I remember the day  this picture was taken. I was dressed by one of my older sisters, and  left to play with a white kitten somewhere in the house till I was called into the den where the picture was to be taken. The photographer told me to lay my hand on my father’s knee, and I  remember my father taking my hand in his, my smiling over at him as he smiled at me.  But when I look at this picture now, what I remember most about that day is that  I did not have  a care in the whole wide world.

Thirty years later, I walked  the oak-shaded sidewalk in front of this house holding my four-year-old son’s hand.  We would head out from my mother’s house for the fifteen minute walk to Main Street, where we could get  a  bowl of Conrad’s home-made ice cream.  The sidewalks  which we followed to town were cracked and buckled,  not so much from age as from the huge roots of those oak trees.    My son would ask  for the same stories each visit.  About my best childhood friend who lived in the house across the street whose parents still live there. About  the people next door who knew my family before I was born, and still  live there.  About climbing trees that were big when I was little whose very  roots were now ripping up the sidewalk.  He would sigh and dream aloud to me about what it would be like to grow up in  such a place, where nobody moved, where Gram lived around the corner, where Aunt Reeny’s ear was a bike ride away, where cousins lived in the next town. And he would promise me and himself aloud, that when he grew up, he would raise his family in  a place just  like this.  A place with strong and deep roots.

That was  when I’d start to worry. A mother wants to give her children everything they wish for, especially aunts and uncles and cousins who love you unconditionally. But my life quite simply demanded that I be elsewhere, as it does for many  nuclear  families. At that point those oak trees seemed to come alive, like that scene in The Wizard of Oz,  telling me  in a deep oak-tree voice that I was making one big mistake.  Nature simply  did not intend for children to be raised like that.

It was soon after that walk ten years ago with my son that I began researching my family at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.  I was  equipped  with a binder that held blank pieces of paper, ready to write it all down, very neatly, so my son could read, once he learned how to read, our family tree.  Some family trees  are all neat and tidy.  I once knew a woman who had  a formal picture of both her and her husband’s parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents.  Each picture was a 5 x 7,  framed in the same style frame, and  hung in chronological order on the walls of the alcove leading to her dining room.

I  discovered that my family’s history is not a series of 5 x 7 pictures hung in chronological order, nor does it lend itself to one of those geneological maps which depict a family as one tree with one set of roots. My binder of blank paper grew into a collection of stories about journeys, both external journeys and internal. For example, my father made an external journey to Ireland in 1965 to unearth his roots.  Years before that, he had made an internal journey at a Paulist Noviatiate, which  he entered in 1929 with the intent of becoming a  priest.  I was with my father in 1965, and  I have vivid memories  of  Dad on his search for Irish roots. I was not with him at the Paulist Novitiate, but I have a collection of  letters he received while he was there from his family and friends, letters which my father  kept  until he died, and which somehow found their way to me. These stories, and others, are what eventually found their way into my binder.

We have all  made similar external and  internal journeys.  The stories of those who journeyed before me have enabled me to come to understand my ancestors as more than a name  listed on the census in the National Archives and my parents as much more than Mom and Dad. And their stories have enabled me to  understand  my own journeys of which there have been so many.  And in the end I realized that I have nothing to fear from those deep-rooted oak trees.

Arboretum: Part One

The Timber Trade Route: Ireland to Maine

On their own soil, the Irish had  learned to survive without much wood. The Saxons had raped the countryside of  its woods and groves centuries earlier. The people came to rely on  the surrounding  peat bogs for  the fuel they needed, and they built their cottages using mud and stone for the walls.  However,  a family had to have at least one wooden beam of support over their heads.   So rare were these beams that when families were being evicted from their homes in the early 1800′s, even the most miserly of landlords would allow the destitute family to carry this one beam of wood  away with them. This was, for some,  their only hope of ever having another roof over their heads.

For others, there was another  source of hope.   By 1830 every seaport village in the south and west of Ireland  harbored  vessels which set sail in the spring for the St. Lawrence Seaway. There was an abundance of wood along the banks of the St. Lawrence,  and the merchants who owned these vessels prospered from this trade route.  But a trade route works best if there is a two-way trade, and sending empty ships to the St. Lawrence to pick up timber did not make good business sense. So the merchants offered passage to  the maritime provinces  for  fifteen shillings, which was far cheaper than the four or five pounds charged  for passage  to New York. Furthermore, the merchants offered immediate employment upon their arrival, as the immigrants would be paid to help load the ship with her new cargo.   The merchants won through this arrangement; they now had cheap ballast for their empty ships and a guaranteed labor force on the other side. The Irish immigrants won in that they had cheap passage to a new world that offered more hope  than the bleak horizon in Ireland.

But this employment lasted only through the summer. Then the young Irishman who had come to this new world to make a life for himself had a decision to make.  He could go into the Canadian woods, clear  some land, and begin to farm it. This was  lonely and rough; rough he could handle, but the social instincts of the Irish do not lend themselves to  such a solitary life.   His other choice was to become a lumberman at one of the many lumber camps also back in the woods, where the workers would spend the winter harvesting the forests for the next spring’s shipment of timber. Here there was plenty of work for the men and  plenty of companionship  among the company houses  supplied by their employer for their now young families.

Helen Hamlin, in her book  Nine Mile Bridge, describes life in  a lumber camp. Employed as a  schoolteacher in the lumber camp called  Churchill,  she  recalls   such   settlements  as anything but  a romantic  log cabin colony under the shadows of great spruces.  The shores of the ghostly lake in Churchill were lined with dri-ki,  which were the bleached dead stumps of drowned trees. The houses in the settlement were identical -  one and a half story company houses that had once, a long time ago,  been painted white.  There were few log cabins in the camp,  a couple of  woodsheds, outhouses, and pigsties.  The boarding house for the bachelors was a long barracks-like building.

