Books make wonderful presents. Books for birthdays. More books for Christmas. Mother’s Day. Father’s Day. Farmer Gary and I take it to the extreme, with books for Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter … you get the picture. Around our house, most books are one-and-done. Upon completion, the volume goes back on the shelf or, occasionally, into the donation basket. But once in a while, there’s something about a book that is almost haunting. A single reading is not enough….
Two years ago, as Gary and I finished clearing out Mom and Dad’s house in Connecticut, we set aside all kinds of mementos from their lives that we hoped would fit in the U-Box containers we’d rented. One entire section of the garage was filled with gardening tools. Some I remembered clearly from 50-something years prior. Dad loved to garden. It relaxed him after a long day in the office. A hoe, a rake, or a trowel was a piece…
“Paula, can you find something for me on your computer? There’s something I want to give Dad.” My heart leapt. It was 2016, and Mom was deep into Parkinson’s. She hadn’t been able to go out shopping for years. By then, most of our daily phone conversations were fairly one-sided. I provided family updates, which she enjoyed and could later share with Dad. One update Mom would be sure to give me, though, was: “Dad played the piano this afternoon….
My middle brother, Dave, wove together this remembrance of family and friends returning to Madison a few months ago to honor Dad’s memory in a heartfelt Celebration of Life: On June 11, about 40 family members and friends gathered at my parents’ spiritual home, St. Margaret’s Catholic Church in Madison, Connecticut. Dad had passed away in April of the previous year, before the risks COVID posed had diminished significantly, and this had limited the number of people who attended his…
What do you use to save your place in a book? A piece of scrap paper? An old photo or business card? A piece of toilet paper (we know where you’ve been reading!) or paper towel? Maybe a bonafide bookmark? As long as you don’t – gasp – fold, spindle or mutilate the page of your book, nearly anything will do. While cataloging the hundreds of inherited books from my parents’ collection, I’ve come across many bookmarks. Some stir a…
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…
Now that three steamer trunks have arrived packed with papers from Mom and Dad’s attic, it’s more obvious to me than ever that Mom was a prolific writer. This question has been on my mind recently … what was her final verse? It may take years to sort through her decades of letters, poems, and prose, but since most are dated, surely the answer will appear eventually. She used to laugh about her first verse. Little Joan Cassidy was in…
A busy month, with our trip to Connecticut to clear out Mom & Dad’s house, but books managed to wave their pages as me, seeking to soothe my sore muscles and aching heart with an escape to wonderland. A side note: Farmer Gary puts me to shame when it comes to level of voracious reading. While in Connecticut, he kept a pile of newspaper circulars to read when he had a few minutes. We’d canceled Dad‘s newspaper and magazine subscriptions,…
Not long after Mom and Dad moved to Madison, Connecticut in 1995, they discovered a treasure. No, it wasn’t Hammonasset Beach State Park, just a few miles away. It wasn’t the many opportunities for fresh seafood in the charming oceanfront community. And it wasn’t even the discovery that there was a Girl Scout two doors down, who would keep them supplied with Thin Mints for years to come. It was the bookstore. And not just any bookstore. An independent bookseller….
Farmer Gary and I just returned from nine exhausting days in Madison, Connecticut. I’d volunteered us to sell Mom and Dad’s house, including clearing out the house of personal belongings. Spoiler Alert: Mission Accomplished. Gary and I felt comfortable taking on this task knowing that long-time friend Rus (a semi-retired realtor who grew up in Lowell, Mass., and is a roller-coaster enthusiast) would be at the ready with advice. Plus, my husband has a subscription to the Wall Street Journal,…