from-blacks society solely depend on having a low melaninated skin tone?
• 5. If I’m 1/16th white, does that make me less racist against whites, according to your calculations? BTW, my mother is 1/8th white. Would you consider her a “reverse octoroon”?
• 6. In your all white community, would you regulate media so that no racially-diverse programing is experienced? Would you permit black music or any genre based on black music? Would you only play black music if only covered by white people? Would you form parallel versions of professional sports? How separated do you need to be from blacks?
• 7. In your white society, who would you hire others to do those jobs where whites are underrepresented in an integrated society? Even the founding fathers embraced diversity when it came to the workforce, especially jobs that were deemed unsuitable for respectable white people.
• 8. Lastly, if you achieve your all-white society who will be the new niggers?