On a Sunday afternoon late in the fall, Hamlin relates that one of these settlements would be quiet.  Doors would be let open to let in the late fall sunshine. Children would be playing outside – hopskotch and skipping rope.  Boys would be in the mud pond on log rafts, falling in and climbing back up again.  Men would stand around in small groups talking. some in suits and some in their lumberjack attire. Women would stand in the open doorways with their arms crossed under their aprons. On weekdays   Churchill was a droning beehive – sleds being loaded for the faraway camps, the sawmill in full-buzzing swing, the air fragrant with freshly-sawed pine and spruce.  Hammers pounded all day as the blacksmith repaired logging chains and made new sleds in preparation for the winter which was to come.

The long-timers in these camps in the maritime provinces were French Canadian. They spoke French. And if you didn’t speak French, you did not want to stay on too long as a lumberjack in the Maritime Provinces.  Stories came back to the camps of others who had left for the States, where  people spoke English, there was plenty of work , and the wages were high. So  the young Irishman would work  as a lumberjack  until enough money had been saved to start the journey south.  No ships were sailing south. There was only one way to get there, and that would be to walk.

Bernard Mclaughlin was one of these young men  who had left Ireland during the potato famine.  He left the ship he had come over on, and went to St. John, in Canada, where he met Mary Dulaharty, also an immigrant, but from Spain.  They were married in St. John on August 16, 1825.   Thousands of  immigrants, mostly Irish,  followed the coast of New Brunswick to Maine and continued along the trails and roads into New England. The McLaughlins followed the St. John River, and then up the Aroostook River, until they stopped at a logging camp in Aroostook County, Maine.  Land this far north  had only become part of the United States in 1838.

In 1840,  Barney was 42 years old, and his wife, Mary, was 41years old.  They now had six children, one daughter and five sons, since their marriage fifteen years ago in St.John, Canada.     One can only imagine walking those riverside trails with your children in tow,  looking for a good place to settle down.  The McLaughlins would have heard stories about homesteaders in the West, who were given land to farm. Appealing to some immigrants, but not so much to the Irish, according to  Marcus Hansen in his book on immigrants  during this time period.  The Irishman’s love of land was only equaled by his love of  company. Tales of the prairies with distances without end, villages without a social life, and no churches of his faith compelled them to settle  in New England.

So, somewhere between 1830 and 1840 ,  Barney McLaughlin and his family stopped walking and  made a home out of a company house in Plymouth Grant, a logging community in Aroostook County, Maine.   John Dorsey, another Irishman, was a local who was living near a place called Fort Fairfield, which was in the same vicinity as the logging community. John and his wife, Mary, were   about the same age as Barney and Mary, and they also had a large family – three sons and two daughters.  In 1840, the census-taker came into Plymouth Grant. The  locals from the Fort Fairfield area as well as the lumberjacks formed a line to sign on with the census.. Only five men stood in line between John  Dorsey, a local landowner,  and Barney McLaughlin, a lumberjack.

Barney McLaughlin stayed at the  lumber camp until  1843, when the area north of the Fort Fairfield area,  which would come to be called Limestone, was opened for settlement.  Barney was able to buy lots at $1.25 per acre, 50 cents of which was to paid in money, and the remainder by road labor.  Barney took land at what would later come to be known “Four Corners”. Thier only neighbor, Andrew Phair, was about two miles away on the land he had purchased.

A survey of Limestone done by Rowe and Colby of Philadelphia in  1877 shows a great amount of  activity in the area over the course of those  thirty years.  “Four Corners” is shown as the intersection of  Caribou Road and Fort Fairfield Road.  If you were to walk down the Fort Fairfield Road from the Caribou Road, you would have passed  four farmhouses  each of which held one of the now deceased Barney’s son’s families.   James McLaughlin might have been sitting on his front porch, and he would have explained that he lived in his own  house here behind him, with his wife Bridget, and their  five children, all under the age of 10.  He could have pointed out his brother John’s house,  two doors down, where his brother  lived with his wife Katherine. Across the street were two more brothers, George, who was 25, and Barney, who was 26. Between those two brothers there were four more young children, all under the age of 10.  Then, he most likely would have pointed out a large parcel of land, and told you that it belongs to his sister, Catherine: this is the only lot on the survey map which is owned by a woman in 1877.

The census of 1880 shows these  four families still  living on the same road,  the four brothers now in their forties and late thirties, and their children  coming of age.  Catherine’s lot of land is now where she lives with her brother George; the census suggests that his wife Margaret has died, leaving him 8 children to raise with his sister’s help. Next door is his brother Barney and his sister-in-law Susan, who are raising their  7 children.  James is still across the street, with his wife Bridget, and their four children. Their oldest daughter, Ellen, is now living across the road with Barney and Susan to help with their family.  Next door to James is John McLaughlin and his wife Katherine; they still  have no children.

