Mom’s cousin Patty sent me a wonderful photo via email this week.

The (unfortunately) undated photo shows their Aunt Marguerite (a nun my generation knew as Sister Amabilis) outside with a group of children, looking at a birdhouse.

No doubt they were her students, as Sr. Amabilis taught first grade for 58 years. (That’s right – nearly six decades!)

Mom adored her aunt, and wrote to her regularly. Sr. Amabilis saved the letters all those years and they were eventually returned to Mom.

Here’s the earliest one I can find – also undated. Based on her mention of “Baby Ray,” I’m going to guess Mom wrote this right after her brother‘s second birthday in January of 1940, when she was ten:

The letter continues:

… is feeling good. Here are a few poems for you. Give my love to the Sisters. Goodbye. Your niece, Joan

Perched in their backyard in Fair Haven, here’s Mom and “Baby Ray,” along with their sister Bunny, whose birthday is also in January:

And here are the two poems Mom included in her letter:

Snow

The ground is piled with snow,
And outside I will go;
To make a snowman big and fat,
He’ll wear my Father’s old torn hat.

~ Joan Cassidy, circa 1940

My Sled

I received a sled for Christmas,
Its name is Yankee Clipper;
One day I played it was a ship
And I the mighty Skipper.
I sailed right down a great hill,
And called it Niagara Falls,
But I had to put my sled away
When I heard my Mother’s calls.

~ Joan Cassidy, circa 1940

On a lark, I checked to see if Mom ever wrote a poem about a birdhouse.

As a matter of fact, she did:

The Woman in the Birdhouse

Snow surrounds her
and in the upper window
of her mountain house
she reaches out to shovel
it from her white roof

How like a bird she looks
in that whimsical window
edging into Spring
in her own way

~ joan vayo 7 March 2001

Mom and Dad kept an array of birdfeeders, birdhouses, and birdbaths wherever they lived. This is the backyard in their final home, in Madison, Connecticut.

They enjoyed watching for and listening to a variety of feathered friends over the years.

This family of owls (the first is front and center, another on the roof, and a third perched in the woods) lifted Dad’s spirits that first summer after Mom’s passing:

I fear there was not a birdhouse large enough for the three of them to settle in, so after a few good meals and a raucous bath or two, they took off for parts unknown. No doubt the smaller birds (not to mention the squirrels!) were not sorry to see them go. But Dad always kept an eye out for them, just in case.

“Snow” and “My Sled” © 1940 Joan Cassidy (Vayo). All rights reserved.
“The Woman in the Birdhouse” © 2001 Joan Cassidy Vayo. All rights reserved.

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