As Halloween fast approaches, it is time to tell my cousin Suzanne’s story about Grandma and the Bats. The year was 1985. The place was our maternal Grandma‘s house in New Haven. Our mothers’ cute childhood home at 33 Chatham Street was a wedding gift from Grandma’s parents in 1929. Grandpa had passed away three years earlier and Grandma was delighted when Suzie accepted her invitation to be roomies. Suzanne was recently out of college and had several part-time jobs…
Have you ever felt a sense of grace while going through a really hard time? Have you found something to smile or chuckle about through your tears of grief? Mom called this “a sense of holy laughter” in a recorded interview, below. She was referencing how she and her siblings managed to laugh as they stepped cautiously through the final weeks of their father’s life in the spring of 1982. A sense of holy laughter. Grandpa loved a good laugh….
Growing up, we all knew better than to ask Mom who her favorite was, as the answer was always the same. With three sons and a daughter to choose from, it was just impossible. “You’re all my favorites,” she’d say. Well. Apparently when it came to her hundreds of poems, Mom did have an extra warm feeling for a select few. In this recording, her college friend Mary Fleming interviews Mom and poses that age-old question: As mentioned in the…
For the past decade or so, I made a point of not deleting voicemails from my mom. Knowing she wouldn’t be around forever, I wanted to have a way to still hear her voice. But last spring as I prepared to retire, I “wiped” my work phone without saving the messages. Darn it! If only I’d thought to ask any one of my sons for help, surely we could have preserved those precious files. Happily, something even better has turned…