If you were to walk down the Fort Fairfield Road from the Caribou Road twenty years later in 1900,  the first house on your right would still be George Mclaughlin’s place.  Catherine, known by the children as Aunt Kit,  has since left the farm; apparently she  died on her way to California with a parson’s family.  She would have been in her late thirties. Most of  George’s children are gone, but for  his sons, George who is 24 , Michael 21,  and a daughter,  Catherine 22.  George Jr.  might explain to you that next door lives his Uncle Barney, who is now 65.  George might also explain to you that his Uncle Barney was named after his father, George’s  grandfather, who was one of the first settlers of Limestone. George might go on to tell you that he works  his father’s potato farm with his brother Mike. He would most likely tell you that the McLaughlin family has always farmed potatoes in Limestone.

In the fall of 1905,   George McLaughlin Jr. – now 29 – saw an attractive young woman sitting on the front porch of the house across the road  from his. Limestone was  a small town, and George knew that the new school  teacher who was from Fort Fairfield was boarding at his neighbor’s place.  George  walked across the road and introduced himself to this attractive young schoolteacher, Susie Dorsey. The next spring,  Barney’s grandson, George,  married John Dorsey’s great-granddaughter, Susie.

In 1900, Susie Dorsey had been a sixteen year-old girl living  in Fort Fairfield, Maine.   Her grandparents, Edward and  Hannah, had raised seven children in Fort Fairfield.  Susie had  four uncles and two aunts in the small town. Uncle Edward was the town’s stable keeper,  while her other uncles were farmers like her own father. All except for Uncle Miles, who  listed his occupation as “capitalist” in the 1900 census: he was the only capitalist in  a community whose members listed themselves as farmer, farm laborer, day laborer, servant, livery stable keeper, and town physician.  Susie Dorsey had 22 cousins in the small town of Fort Fairfield, who were between the ages of 6 and 20.  She could hardly walk through town without bumping into one of them. And the Dorseys held their heads just a little higher on the muddy main street of Fort Fairfield, or so the story goes, because of yet another story.

Susie’s great grandfather, John Dorsey.  had come to this part of Maine around 1825.  The story  is that he emigrated from Ireland to England  to work as a groom on the estate of  some English lord. The lord’s lady, Lady Anne, fell deeply in love with this handsome sweet-talking groom, and they ran away together to the new world.   Edward Dorsey, a descendant of this family line, wrote  in 1977:

“John and Lady Ann Richardson Dorsey were of the first generation and settled at the mouth of Johnston’s Brook around 1820. By the way, John was  a stablehand and groom, and from the information furnished by my late Dad, was quite a Ladie’s man. He was born in Westmeath County, Ireland and went to England where he was employed as a Groom for a family of nobility by the name of Richardson. He left hastily and secretly with the wife of Lord Richardson and came to Canada by boat and  then settled in Fort Fairfield in 1820.

John did emigrate to England  from Ireland, where he was born some time between 1790 and 1795.  After serving as a private in the British Service until he was in his thirties,    he received  a military land grant, which was lot 107 near Andover, Maine.   He did well there, for in 1840 he received another land grant closer to Fort Fairfield, which then became known as the Dorsey Road area. This was the same year he registered with the census at the logging community known as Plymouth Grant. Another document states that his wife, Mary Ann Richardson, was born in  Condyle City (sp) in 1795 .

She was married before she met John Dorsey, and she had a son by her first marriage. This boy’s name was Robert, and Mary Anne Richardson brought Robert with her when she left England with John Dorsey.  Robert was raised as John’s son, and  eventually Robert married into another Fort Fairfield family.  If Robert was the oldest son of an English Lord, he could have returned to England to claim his inheritance. But he did not.

This all  leaves considerable doubt about the Lady Ann Richardson story – charming as it is.  Why such stories exist gives an insight to our country  in the last quarter of the  twentieth century At that time there were happy diplomatic relations between the U.S. and England – so happy that the U.S. looked abroad for its standards, and England  stood out as the best role model.  This was most conspicuous in the cities where the daily press made a feature of English society news. However,  this preoccupation with things from England reached far into our countryside.  Knut Hamsun, a Norwegian novelist, was a self-proclaimed judge of artistic and cultural matters in the small Wisconsin village where he lived.  However, he understood that his opinion counted for naught if an Englishman were present.   The English newcomer  established usages of tone  through out society in the second half of that century.  Perhaps  Mary Ann, having been born in England, served such a function in the small community of Fort Fairfield, thus dubbing her Lady Ann.  Susie Dorsey, her great-granddaughter,  left Fort Fairfield  when she was 21 to teach  in a one-room schoolhouse in Limestone where half of her students spoke English and  half of her students spoke French.

The census of 1910 shows George and Susie McLaughlin  living in Limestone with one servant, Iva Seger, and one day

laborer, Henry Fischer.  George’s Uncle William and Uncle Barney are still living on their farms, and two cousins,

William and Henry, are also running their own farms and raising a large brood of children. By 1920, George and Susie

have two young daughters, Eva and Bessie.  In 1929 Bessie joined her older sister Eva in New York

City, where the two young women  attended The College of Mount Saint Vincent.  One day during her sophomore year

Bessie was walking towards Seton Hall, her dorm, when she saw two of her classmates, Anne and Helen O’Dea.  Twin

sisters, they were standing  near the doorway talking with a young  man.  I am not sure who asked for the introduction:.

I do know  that Bessie  was introduced to the twin’s brother, Arthur.  They dated, fell in love, married and had seven

children in this order: Anna, Elizabeth, Arthur, Thomas, Maureen, Joseph, and me, whom my

mother named Susan Dorsey.

Arboretum continues on July 15.

