{"id":5199,"date":"2017-12-05T12:05:16","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T23:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/?p=5199"},"modified":"2017-12-24T23:38:47","modified_gmt":"2017-12-24T10:38:47","slug":"nonagenarius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/nonagenarius\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonagenarius"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mamea family had a get-together earlier this year. With almost all of his progeny in one room, my father announced that this year he was turning 90 years and he expected a full and proper celebration.\u00a0In the (brief) silence that followed, my siblings and I exchanged looks, jaws mid-chew, our mouths full of food.<\/p>\n

Our father has always had good timing.<\/p>\n

The thing is\u2026 we’d celebrated his 80th in 2006, which meant we’d all<\/em> forgotten that\u00a0last year<\/em>, 2016, should’ve been his 90th birthday. But we hadn’t really<\/em> forgotten because somewhere along the line, someone had unearthed this document:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He’s not\u00a0officially <\/em>90 for another two years. He snuck in his 80th\u00a0three years early.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat’s with the numbers?\u201d the numerically-bonded amongst you ask. \u201cHow could we forget his 90th birthday?\u201d the emotionally-integrated amongst you cry out.<\/p>\n

We did that 80th shindig on his say-so, and in the intervening years a fog of confusion has grown where official documents say this, our father says that \u2014 and our father’s answers have differed slightly with each asking\/confirmation. Also, he’s 80-plus, for pete’s sake; his birthday\/s was\/were almost a century<\/em> ago now, and, for a large part of his adult life, birthdays were irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Some might say there’s a rich vein of family history here. For my siblings and I, it was another memorable moment in the life of being a Mamea.<\/p>\n

Wearing my writer helmet, there’s an interesting character feature here that might come in handy at some point. Not the obvious age-defining-character angle, but more how multiple birthdates \u2014 all equally valid \u2014 inform\u00a0backstory<\/em>. A lot (could have) happened in that two to three year gap between my father’s possible birthdays: he was born either before or during the Great Depression; he was born either before or during the rise of the Mau movement in Samoa. The timing of his arrival on this planet could make a world of difference in his upbringing and character.<\/p>\n

Like anyone and everyone else, both real and imagined, there’s more to Pater Mamea than meets the eye. It just requires some thought and a little patience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mamea family had a get-together earlier this year. With almost all of his progeny in one room, my father announced that this year he was turning 90 years and he expected a full and proper celebration.\u00a0In the (brief) silence that followed, my siblings and I exchanged looks, jaws mid-chew, our mouths full of food. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Nonagenarius”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[241,1278],"class_list":["post-5199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scriptwriting","tag-character","tag-mamea-aiga"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5199"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5248,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5199\/revisions\/5248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}