This week came the news that Covid-19 had taken its 100,000th victim. My heart aches for all those unfinished stories and all those heartbroken families. May they all somehow find peace. And so it is with utmost respect for the departed that I also mourn a tiny bit for the Copacabana. If you were around in the late 1970s, you’ll remember Barry Manilow’s “At the Copa” disco tune that endlessly told the story of Lola (she was a showgirl) and…
Look! It’s a fingernail moon! Little Thomas was barely more than a toddler when he pointed to the night sky and proclaimed the waxing (or maybe it was waning) moon looked like a fingernail. We were driving at the time (pre-cell-phone days), and I couldn’t wait to get home to call Mom. Her first grandchild had a poet’s heart. Mom absolutely loved the moon. She was fascinated by the changing sizes, shapes, and colors of the moon. Harvest moon, crescent…
Mom wrote this poem, called simply Cherries, when her granddaughter Lucy was just a few months old. It may be that this cute little outfit inspired her. Cherries Lucy’s little yellow dress is cherried Take her to the hammock under cherry treesand in the early evening wrap herin the childhood cherry spreadremembering another eveningwhen we rode a ferris wheelafter a day of cherry picking Grandchildren and sister loved the cherriessent for summer birthdaysand from a country marketwe wooed each otherwith…
Last fall’s post about Sister Amabilis is by far the most-read story on this family blog. Hundreds of her first-grade students – now grown with children and even grandchildren of their own – fondly remember that tiny nun with the huge heart. Thank you to all who shared memories here or on Facebook. As we continue to sort through a mountain of family archives, delightful surprises about my mom’s aunt keep popping up. Easter eggs, if you will. Let’s start…
The year was 1929. That fall, the stock market crash set off The Great Depression. Also that fall, the mothers of two cousins-to-be found out they had identical due dates: April 6, 1930. And so began The Great Competition. I’ve never thought of my mom as a competitive sort. Well, all except when it came to her poetry. The Great Competition involved Grandma Cassidy and her sister-in-law Ethel Cassidy Hungerford. Both babies would be the first born to each couple….
No, not that Jack Cassidy. But yes, Mom had an uncle named Jack whose gregarious personality both flattered and flustered. As girls, Mom and her sister, Bunny, would scurry into the pantry to hide from that big personality. I did the same years later. As a child, I cowered from my uncle John Cull’s Eugene Levy-esque eyebrows. We shy lasses eventually grew up to appreciate these fine gentlemen. Mom wrote this poem about her uncle Jack Cassidy, a steamfitter, 13…
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…
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…
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,…