As most of you know, I was born and raised in Manville.  Born at home on Winter St. and raised in a 4th floor tenement on Railroad St., right there on the banks of what was then the very fragrant Blackstone River. Our house sat flush up against the sidewalk in front, with just enough room for a driveway on either side, and a cement yard edged with a row of garages out back. This was my immediate world and it shaped my perception of the world around me.  I knew, for example, that only rich people had grass, and only the very rich had bathtubs. Our bathroom, which back then was referred to simply as “the toilet,” was just that – a closet-size room in one corner of the kitchen that contained a toilet.  Period. No sink. No shower.…

We were at my mother’s not long after Mother’s Day when we spotted a vase of roses on the hearth. “Oh, is that that vase that Gerry peed in?” we asked, and then we all burst out laughing as the memory resurfaced. Here’s the story. When I was a child we lived in a four-decker tenement house in Manville.  Since our apartment was on the top floor, our hallway was relatively large and spacious, running a good 12 to 15 feet from front to back and maybe 6 feet across, with our door at one end, a window at the rear, and the open stairwell occupying a chunk of space along one side. For reasons I’ve never understood (or given much thought to, truth be told) our old white icebox sat at the far end of the hall.  Replaced by…

Someone recently posited that every missing sock is being replaced by an extra Tupperware lid ... I’m still thinking elves are responsible.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love football.  I love football in general and the New England Patriots in particular.  The 2012 schedule of games is taped to the side of a small bureau that faces the recliner in which I sit to watch the games, all the better to keep track of exact dates, times, and stations where said games will be found.   I own a Tedy Bruschi football jersey that literally comes down to my knees but was the only size available when I finally had enough cash in hand to make a purchase.  And I cannot tell a lie, in spite of my recent promise to myself not to add to my t-shirt collection (at least not for a while anyway) I couldn’t resist the gray Patriots shirts on sale at Job Lot last week…

I had recently commented on the fact that the reality of motherhood is a far cry for the idealized version that most of us tend to carry around in our heads before real life intrudes and teaches us differently. It seems that the other side of the coin…how our children see us as parents and their perceptions of their own upbringing…may be similarly flawed. I discovered this last week when I went out to lunch with three of my children.

Ballet has always fascinated me. I can’t remember when the fascination began, but neither can I recall a time when it wasn’t there.  The only thing that I am sure of is that it certainly wasn’t a result of having been exposed to it during my formative years.

The clock had sat on the mantle in my mother’s living room since shortly after my grandmother’s death in 1964, and although she had initially said she had never really cared for it, its very pretty, ornate styling fit in well with the rest of her décor.  Truth of the matter is, she only took the clock for my sake. I had been fascinated with it since I first noticed it and learned its history back in 1955 when I was thirteen years old.

My father was never much of a drinker. In fact, unless we had company coming we never usually even had alcohol in the house. But during the summertime when we would get word that the aunts, uncles, and grandparents were going to be making their annual pilgrimage down from Cohoes, NY to visit us, my father would go out to buy a case of beer. Company would come, the beer would be consumed, and the case of empties would be brought downstairs. No one ever seemed to get around to taking them back from whence they came, and so over the years, one case at a time, they slowly piled up in the cellar. It just so happened, during those years, that as the bottle collection grew, so, too, was I growing. Growing from infant to toddler, to young child,…