She was just 13 years old. It must have felt like the world was exploding. Her uncles were in uniform. The radio blasted news of war. There was rationing of food and materials. Newspaper headlines were frightening. So Mom wrote poems. Some she included in letters to her aunt who lived an hour away. It wasn’t until after Sister Amabilis passed away that Mom discovered all her letters had been preserved. This poem about the USS Hornet was so long,…
Mom dearly loved her aunt Ginny. The youngest of Grandpa Cassidy‘s siblings, Ginny lived her entire life on Lombard Street in New Haven. Virginia Anne Cassidy came into this world on December 11, 1915. This was a full 22 years after her oldest brother, John, was born. Grandpa was 15 years older than Ginny. After all these years, it’s only now coming to me that Mom must have been named for her. Virginia was Mom‘s middle name. This is the…
Now that I’m buckling down and finally watching the tutorial videos Ancestry.com provides, I’ve learned the fancy genealogical terms “brick wall” and “breakthrough.” And so, with a bit of a blush and definite tongue-in-cheek, I must proclaim: We’ve scaled the brick wall and experienced a breakthrough! Let’s go back a week, when the luck of the Irish arrived via an email. It was Adrian (who, it turns out, is my third cousin), who had wandered across this blog post from…
After a loved one dies, it’s a great relief to dream about them. I seem to dream about Mom and Dad just a few times a year. It always feels current, yet back in time. That way about dreams that’s only confusing after you awaken. In the dream, I proclaim joyfully that Mom is able to walk steadily again, as in her pre-Parkinson’s days. I hug her repeatedly. We prepare a meal together; it’s always a family gathering. I wake…
With Mom’s love of nature expressed in her poetry, I have to wonder … Who is this woman in red? A cardinal? Red squirrel? Red-winged blackbird? Or maybe, just maybe, a red fox. Here’s Mom‘s poem: The Curve / The Cave I will always wonderwhere the woman in red wentshe was my musicI knew her loved herwrote her on the pageand in my hearta lover came out of the Eastwith voice and eyes and hands so tendershe became his flowerdon’t…
One of these days, I need to pull out Mom’s “rejection folder” for a blog post. Yes, she kept the rejection letters she received from magazine editors over the years. Rejection. Who needs that?! But Mom never gave up. She kept mailing out those hand-typed poems, knowing her work was good. Once in a while, there’d be hand-written feedback in the margins of those letters, written by kind editors who no doubt understood the pain of rejection. Back in the…
With Mother’s Day just around the corner, here’s a poem Mom wrote in memory of her mother in 2004. The occasion was the 101st anniversary of Grandma‘s birth. It had been more than two decades since Grandma’s passing, but her oldest child was still thinking of her parents together. Dancing together. Maybe In a photograph the windowlures us to a world away we’ll never seeso like a road ascending bendingon the driver’s side and then is goneas we are gonewhat…
The anxieties and worries of the past few months bring me to wonder about another time of national crisis. In the early 1970s, there was war to worry about. And a draft. With three sons, two of them approaching the age to be called up, Mom and Dad must have been concerned beyond belief. We’d just moved to Fairfield, Connecticut. Richard Nixon was president. And Vietnam was on fire. Here are some of Mom’s raw war poems from that time:…
“The Hundred Acre Wood got floodier and floodier.” How lucky am I to have married a man who can quote Winnie the Pooh?! Farmer Gary and I were driving home after a wonderful weekend with James. Our youngest son lives exactly 250 miles from us, so it’s a bit of a haul, but always worthwhile. James cooked for us several times and took us to our first cat cafe. My favorite moment was just as we walked into the special…
Today is April 1. Apparently there was a bit of snowfall on this day 22 years ago outside Mom’s window in Madison, Connecticut: One Flake Falling With one flake fallingthe snow begets a garden for the moon So April One once greenis slowly overlaid with whitethe pussy willows pausethe school bus hurries children home Some forty years ago I wroteof such a prank on such a dayI hear the same sky laughter nowand spot the sunshy preening for her bow…