Telling Our Stories

  I don’t remember at what age Mom introduced me to Weymouth Landing’s old Tufts Library southeast of Boston, Massachusetts. What I remember perfectly about that wonderful day was her hand holding mine as we walked into Weymouth’s huge library to experience the absolute wonder of seeing all those warmly glowing wooden shelves filled with books! My two brothers and I had grown up with books around; our mother had turned two rooms of our home into a children’s kindergarten in the forties making more books handy to us than most other kids’ neighborhood homes. The words ‘more books’ on that amazing day became a relative term however because Weymouth Landing’s wonderful Tufts Library seemed to have millions! I stood inside the huge double door entrance gaping until Mom led me into the stacks on a quick tour explaining where each type of book was kept and which sections I’d probably be most interested in. Then we tiptoed to the librarian’s desk where, speaking in hushed tones and then si...

      I like to make lists.  Lots of tasks, written in no particular order, marching down the page.  My family loves to tease me about it; “ Mom and her lists!” they mumble, rolling their eyes.  My favorite part about making lists is crossing off what I’ve done.  Sometimes I even include things I’ve already finished just so I can cross them off and feel a sense of accomplishment.        Today’s list was pretty short:  Max to groomer’s; return fabric samples; go see Jan at the Thrift Shop, and   Memoir Club .  Sadly, there was nothing I could cross off without actually doing it.     I only had a half hour to see Jan before Memoir Club.  I grabbed my fleece off the back of the kitchen chair noticing the large stain on the upholstered seat.  Judi had spilled a mug of Dana’s hot syrupy goodness that he called hot chocolate last December at our first annual siblings’ cookie bake.  I made ...

August 2001: It had been one year since my mother’s death. The year was complicated by family conflicts over her estate, and I was still emotionally raw from the losses.  My husband and I were vacationing at our favorite vacation spot,  Acadia National Park.  I was shopping at some of the gift shops in South West Harbor.  Specifically, I was in a little shop called “Hot Flash Annie’s”. How could I not go in/! I picked up a little glass stone with the word  JOY written on it.  It reminded me of a stone I had given my mother years ago that sat on her kitchen table for the rest of her life next to her bills, newspaper articles, and ashtray.   When she died I took it back even though it was covered in nicotine.  I was wondering how I would find joy again.  When I got to the register to pay for the stone, I began to tell the owner/cashier about my mother and the stone.  I stood there sobbing,  she came around from behind the r...

  It was spring and I came home from school with a notice that class pictures were about to be taken in school at the end of the week. This, normally, would not have been such a big deal but it was short notice and I needed a haircut before I was to be immortalized in an infamous school portrait. For another reason, this would not have been such a big deal because I lived in a family full of hairdressers and barbers. Out of my 11 aunts and uncles, 5 of them owned clippers and one of the family events on a Sunday night every month or so was a “clip in” in my grandmother’s kitchen, with my uncle doing all boys. I was going on 9 years old and secretly longed for a chance to get a real haircut, in a real barbershop like my Dad, without an audience of giggling cousins. It just so happened that the stars were in line and my Mom forgot about the picture date until the day before the big shoot and it was crunch time. It didn’t make much difference to me whether I was trimmed for the pictur...

I never met anyone as loyal to her family as Kathryn. She always said that everything that had happened to her was her own doing.  She never blamed anyone else but herself. We met her at two months old when my sister and her husband took into their home their foster baby.  She was adopted one and one-half years later.  My husband, Paul, and I were thrilled to be the Godparents to our dear Kathryn Mary. I always called her Kathryn but my husband always called her "Mia Bella Bambino." Kathryn took up all the space in any room -- especially learning to walk,  which she did by running and crashing into walls.  Never was a baby sweeter or friendlier than Kathryn. She loved to eat, and she ate anything you put in front of her. The first sign of trouble arose for her in school when she encountered math, and that was her downfall.  She struggled all through school, which made school years all the more difficult.  She was never accepted there. Once she was a te...

