Today is Grandma Cassidy‘s birthday. And it’s Poetry Day. Born in 1903, Grandma wouldn’t have permitted us to calculate her age, had the luck of the Irish kept her with us all these years. Saints preserve us! Me sainted Grandmother has made her home in heaven since 1991. I was “great with child” at the time, with middle-son John on the way and couldn’t travel to attend her funeral in New Haven. I’ve always believed her blithe spirit lives on…
Does anyone still watch for “the first robin of spring”? That was a game, of sorts, growing up in western Massachusetts. Winters were so long that even a whisper of spring gave us a real lift. Sidenote: I fondly remember the annual family activity of clearing the driveway of the half-foot or so of packed snow and ice. It was genuinely fun chipping away the giant chunks during the February thaw and again in the spring. The only other chilly…
Bill’s wife, Barbara, whipped up another batch of comfort food over the weekend. She made several loaves of Cranberry Nut Bread, using Mom’s tried-and-true recipe. Bill brought a loaf with him to this week’s visit with Dad. They chuckled about a favorite Bob & Ray comedy routine that involved a “fast-breaking news” interview with The Cranberry Man: Mom and Dad loved Bob & Ray, and delighted in all the ridiculous characters and parodies they developed over the years. My parents…
All my life, Dad has talked about what a scamp he was as a kid. Yet, there were no stories to back up his claim. Was this silence on his part due to not wanting to set a bad examples for his four children? Perhaps. It’s only now that the confessions are spilling forth. As his confessor, I am impressed, but not yet mortified. Here’s a story: Times have changed over the generations, thank heavens. Back in the 1930s, Catholics…
Here are two of Mom’s poems to commemorate Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten Season. ash wednesday nails in the nesta night bird falling and in the housessomethingout of a dark holewet now on the courthouse stepsa dwarfthumbing his nose the bridein jewels before the frosted windowwaits the wind stirsa star under the ground the gold eggs gleam ~ joan vayo 24 February 1979 psalm what birdwaits here in darknessunder the death of the beloved by the lake the…
She was regal. She dripped with jewels. Her royal standing knew no equal. And she was purple. I don’t know why, but memories of Madam Queen came rushing back yesterday. And not just my affection for the oversized purple plush kitty cat, but how I got her. Madam Queen, or Maddy if you knew her well, was a gift. Not a birthday present, not a Christmas package, one of those “just because” gifts. Grandma Cassidy came to visit shortly after…
I kid you not: a big star once invited my Grandpa Cassidy to go on the road with him. And not as a security officer – as a tap dancer! Mom’s sister, Bunny, just shared this story with us last week, when Gary and I were visiting Dad in Connecticut. Poor thing, I think I asked her to repeat the story three times – I just couldn’t believe it! Grandpa was a “cop on the beat” in New Haven, Connecticut….
For as long as I can remember, our family’s lore about my great-grandparents’ emigration from Ireland includes the phrase “they missed the blizzard.” For some reason, I always assumed the blizzard was in Ireland and the newlyweds escaped it. Although blizzards are not entirely foreign to the Emerald Isle, neither are they a regular occurrence. It turns out, the “escape” was on the arrival side. The year was 1888 and in March, America’s northeast was paralyzed by ice, snow, wind,…
A week before Mom’s passing, I asked her about what is perhaps my favorite poem, “The King My Father.” At that point, her ability to speak had lessened greatly. Parkinson’s had cruelly robbed her of simple conversation. She regressed from struggling to remember a specific word to the point that she’d start a sentence but would stop after two or three words. And so when I asked her for the backstory about her poem “The King My Father,” my own…
Gosh, I remember that day. We were at Grandma and Grandpa Cassidy’s house for a visit. This story centers around their kitchen. And eggs. I loved that kitchen, and the adjacent pantry. The kitchen included a dinette set, pushed up against the wall. That wall featured a Murphy bed-esque ironing board – it folded up and all but disappeared! The room also included a gas stove and a tall white cabinet that was freestanding. I’m sure that cupboard housed a…