It isn’t very often that The Virginian-Pilot’s Op Ed page brings on peals of laughter at my breakfast table. But ever since Daniel Golden’s article delineating the high level of success in Department of Defense schools appeared in the Wall Street Journal, there have been some very odd ideas expressed on the last page of the Hampton Roads section of this paper. As distinguished national columnists such as William Raspberry of the The Washington Post and Anthony Lewis of the New York Times try to explain to the American public how this could possibly happen, they reveal how very little they know about the military lifestyle.

For example, Mr. Raspberry, who usually writes intelligent, well-informed columns on the state of public education in this country, feels that one area where the Department of Defense schools succeed where the nonmilitary counterparts fail is due to the “presence of parents, particularly fathers.” Now that’s funny. When I needed two hands to count how many deployments my husband had made, I stopped counting. This was due to that fact that I was so busy being Mom and Dad that I never had two hands free at the same time to count. Does Mr. Raspberry even know what a deployment is? What a geographic bachelor is? Or better yet, does he know what a “one-year unaccompanied” is? The “presence of parents, particularly fathers” – POPPYCOCK!

Mr. Lewis has this idea that the success of Department of Defense schools is because “the gap between high and low incomes is less stark among military personnel, and less distorting than in our civilian society.” Let’s take a closer look at this idea. A Petty Officer 2nd class with ten years of active duty makes about twenty-two thousand a year, and a Lieutenant with ten years of active duty makes a little more than twice that. They could both have a daughter in Ms. Smith’s third grade class in the DOD school in Rota, Spain. Each of those little girls knows that based on her active duty parent’s rank, not only is her allowance determined, but also the size and location of the house to which her family was assigned upon arrival in Rota. There are beaches where the officer’s family goes on Sunday afternoons, and there are other beaches where the enlisted family goes on Sunday afternoons. There are even specified parking places at the grocery store for the officer’s wives. There is nothing more stark and distorting to the civilian world than the military system of rank. By the way, it is also a difficult concept for third graders.

But the test scores show that this does not seem to adversely affect their ability to read and write. Roy Truby, who is the executive director of the board that administers the National Assessment Test, feels that this report “debunks the notion that demography is destiny.” So what does mark the destiny of these military dependent third graders at DOD schools? Obviously, I do not agree with Mr. Raspberry’s emphasis on the presence of fathers, nor do I agree with Mr. Lewis’ idea that the success is due to a less stark and distorting gap between an O6 and an E1. Furthermore, given that the military community is a reflection of American society, the performance of these children cannot rest with more caring parents, better prepared teachers, or brighter students. Ms. Smith in Rota, Spain has the same challenges as Ms. Smith in the local public school. In searching for the differences between the two student bodies, each columnist has failed to understand one basic feature. Of the 224 DOD schools, 153 are overseas. I would argue, therefore, that this study debunks demography for geography.

For the most part, these children who have scored so well on National Assessment Tests spent a total of three years of the K – 12 experience in DOD schools. The rest of their education took place back here the good old USA, and most probably in the local public school system. However, these children return with one great advantage. For those three years, they lived in another country, be it Spain, Japan, Korea, or Panama. In doing that, they have not only seen another culture but they have experienced it deeply. So have their parents. In fact, they had this life-changing experience together, as a family, and it has changed them forever.

A list of the possible changes is too long for the limits of this column, but I think most who have lived overseas would agree with this summation of the experience. One returns from an extended stay overseas with a deep appreciation for the quality of life – an appreciation which overrides quantity of life time and time again. With this lesson in hand, returning to the USA opens up so many vistas of opportunity to this family of sojourners – education being one of the most obvious. This is why these children continue to perform so well in life, long after 80% of them have graduated from college.

In bed-and-breakfasts across Ireland, Nuala O’Faolain would meet women who ” throw sugar on the fire, to get it to light, and wipe surfaces with an old rag that smells, and they are forever sending children to the shops.” Then they would turn and question O’Faolain: “And did you never want to get married yourself?” For any one who has stayed in those same bed-and-breakfasts and has the desire to move from the guest’s sitting room into the family’s kitchen, O’Faolains‘ memoir Are You Somebody? is just the ticket.

Yes, it is a sad story. Born the second of nine neglected children to an alcoholic mother and a philandering father, Nuala’s refuge was the word. In fact, when she was asked to list the most important events of her life, being born came up as number one, and learning to read was number two. She read her way through a scholarship to University College, Dublin, followed by another scholarship in Medieval English at the University of Hull in England, followed by another which took her to Oxford. Along the way, Nuala rubs elbows with Philip Larkin, John Berger, Kingsley Amis, Seamus Heaney, J.B. Preistley, among others. You may be wondering where the sad comes in.

Nuala O’Faolain is a woman who came of age in the early 60′s in Ireland. Caught between the emerging woman’s movement and a country that outlawed divorce, Nuala struggled. After spending the night with her lover at one ill-reputed boardinghouse in the suburbs of Dublin, a carload of Catholic vigilantes crawled beside her as she walked towards the bus stop. Irish girls just didn’t do this sort of thing. Nuala did it a lot. In fact, at times she comes across as the Irish version of Moll Flanders. Until she paused to write an introduction to a collection of her columns from the Irish Times, Nuala had never stood back and taken a good look at herself. The Irish Times readers knew her as an opinion columnist with a confident voice; daughter of a well-known Irish journalist, Terry O’Sullivan. However, Nuala realizes “My private life was solitary. My private voice was apologetic…I had no lover, no child.”

In her memoir she comes to terms with her private life and her apologetic voice.

This book is not a sentimental portrayal of an Irish woman. It is not rich in the Irish English idiom, as we get from the likes of Frank McCourt. Are You Somebody will not will not make you run to your travel agent and purchase a one-way ticket to Dublin. However, in the reading of this book you come to know her and her Ireland, which in the end, she holds very close to her heart.

