Page 126 of Sins of Arrogance

The en­tire first level of the yard at the back of the house is filled with blan­kets and lawn chairs for the older fam­ily mem­bers. The lawn be­tween the pool and the ocean is set up for bad­minton, bocce ball (the set gifted for the cel­e­bra­tion by Miceli) and gi­ant yard pong.

Teens are swim­ming off the dock and loung­ing on the shore. Splash­ing chil­dren have pretty much taken over the pool, that has two life­guards on duty.

Enoch grins at me as he runs by too, clearly en­joy­ing his first La­bor Day.

Ac­cord­ing to Hope, the AOG didn’t cel­e­brate na­tional hol­i­days. Or Christ­mas. And the way they cel­e­brated re­li­gious ones wasn’t in­tended to give chil­dren joy and a sense of be­long­ing.

Easter was a time to teach them about the phys­i­cal and emo­tional sac­ri­fice nec­es­sary to be a good Chris­tian. The rhetoric of re­li­gious na­tion­al­ism was shoved down Enoch and Es­ther’s throats from in­fancy.

Hope’s too for that mat­ter.

But she broke away from the brain-wash­ing and did her best to mit­i­gate it with her chil­dren.

She’s pretty amaz­ing and I think maybe I should tell her that. From one mom to an­other.

Sit­ting with my fa­ther, on a pic­nic blan­ket smack dab in the cen­ter of the rev­el­ers, Hope’s fairly glow­ing with hap­pi­ness. Though I’m not sure if it’s caused by the hol­i­day or the fact my fa­ther has barely let her out of his sight since they got back from Lon­don the day be­fore yes­ter­day.

Moma (who in­sists she’s not old enough for a lawn chair) is sit­ting with them. So is Dier­dre, for which I am silently but ut­terly grate­ful. When she chose sit­ting with the boss over shar­ing our blan­ket, my day turned brighter for sure.

That she is at­tempt­ing to ap­pear as the host­ess of the event isn’t lost on any­one. That no one else sees her that way is en­tirely lost on her.

Róise’s fi­ancé, Miceli, started out sit­ting with us, but af­ter eat­ing, he went to talk busi­ness with my fa­ther. I was sur­prised, but not in the least un­happy, when Mick didn’t opt to join them.

Fitz col­lapses on the blan­ket in front of me and his dad, barely miss­ing Róise’ feet. “Can I have an­other cookie?”

Reach­ing out to wipe at the choco­late smudged across his cheek, I ask, “How many have you had?”

He makes a face, jerk­ing away from my hand. “Mom!”

The ti­tle’s new and it’s not at my in­sti­ga­tion. Dier­dre-bloody-Kelly told Fitz that big boys don’t call their mams mommy. When asked for his opin­ion by our son over-the-moon ex­cited about start­ing big boy first grade, my clearly dis­tracted hus­band agreed.

When I told him later I didn’t ap­pre­ci­ate it, Mick didn’t even re­mem­ber the dis­cus­sion. But he pointed out that at some point Fitz was bound to stop us­ing mommy.

Which is true, if not the point.

The point was that Mick had taken Dier­dre’s side over mine. Which I was smart enough not to bring up.

Be­cause Mick seems to be re­ally sen­si­tive to any­thing that might in­di­cate I’m jeal­ous lately. He’s not mean about it, but he goes out of his way to tell me I have noth­ing to be jeal­ous about.

Like that has helped any woman ever to feel more se­cure in her re­la­tion­ship.

Any­way, I told Fitz that we might be Irish but we’re not from Ire­land. If he wants to call me some­thing be­sides mommy, he can use mom like I did with my mother.

I won that bat­tle at least.

“How many?” I ask again and wait for Fitz to an­swer.

He shrugs. “Four. Maybe five.”

“Which is it?” Mick hands Fitz his wa­ter bot­tle.

Our son takes a drink and then sighs. “Five, I guess.”

He looks so woe­be­gone, I have to hide a smile.

Mick looks at me, his lips quirk­ing too. “Well? What do you say, mom?”

“One more, but that is it.” My stern tone could use some work, but it is a pic­nic.