I'm stuck in the summer of 1980, everybody calls me Baby and it doesn't occur to me to mind. that was after the Beatles came, but before John Lennon was shot, when I couldn't wait to get into either The Harkness Ballet School or the Joffrey Ballet School and I wanted to be a dancer, just as my father had, he died before I was born but I knew I'd be a Daddy's girl if he was still around.
I close my Mother's battered copy of The Fountainhead and look out of the window at the green trees swooshing past. I begin to think about my Father, a habit I had picked up over the years. I knew he was good-looking, my Mother told me that, but she had always been reluctant to speak about him, her brown eyes growing sadder as I probed her about him.
It had been my Nana Marge that had told me all about him. He was tall with dark hair and was a brilliant dancer and he had been my Mother's first love. She was completely in love with him and Nana says she recieved a letter telling her of his death which had shaken her up. He never knew she had been pregnant with me and she regrets that. I try to conjure him up but I don't get much further than the dark hair and piercing eyes. Thats about as far as I always get.
I turn my mind to the new place we're visiting for our summer vacation. Smothermans? Kellermans. That's what it's called. Nana Marge and Grandad Jake took Mum and Aunt Lisa there one summer and I've always been told it was a memorable one. Grandad was good friends with the owner Max Kellerman, but he passed the business onto his Grandson Neil, who Aunt Lisa and Uncle Rob named their son after. "A slimeball" Mum and Nana had called Neil Kellerman multiple times.
"Oh my word, its exactly the same!" Nana exclaims, interrupting my thoughts and pointing at a battered brown sign on the road side reading "Kellermans, Mountain House."
"No its not-" my Mother buts in, "Now it says Neil Kellerman welcomes you."
"Is that the slimeball?" I ask loudly but politely.
"But out Baby." My Grandad says with mock sarcasm and my Mother laughs out loud. I'm generally a bright kid but I can't workout what those two are spluttering about and neither can Nana by looking at her face, but then hers screws up into laughter as well. I giggle, assuming their laughing at my comment and go back to the window to see we're driving up a long private road. Kellermans.
when you turned and
walked away
that's when I wanted to say
come on baby give me a whirl
I wanna know if you'll be my girl