She closes her memoir walking the Burren, a lonely stretch of land in the west of Ireland, alone on Christmas Day. She never explains why she is there alone on that day of all days. Nuala O’Faolain does not have to. If you read this heartfelt memoir, you will understand her solitary soul, and you will walk with her.

In 1994, I stood with  my oldest son, Brian, on  a piece of land called Deer Point in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We were both looking through  binoculars at the same thing;  United States Coast Guard cutters bringing in thousands of Cuban refugees  whom the Coasties had rescued from the waters between Cuba and Florida  to a safe haven at  Guantanomo Bay.  For  very selfish reasons, as I watched I wished them all to be returned to Havana.  Their presence  in Gitmo meant my boys and I would have to leave and my husband would have to stay,  keeping us apart for one year.   This is what I saw, but Brian saw something else.  Nine years later he graduated from the United States Coast Guard Academy, and he now flies the C 130 out of Clearwater, Florida…..often looking for  refugees  in the waters between Cuba and Florida.

The first time I was in F 128 was the day that I interviewed for my job. After the committee had asked me a set of 20 questions in a conference room, we moved to this classroom where I was to give a teaching demonstration. I had to pretend that the committee were ESL students, to whom I was to teach a lesson on thought pauses, one aspect of English pronunciation taught to ESL students. I remember liking the room that day because as I stood in the front of the class facing the “students “, behind them was a row of floor to ceiling rectangular windows that faced a large stretch of green grass and picnic tables scattered under several towering shade trees.

I have grown to love this classroom, having taught at least one class every semester in F 128. Sometimes, but not very often, I am in there alone. All the students have left after a class and I am putting my textbook and notes into my briefcase. Before I walk out the door, I take a long look at the empty desks and I remember students who have sat at those desks. I remember the blackboard covered with my handwriting, teaching them one thing or another. I remember their laughter, I remember their problems, their sadness. I remember students who always sat together, inseparable friends. I remember the romances between students, resentments between students, the look on their faces when they passed a test they thought they had failed, and vice versa. I remember the young man who always fell asleep in that last desk in the first row. He was a cab driver… all night, every night.

From time to time I try to explain to an acquaintance about my students. I have learned over the years that it is difficult for someone who is not in my field to understand these students whom I have come to love and cherish. Over the years, I have written several stories about them in further attempts to explain them to others and, at times, to myself, if truth be told. However, I have never felt I did them justice.

Recently, in an advanced reading class which met in F 128, my students read a short story written by a man who was raised as a migrant worker, with his family moving from farm to farm, and the memories of both the good and the bad of this experience which in retrospect he cherished. The author was especially fond of the one cooking pot his mother had to feed her large family, explaining it in great detail to his readers. After reading this story, and discussing it in class, the students were asked to write a paragraph about an item that they remembered from their childhood or a memory from their childhood that they feel shaped them into who they are today.

Any teacher will tell you that the same assignment given to two classes will yield two very different results. This assignment with this class yielded wondrous results. After reading and rereading what my students  had written, I realized why all my attempts to explain them was in vain. Here, in these short stories, they had done it themselves in their own words. My intent in sharing them with you is that in reading their stories, they can touch your life as they have mine over the years in F 128.

My family and I have kept a video tape player for 17 years. My father bought it brand new. Since then, we have collected all the Disney VHS tapes, movies of all kind and even our own life in tape. Thirteen years ago, my family and I moved to Montreal. We took about ten suitcases, some bags and a box with the VHS. Three years after, we moved back to Venezuela. We took back our VHS to show family back home how was Canada. Our family did not have a VHS, so it was really helpful for us to have one. When we were there the video player started to have problems with the recording and also each time the tape was playing the player burned the plastic inside the tape. My sisters and I felt sad knowing that the VHS was not working well and that we would not probably see more movies or record any movies ever again. My father knew that we loved it and he decided to send it to a friend to fix it. I remember going with him. I felt so happy that we would finally have our VHS back to enjoy more movies and memories. My father’s friend fixed it cheaply and taught him how to fix it incase it breaks down in the future. Three months passed, when we finally left Venezuela to United States and I remember carrying that same box with the VHS that have brought us many memories. Not too long ago, we start seeing DVD and Blue Ray, but for my family and I our VHS will always be the best.

Loida Dongarra Venezuela

When I see oranges it remains me of Christmas. I would get them only in December because it was the harvest time for this fruit in Southern Russia. Parents would stay in line a long time so they could buy some for their children. I do not know why but oranges were sold outside of the stores all time. The streets were covered with snow and oranges looked so shiny. This fruit was a part of Christmas presents and a symbol of celebration. The smell of oranges was everywhere and it reminded people about vacation. The day before Christmas parents let us open our presents. We ran out on the street and compared our oranges. Who had the biggest became queen or king of the street. I was queen all time because my uncle sent me oranges from Moscow. Boys and girls never had been in my position because they had actually a mandarin that much smaller than orange. But I had a REAL ORANGE which was sent by my uncle who bought it in Greece. Only one time I had been beaten by a new girl but she brought a grapefruit. Later we discovered this fake, and we dethroned her from the queen position. We were allowed to eat our oranges, but we had to return the skin to our mothers. They dried the skin and used it for cooking some cakes. I live in America now, but I give my neighbor’s children oranges each year making their parents confused. I just explain that it is a Ukrainian tradition and the parents smile and I am happy.