    I was walking by the Hunt School (School Street School) the other day and I remembered a story about how I saw the flag rescued one afternoon. I was in the fifth grade with Mr. Nourse, on the second floor, in the front of the building. It was the usual custom for the custodian, Mr. Holbrook to stop by each afternoon and take in the flag which flew just outside the center window.             It was a particular windy spring day and the flag had gotten wrapped around the pole and could not be drawn in. He tried to free it with a broom handle but to no avail. As Mr. Holbrook stood looking out the window trying to figure out a solution to the problem a fellow student spoke up, “Mr. Holbrook I can get the flag in.” The whole class turned to Walter Hathaway in curiosity, as he volunteered, “I can climb out the window, shimmy up the pole, and unwrap it.”             N...

It was the end a of cool spring day and my wife and I were looking for an escape from our regular route to walk our dogs. We chose to visit an old cemetery just outside the center of town. The sky was becoming clouded over with rays of sunshine peeking through. It was marked with shades of dark blue clouds mixed with patches of blue sky. The air had turned crisp with sunset approaching, as we got out of our car. Our dogs we oblivious of the natural beauty around us, they were just interested in the new smells. The stark grey leafless trees, inside of the granite fence posts with their rusted red iron rails marked ancient family plots. An occasional evergreen and a few lonesome daffodils added a little color to the scene. The grass is still brown with patches of green and a few tattered flags, that had made it through the winter. Walking along the paths of the aging roadway I notice names of folks once prominent in the town. Among them are not only names from history but as time g...

            The bright, mild January 1990 day in Abington, Massachusetts, was far from the Laotian jungle of November 30, 1968, when the helicopter carrying a three-man crew plus Staff Sergeant Richard Fitts and five of his fellow Green Berets was shot out of the sky and crashed, a fireball killing all on board. Twenty-one years later amidst different geopolitics, an American-Laotian search team found his remains—a few teeth and about a hundred bone fragments, some his, some not. It was enough.             Cars lined the roadway swirled among grass and gravestones. People edged toward Richard’s open grave. I kept a distance, not wanting a privileged space and stopped about twenty feet from the hearse. The Army honor guard stood perfect in uniform, their faces frozen in solemnity. Three riflemen would fire the salute. Six pallbearers carried the flag draped casket. Three drummers beat the dirge-pace...

  Sometimes I think my August birthday came with an innate affinity for summer.   The moment I catch the first fragrance of lilacs, I step out of hibernation and revel in the nascent season with as much delight as a child counting the days ‘til Christmas. Tonight is one of those perfect late June evenings. July Fourth has not yet arrived, so my illusion that the summer will last forever is safe.   My home on a hill faces west and nature has outdone herself this day. I raise my glass of Pinot to the spectacular sunset show then head to the kitchen to finish setting the table. To the undiscerning eye, this is an ordinary scene. The day is done. A cool summer breeze rustles the curtains as a young woman sets a place for two. Flowers grace the table; chicken roasts in the oven and salad chills in the fridge.  Clearly, someone else is expected.  His name is Will, and I can tell you that there is no such thing as an ordinary day with Will. He is the man I l...

  My mother enters the kitchen through the back door, the basket balanced on her hip, the first load of laundry washed and hung on the clothesline.             "Kathleen, I want you to go over your aunt's today and help her."             My ever-so-compliant-seven-year-old self agrees immediately while my more inquisitive self wonders, "What is this all about? What about my chores here, or entertaining my little brother, watching my baby sister?" I don't know this aunt, my mother's older sister, very well, but she is always kind to me when we visit.   I start out on this hot summer morning in late June, happy as only a child with no worries or responsibilities can be. Three streets away from our new house in Weymouth stands 14 Wildwood Road, originally my grandmother's cottage, where my Aunt Mary Rose and her family have lived since the winter of 1940.  ...

                                                  It was July 21, 1970, an early summer evening, and I was standing on the bridge with a couple of friends, surveying the river near the flood stage, at the paper mill. Halfway around the world in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, two OH6 helicopters were falling out of the sky and four young men would die in the crash. One GI, Specialist Walter Joseph Kacsock, a very close, childhood friend and classmate would become forever young.   Two days later, after coming home from work I got a phone call from Chuck’s cousin bearing the news. The conversation was brief, he had been killed in action and she would call with more details as the family was informed. The next two weeks seemed like forever waiting for his body to return home. Chuck or “Sock” as he was known to his friends, was ...