“Did you know about the chair that went to college?” Dad and I were talking on the phone a few years back about how he filled his days after Mom passed. He spent hours each afternoon going through her poems and prose, much as I do now. Something he’d seen that day reminded him of that chair. Uh …what chair, Dad? Ah, yes. There was a comfy armchair we’d had since, I think, the 1960s in Pittsfield … … it…
Mom wrote this poem just days after the last of her uncles passed away. She greatly appreciated their place in her life growing up in New Haven. Uncles We never owned a carso uncles drove us placesto picnics weddingssometimes a collegebuses and legs were everywherefor shopping movies doctorsdates and family visitswe never took taxis and rarely trainswe needed uncles to drive a distanceand teach us how to ride a horseplay pinochle or tell a storytake us for ice cream across…
“Oh, boy! Stinky cheese!” Dad sure knew how to clear a room. He was crazy about pungent cheese and all the drama his eating it entailed. Maybe it was the Frenchy-Frenchman side of him? We kids would run for cover while he all but inhaled chunks of Camembert, Munster, and Feta. Phew! As a child, I remember begging Mom to let me wait for her outside of a food shop in Pittsfield, a store that specialized (or so it seemed)…
Sometimes the ugly headlines are enough. Too much, really. Defunding libraries? How can this even be an idea, much less an attempt in the Missouri legislature? I can’t help but wonder what Mom would think about this. Libraries were her lifeline as we moved from state to state in the 1960s and ’70s. I have a feeling she and Dad checked out schools, churches, parks – and libraries – while househunting each time. The library I remember most was in…
While adding to Farmer Gary‘s side of our family tree, it’s a treat to share newly discovered family stories (and family members) with him. Our conversation the other evening began with, “Your dad was first cousins with her mom. Still, I can’t help but think Joan Wharton and my mom would have been great friends.” It’s been somewhat of a scramble climbing from one side of our family tree to the other, but well worth it. Joan Wharton didn’t grow…
Growing up in the 1960s, getting new clothes for Easter Sunday was a big deal. I don’t know where she found it, but one spring Mom came home with a “coat of many colors” for middle-brother Dave. It was … to use a dated word … snazzy. Nearly 40 years later, Mom remembered that jacket in a poem: David Growing upyou prized foil candy wrappersa bright heap on your bookcasemade merrier by the sun Your younger brother later your own…
No, I’m not referencing the situation here in America. There’s another former president from a far-away land who also says he didn’t do it. This year is the 25th anniversary of the Kosovo War. That country’s former president pleaded not guilty at The Hague today to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Mom had a way of deeply humanizing stories of political and ethnic conflict through her writing. From Paddy McCarthy’s part in Belfast’s Bloody Sunday in 1971 to the…
Mom had a really good friend named Mary. Two friends named Mary, come to think of it. Mary Donahue and Mary Fleming. Turns out they were the same person. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this is a recent discovery on my part. When they met in college, Mom was Joan Cassidy and Mary’s last name was Donahue. They were thick as thieves, those two, along with Gloria Dowaliby. Here’s Mary’s yearbook page from 1952, graduation year: Their final year…
When your mother is a prolific poet, it may be best not to try and figure out too much about each individual poem. Mom loved words, the sound of words. And weaving them together into poems was one of her life’s great delights. Perhaps unfortunately, there’s something in me that is so literal, I have to spend at least a little bit of time to try and “figure out” each verse. As if it’s a riddle. Which I know it…
This selection of Mom’s prose from 40 years ago captures memories of the Quinnipiac River, located just down the hill from her childhood home in New Haven, Connecticut. Here’s a photo of her dad, Frank Cassidy from around that time, heading home on Chatham Street after one of his brisk walks. That’s the Quinnipiac in the background. The river has had good years and bad. My memories of it are from the 1960s, when it was befouled by industrial waste….