Happy Birthday Aunt Dolly

I telephoned my Aunt Dolly this evening....... today is her 92nd birthday. Aunt Dolly lives in the house built by her father in 1922 (my grandfather-- dad's side). The house has three floors and a full basement. Seven bedrooms, two bathrooms, two kitchens, two pantries, a two car garage, two driveways, small front yard, a super-huge backyard. My Aunt takes care of everything herself.

When Aunt Dolly picked up the phone, I asked her if I was calling at a good time. I always ask her this question right away because she doesn't have a cordless phone. There are a lot of phones in that house, but all of them have the old-fashioned short cords. If she's cooking something on the stove, the phone cord doesn't reach across the kitchen. Come to think of it, all of her phones are the old black bakelite phones that would make telephone collectors start to drool.

Her answer to that question tonight was "No, this is a fine time. I just came up from the basement. I was feeding your uncle's turtle."

My Uncle Mino's turtle. I had forgotten all about that turtle.... and I can't believe the turtle has out-lived my uncle, who passed away about five years ago. My uncle found the turtle in Virginia. He had driven down there with a cousin of mine and saw this turtle in the middle of the road. He made my cousin stop his car so he could get the turtle out of the road.

My cousin pulled over, expecting Uncle Mino to take the turtle from the road and put him in the woods on the side of the road. My uncle had other ideas. He got back into my cousin's pristine car with the turtle. "Do you think you're going to put that thing in my car?"

"Of course," said my uncle... "If I put him in the woods, he'll just find his way back to the middle of the road and someone will run him over."

"What are you going to do with him?" my cousin wanted to know.

"He's coming back home with me. He'll be safer there." And my Uncle Mino held the turtle on his lap all the way back to Queens so my cousin wouldn't have to worry about the turtle messing up his nephew's precious car.

I've long since forgotten what the turtle's name is, but I do remember that my Uncle named him. Or her. I've forgotten that too. (How does one determine the gender of a turtle?) I think my uncle and my cousin made that trip to Virginia in either the late 1970s or early 1980s. So that's how long the turtle has been part of the family.

The last time I was up in NY (last summer) I went to visit my Aunt Dolly, but I never went downstairs to the basement to see the turtle. Nor did we mention the turtle in our conversation.

My uncle made a very comfortable pen for the turtle once he got back to Queens with it. The pen was in a cozy corner of the basement, complete with a little bit of fence or some kind of barrier so the turtle couldn't get out and get lost behind the furnace or the water heater, or wander into my grandfather's wine cellar. Every morning, my uncle would run about three inches of water into the extra-wide laundry sink so the turtle could swim and bathe, and do whatever turtles like to do in the water.

Then my uncle would let the turtle roam around in his indoor pen in the basement, or in the outdoor enclosure in the yard if the weather was turtle-friendly. The turtle's diet consisted of the finest vegetables, with a little spaghetti now and then as a treat. My uncle gave the spaghetti to the turtle one Sunday evening, "just to see if he's got any Italian blood," as my uncle said.

As luck would have it, the turtle loved the spaghetti, which made my uncle very proud. My dad always said the turtle was lucky that my uncle, who was very artistic, didn't paint an Italian flag on his shell.

So there was my Aunt Dolly this evening, at the other end of my long distance call, just coming up from the basement level of the house, after having fed the turtle his dinner, and after letting the turtle swim around in the laundry-sink. Just like my uncle did for so many years.

My Aunt Dolly is 92 today. If anyone can live till 100 or more, Aunt Dolly is the one who will do it. The question, of course, is will that turtle out-live my Aunt, just as it out-lived my uncle? And if so, who will take care of the turtle?

Let's see. We have a dog and three cats. Could there be room on our screen-porch for my Uncle Mino's turtle? I always have fresh vegetables in the fridge, but I don't cook much spaghetti at home. I wonder if my uncle's turtle would like my Greek spinach pie?