PS Mrs. Boland If it ever snows in Virginia, put oranges on snow, it will look amazing.

Natalya Robinson Ukraine

One of the most memorable memories that I have from my childhood is when in my country, the Dominican Republic, we would have blackouts. Most nights all you would see were the stars and the moon. All of the children from the neighborhood would come out from their houses and gather up in the park that was across the street from my house. We would tell stories and riddles. We would laugh so hard that our stomachs would hurt. We would also light a fire and keep ourselves warm. Some of the older children would scare the smaller ones saying myths like the “chupra cabra’ would eat us if we misbehaved. I was part of the smaller children and that was scary when they would say that. We also had times when we would all gather and play hide and seek. Around Christmas time when everyone was asleep one family would wake up and take their instruments and go from one house to another singing Christmas songs and playing their instruments. They would stay there in front of your house until you came out or until you turned on the lights. Then you would join the group until everyone gathered together. We would go to the park in front of my house and light a camp fire and make ginger tea. We would stay there till morning and then from there we would go to church. I really miss those moments from my childhood.

Roxanny Monegro Dominican Republic

My childhood was not bad, but it was not great either. Both my mother and father worked, and they made just a little money. My family lived in the city. The children went to school on weekdays. They did not need to work for money. Also, there weren’t jobs for the children. So we helped our parents doing the housework at home. There were six people in my family. Because I was taller and stronger then my older sister, my parents assigned me to work on the yard all the time. It was easy in the summer, but it was very hard in the winter because the temperature reached -15C at daytime. We used coal and wood for heat. Every weekend I had to make the wood and coal from big pieces into small pieces so it could be fitted in the firepot. I wore a very long winter coat, thick gloves, a hat, a scarf, and a pair of big boots while I was working. After an hour, my feet were numb, but my body was already sweating. We had about twenty chickens. We sold eggs for a little extra money for our family. It was my job to go to a very far place to buy chicken food. I used a sledge to carry the food home. It was not easy for a twelve year old girl. We couldn’t have eggs every day. So two eggs would be my reward for the hard work.

Zhe Wang China

I am the last child of my parents. My dad was a farmer. When I grew up my older brothers had got a job and they were moved to the city. In our culture men work outdoors jobs only. After my eight years birthday I started working outside to hold the cattle. We had a lot of cows, ox, sheep, goats, donkeys, and horses. I was responsible to protect them to wild animals like hyenas and fox. It was very dangerous especially nighttime. After my ages of ten, I started working the farm with my dad and his employee. Farm work can be very hard hours and long, often sunrise to sunset. I rarely had a day off. For all the the workdays I went to the farm early, my lunch and my book bag was with me because I went to school straight from the farm. I washed my hands and foot on my way with running water. There was no transportation from my village to the school. I walked one hour and half every day. I slept in class and I felt so tired at the time. Most of the time Sunday I washed my clothes in the river. My family they don’t know about homework and assignments. Sometimes it was hard to explain for them. I always woke up early with my mom’s hand clapping sound and I always remember that was the time to breakfast. I miss it.

Dawit Habtemariam Morrocco

When I see a chocolate which is shaped like an egg it reminds me of my childhood. The egg chocolate was little treats from my father. A little toy was inside the chocolates, and I used to collect the toys for treasure. My father was a very busy man. He used to come home from work after I went to sleep, and he left the house before I woke up. So, I did not have a chance to see him on weekdays. However, I did not miss him not much because every night he putted the chocolate on my bedside when he came home. When I woke up every morning, he was gone, but I received treats from him told “Good Morning”. My mother told me “Your father loves you very much, and if you are a good girl, he will give you a treat.” I always tried to be a good girl because I wanted to show my father how much I love him too. I also anticipated receiving the treats from him. When I was a child, I don’t have much memory of him, but I felt much of my father’s love because of the chocolates.

Sachiyo Browning Japan

I have an unforgettable memory that occurred when I was 7 years old. My hometown is a snowy area. However, that year was an extremely heavy snow. It was Tuesday or Wednesday in January. I went to school as usual. Because many snow tracks worked to remove the snow, the road was clean. However, I noticed that snow did not stop at all while I was taking the morning classes. At the lunchtime, the teacher informed that the afternoon class was cancelled. Therefore, I left the school. First I walked with 100 students. I was still comfortable although bad weather. After walked 30 minutes, half of students had already reached their home. When I reached my village, only several students were with me. Then I reached quarter miles from my home, but I was alone. I became fear because I could not see any footprints on the road. I attempted to walk several steps, but the snow was higher than my waist, and I stopped the snowstorm. I cried aloud, but no one through the road. However, the old woman who lived near the road noticed me. Then she invited me in the warm room. While I was eating mandarin orange, the old woman called my home. Then my grandmother came to pick me up. After that, I walked again the snowy road with my grandmother. There were strong snowstorms, but I was comfortable because I was not alone. Even though it occurred a long time ago, I remember when I walk on the snowy road.

Yuki Takashima Japan

]]> http://shestories.com/2012/01/07/f-128/feed/ 1 shestories dsc04062 http://shestories.com/2012/01/04/coast-guard-cuts/ http://shestories.com/2012/01/04/coast-guard-cuts/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 01:12:23 +0000 shestories http://shestories.wordpress.com/?p=138 ]]>

Every morning I routinely open our front door and send the dog out to the end of the driveway to fetch the morning paper. I usually place the paper on the kitchen counter while I rummage under the sink to get a treat for the dog as a reward for her service. But on Friday, March 24th, the dog had to wait. The headline “Coast Guard to cut operations” had caught my eye through the plastic bag, and this woman’s best friend was not going to get her treat until I finished scanning the front page story to see what was going on. For several years I have read with great interest anything the Coast Guard is up to – ever since a young enlisted person did something which had a powerful impact on my life.

