JohnMichaelElizabethAnnMeJoanMaryKatieStephenJulie. These people are my mantra, my brothers and sisters.
JohnMichaelElizabethAnnMeJoanMaryKatieStephenJulie. They are my DNA, my lifelong context. See how they surround me?
JohnMichaelElizabethAnnMeJoanMaryKatieStephenJulie. The Keane kids are my emotional biome. (John Michael has two names, and Julie prefers Jules now, but she’ll always be Julie to me.)
My dad was so proud of his nine children that he got a vanity plate for the Plymouth wagon that read “KEANE9”. My mom was too exhausted to care about vanity, plates or otherwise.
Of course I can tell you their birthdays, but I won’t, because we’ve gotten sensitive about our age. These days, we range from the 60s to the 40s, and that ever-shifting 13-year window between the oldest and the youngest is a permanent reminder of the years that my mother spent pregnant or about-to-be.
Yes, we’re Catholic. How did you guess? My father studied to be a priest when he was young. He quit that quickly, thank God, or who knows where we’d all be. We lived directly across the street from our church in Massachusetts—Saint Margaret’s—and we’ve got tales. The time John Michael sliced an artery on our front porch and Father Hickey heard the screams and came running across to drive him and my mom to the hospital—and saved his life. The time I got hit by a car and Father O’Connor came out and carried my unconscious body up the church steps. The time Ann walked a white carpet spread across the street from our house up into the church on her wedding day. We worked there, we prayed there, we partied there (in the basement). That church was in our bones, as if we breathed its molecules every day and incorporated bits of it into our bodies.
Growing up, we shared clothes, we shared beds, bathrooms, food, books, and toys. Almost never without a fight. When we’d grouse, my father would say “To whom much is given, much is expected,” but we never had much of anything. His job was white-collar, but it didn’t pay very well, and my mom was way too busy with all of us to get a job. Moms didn’t have jobs, anyway.
Our house was big, with six bedrooms and a beautiful yard out back. None of us have ever lived anywhere better. We moved bedrooms often, as the oldest grew up and out and vacated the primo bedroom. I started in the bedroom next to the bathroom upstairs, sharing a bed with JM, then I moved to the telephone room out front by the street, then down to the den for a while, then up to the sweltering attic. Each of my sisters and brothers had a similar nomadic existence in that house.
We inherited and circulated jobs among us. JM started a paper route, which I took over when he went to high school, and I passed the route down to Stephen when he got old enough. Joan got a job at the church, counting money and answering the phone, and she eventually got Father Commane to hire Katie, too. Ann started working at the paper store on the corner, and soon she pulled me in. Papa Gino’s, Strawberries, the cafeteria in my dad’s office, the snack bar at the beach and so many more I’ve forgotten. If one Keane wasn’t available, another one was right there to step in.
It was never idyllic, sharing my life with so many other people. I was born craving solitude, which was never harder to find than in that house. I remember having tantrums when I was younger about the noise, and the bickering, and my latest grievance against Ann or Joan, and my dad was always demanding some “peace and quiet!” If you told me today that I would have to live with 10 other people, I’d start my heroin habit right now.
But these are my troops, this is my in-built network. When I have good news to share, I tell Susan first, then my own children, and then I tell the Keane kids. When I need some advice, I can choose from a Yellow Pages of experts: a chemist and CEO, a pediatrician, a public relations whiz, a human resources master fixer, an artist and baker, an executive assistant with a perfect memory, a lawyer and chef, and a world-traveling development officer with impeccable taste in music.
I could write about my brothers and sisters all day, but I need to share this post on our group chat now, so they can praise me, and tell me what I’ve gotten wrong. And probably ask me why the hell I’m spending so much time on this blog when I should be looking for work. I’m so lucky to have them.
