Fruitful and Multiply

Albie and Margharita Marciano took too seriously the biblical decree to be fruitful and multiply. No sooner were the nuptials completed than they got busy procreating. The fruits of their furious efforts sprang forth a mere nine months after their wedding date in the form a daughter they named Fiona, who later renamed herself Ginger after the ship-wrecked and breathy glamor-girl played by Tina Louise on the television series Gilligan’s Island.

Albie was a science teacher at the local middle school, during an era when it was still legally defensible to physically assault students who didn’t do what they were told. Father accumulated a well-worn reputation for strong-arming and bitch-slapping errant pupils. Margherita was a frazzled mother and housewife. She escaped the pressures of child rearing by watching soap operas and Downy commercials.

Both parents came of age during the Great Depression. The lessons of those days seared my parents in different ways. For Albie, it left the indelible impression that the world was hampered by two critical shortages: food and money. He would spend the rest of his life stockpiling and consuming as much of those items as humanly possible.

For Margherita, it meant agonizing over all decisions, big and small, because one never knew what kind of disaster a wrong choice could trigger. She instilled the same indecisiveness and fear of change in her children.

Albie and Margherita became a couple after mutual friends hooked them up for a blind date. Having just returned from his tour of duty as a communications specialist in World War II, Albie wore his Army uniform for the occasion. Margherita was in a bright

summer dress. She thought Albie looked manly and intelligent in his crisp uniform and wire-framed glasses.

Albie found Margherita’s puckered little mouth a source of lust.

“What do you like to do for fun?” Albie asked

“Oh, I don’t know,” Margherita said. “Just about anything.”

As droll as their exchanges were, a blue spark of intimacy was taking shape between them. Soon they were wrapped in the bonds of holy matrimony. The nuptials were subdued and auspicious. The marriage stood a high probability of success, based on Albie’s industrious and self-disciplined nature, and Margherita’s aversion to change.

@copyright/Mike Consol