On August 31, 1994 the U.S Coast Guard Cutter Nantucket was cruising the Florida Straits in response to the Cuban Refugee Crisis.. If you were standing on the cutter’s deck that day, a crew member would have explained that all the rafts you saw floating in the water and the Cuban refugees sitting in them were still within the territorial waters of Cuba. Beyond the line of rafters the crew member could have pointed out not only the skyline of Havana but also a Cuban gunboat cruising within her own territorial waters.

Allan Weisbecker, a writer from New York and on board the Nantucket that day, could see that the Nantucket’s crew of sixteen was having a busy day. Once the ship spotted a raft which had made it to international waters, she pulled aside and boarded the refugees. Ten days earlier the Nantucket had been in the process of boarding refugees in heavy seas. The raft had capsized, and three crew members had jumped into the rough water, near the jagged edges of the capsized raft, and rescued the drowning people. In four months the Coast Guard and Navy had rescued 50,000 Cuban refugees.. The Nantucket’s crew alone had saved 1208 lives – young women holding infants, feeble, dehydrated old men, young men claiming to be political prisoners.

It was routine for the ship’s crew to dispose of the empty raft so that it would not become a hazard to navigation. Most of the rafts encountered were no more than an inner tube with some framing of odd pieces of lumber and were disposed of quite easily. However, this day the Nantucket came across a vessel structured of metal piping filled with foam. They knew that this one would be tough. Two crew members boarded her with pickaxes and set about their task. One of the crew members then saw a refugee rise from the collection of Cubans sitting on the deck of the Nantucket and exclaim, “She not sink, never!” The crew spent twenty minutes hacking away at the La NINA, the name inscribed on her stern. The craft would wallow, but it would not sink. The Captain finally ordered them to just set the vessel adrift. As the two Coast Guard crew members boarded the Nantucket, one made his way over to the Cuban who had spoken . He asked the Cuban if he built La NINA and as Weisbecker put it, the refugee fearfully nodded yes. The crew member then offered his hand in respect and admiration. The Cuban, having very little dignity left in his present situation, sat down, and unsuccessfully tried to hold back his tears.

This story has haunted me since I first read it in 1995. My husband and I were separated for a year due to the Cuban Refugee Crisis, and for a long time, I am ashamed to say, I had no sympathy for Cuban refugees. I knew this anger was wrong, and I worked on getting over it. I held onto that story about this crew member of the Nantucket as my own life raft of sorts. I knew that if he could show such empathy and compassion in the midst of yet one more of a long line of twenty-hour days working in the heat of a Florida Straits summer, then surely I could get over it.

His simple gesture speaks volumes for the unique culture of the United States Coast Guard. A simple gesture on our part, in return, would be to support the Coast Guard’s call for full funding, so that these dedicated people can continue to not only respond to all search and rescue calls but also to fully enforce fishing laws, prevent illegal aliens, keep drugs off of our streets – and set a much-needed example for selfish folks like me.

I was sitting at the kitchen table of an Irish bungalow situated on the back street of a small Irish town when my father’s voice, reciting “Tree” by Joyce Kilmer, came on over the radio.  His translation of the poem into Irish had recently appeared in the local newspaper, and Radio Eire had subsequently invited him to their Sunday afternoon broadcast.  I  sat and listened with the Irish family with whom I was spending the weekend. We were all in the kitchen reading the Sunday papers, but the room suddenly stood still listening to what  must have been a most unusual sound  – Irish spoken with an American accent.  Not sure at all what the response would be  – was my father making a fool of himself here ? – I was greatly relieved when he ended  and Carmel, 16 at the time, turned to me and said “Ah sure, Susan, your father’s a great man.”

In 1920,  Arthur O’Dea  was a freshman at Park High School on Park Avenue in Rutherford, New Jersey.  He was an avid fan  of  his high school  football team. The 1920 Football Schedule was the compliments of Wallach Brothers,  a mens’ haberdashery on Broadway in New York City.  Written over Compliments of Wallach Bros. is Property of Art O’Dea. That would be my father’s writing, when he was just  boy of fifteen. When you open the football schedule, which is  a cardboard card  measuring 5″ x 4″, there is  a list of the dates and the opposing teams for that season. Dad  wrote Skedyouell at the top of this list.  He also wrote in the score for each game. Rutherford had a winning season that year, 10 and 0, according to the  totals he wrote in at the bottom of the Skedyouell.  However, there was a tie on November 20 between Chattle High School and Rutherford at Rutherford (7-7). He also rewrote Property of Arthur O’Dea on the  very bottom of  his Skedyouell.

On the opposite page  is the list of players, starting  with the team captain, and listing the varsity squad.  My father  had some  fifteen-year-old fun with these names. just as he did with the word schedule. The Manager is listed as D. Keep. Next to  Keep’s name Dad has inked your mouth shut.  A member of the varsity squad is listed as F. Lightfoot. Dad has inked in heavy hand.  R. Thorne is followed by  brier, C. Kiel by rudder, and E. Luke by warm.   Some of the varsity players have an asterisk next to their names, and it is noted at the end of this list that this marks the Letter Men. Dad has crossed out Men and inked in children.

