Being Novel

I may never be considered great at any particular skill or accomplishment, and that’s okay, but I’ll be damned before I’ll ever be boring. Of course, I may be damned anyway, but it won’t be because I was found to be boring.

I would rather be novel.

I’ve always been a big fan of the Irish-American actor, Barnard Hughes, ever since I saw him on Broadway play Nick Tynan in Da in the late 70s.

But I didn’t get to fully appreciate his genius until I watched him play the “Grandpa” character in the 1987 movie, The Lost Boys.

I loved how this eccentric character lived alone (when we first meet him) in this very cool house with all of these unique bits of tchotchke spinning, tinkling and jingling on the property all around the outside of his home while the inside seemed to be taken from the Better Homes & Gardens combined versions of 0001 Cemetery Lane and 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

I remember thinking as I watched that film that, if I live that long, I would want to live in a house with the same kind of eclectic energy. If I reached that age, I also would want to be able to be as unique as a Barnard Hughes’ character.

My grandmother, Bridey “Nana” Burke (née Igoe), and to a more repressed level, my mother, Vera McCaffrey, possessed a feminine version of that eccentricity, so I knew, given how I physically favored the Black Irish, Galway side of my lineage, that I had a genetic predisposition towards the same.

That familial eccentricity occasionally surfaced over the years in my non-conformist approach to all the social mores of my childhood, education and even later in my professional life.

But it didn’t get to fully rear its ugly head until after 2017, when Lisa and I, now in our 60s, upped and relocated from the Bronx, New York, to Berthoud, Colorado – and arrived at what ultimately became Casa Claire.

There I was presented with a blank canvas.

And then I met Claire The Mule.

And I started to write

And while this was happening my whimsy got loose, and I started assembling my tchotchkes.

And each day, as I move among Claire and Honey and Blue and Lisa and the tchotchkes here at Casa Claire, I feel like Barnard Hughes’ Grandpa from The Lost Boys, eccentric, creative and happy.

Add the magic of the Ozmandian children to the daily mix, and all I can say is that I hope they don’t invite the local Vampires across the threshold.

But I sure as hell am enjoying sharing every bit of whimsy with those flesh devils as Dude here at Casa Claire. It can be infectious.

Now the sun is rising and I must get on with Humpday.

You fine, five readers get those skates on and attack the hill.

That will be Friday waving at you when you hit the peak.

While you are slaloming down the far side towards Thursday, think about finding your own whimsy. It’s out there. Probably hanging with Friday.

Now, I’m going to go cuddle some kitties and make my rounds.

Let us all get out there and make today a great one, with a side of whimsy.