In 1924 Dad was a senior in high school and he ran track. The  Official Program from the Sixth Annual Championship Track and Field Meet of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association says that this track meet was held in Palmer Stadium at Princeton University on Saturday, June 7, 1924 from 10:30 – 2:00.  Dad ran  as  number 3 in the 100 Yard Dash Class A High Schools, and the 220 Yard Dash in the Class A High Schools.  He received a medal for his performance in the 100 yard dash.  My father started New York University in the fall of  that year, and he was  living at the Zeta Psi House in University Heights.  His high school friend,  “Bres” ,  was  living in Brownson Hall at the University of Notre Dame, and wrote the following letter  to his former high school buddy.

October 23, 1924.

Dear Art,

John informs me that you think I owe you a letter. I’ll favor you with a little news.

Well, the football startled the East by beating the Army. They will meet a worthy opponent in Princeton, but will come out on top.  How did you like the playing of our captain on Saturday? He has certainly landed a place in football history.  NYU is having a a hard time according to the latest scores. They are not as you thought.

You seem to be taking every subject in college. John wants to know if you are taking sewing while Clate would also like to know if they show you how to push the carriage. 25 hours a week must be pretty hard. We are only taking eighteen hours. the quarter exams come in a couple  of weeks. Latin and Biology will give us the most trouble.

I suppose you take your daily beating from the sophs. Well, this is a real school! We have our fun without some one giving it to you. Hogan says that if you bring any more of these sad stories to his ears, he will disgrace you in  public by calling you a liar. John has developed into a hard nut, so hard that he claims he will beat a guy who calls him by his new name.

John feels that it in only right in dissolving the law firm of Weinberger and Falvinavo for the simple reason that his partner is lost in the eternal clutches of the women at St. Lawrence University in the wilds of New York State. So you see, his new name is both fitting and proper.

Now it is your turn to write; and don’t wait a couple   of weeks and then say I have not written you.

I will close now as the stuff that they call food is waiting to be devoured.

Your friend, Bres.

Two years later, in the fall of 1926,   Dad received the following letter from his Zeta Psi fraternity brother, John G. MacKnight.

Sunday. September 10, 1926

My dear Art,

I have your letter and I must confess that it leaves me puzzled. From the letterhead of the Paulist Novitiate and from your inquiry as to your standing in the fraternity, I was inclined to think that you were contemplating entering the priesthood. As this is a very serious step for anyone to take, I was wondering whether or not you had this in mind. I wish you would  tell me if such is your decision and let me know what your plans are.

I was extremely sorry to hear that you were not coming to New York to finish up this year, but after all you are the one who must decide on his future.

Best wishes from all of the brothers at the Phi.

Fraternally yours,

John  G. MacKnight

During his first three months at the Paulist  Novitiate in Oak Ridge, New Jersey, his father would drive the family to visit  him on the weekends. The following letter suggests that  sometime in November he wrote to his mother that the family should be preparing for Christmas in some way during the season of advent.

November 30, 1926

My dear Son,

When I awoke at 6:30 this morning I was so happy in the the thought that my child, my little boy, had already served at a mass for my dear mother. The mass here was at 7:30 and we were all present.

I am sure you would like to hear about my wonderful retreat.  Mother Lynch was my mother and we became great friends. She  is the dearest loveliest woman and was extremely kind to me. I think she assigned me the best rooms and I surely appreciated it.  I told her that perhaps she  thought I was old and decrepit and need a few luxuries in my old age.  She also said I needed no introduction as she knew I was your  mother the minute she laid eyes on me. Who shall take the compliment, you or I?  I could never begin to tell you in a letter all that I think of dear Father O’Keefe. His conferences were a joy never to be forgotten. When I see you I will try  to tell you about them.

In your letter you made the remark that you thought that I should prepare the family during the season of advent for the coming of our lord. Well, I had that very thought and am going to begin by including you. As a good means for this purpose I have asked the family to stay home from Oak Ridge until Christmas Day and all have consented although it will be a hard sacrifice for Helen and Anne. It will be a family  mortification and I hope it will be of great benefit to all.

Dad is as busy as he can be u p on the third floor. As usual he had a few surprises for me when I returned from the retreat. He has an old tin waste basket that was in the cellar for ages painted a vivid green  beside his desk. He also  received the Duraut radiator cover for the Packard (imagine my feelings).  He was so proud of  his artcraft. I am going to mail this on my way to pay the taxes a job which every good citizen make believe they are proud to do. Grandma O’Dea will be so happy to hear form you and I am sure it will make her understand a little better.  I will now close with love from all and may God bless you and keep you.

Lovingly, Mother

On February 8 of the following year, 1927, she writes:

Dear Arthur,

Tuesday is the day of the week in this house for me to look for your letter. When Helen and Nan arrive at home the first question is “did Arthur write?’ and there is a scramble to see who will get it first.  Your letter today was unusually interesting and I quite agree with you that  every    church in the land should have a Paulist book rack.  But my dear boy don’t ask me to approach Father Smith on this subject for I am almost certain he would not do it.  However, if I have the opportunity to suggest it,, I won’t let it pass. Father smith never refused me anything I asked of him, but I am always careful to study him well first.

And so you did see the tracks (of our car) in the ice out where we skidded.  It was well Larry was aware of the situation and got the car out very easily. I started to walk down the hill but changed my mind for I thought I might better roll down in the car than on my head. Dad is working hard to get away tonight, I don’t know just where and I don’t think he does either. He wrote to Mr Wilkins about the matter and I hope all will be stilled and rid  this controversy.

March 3, 1927

Dear Arthur,

I bought the life of Father Doyle and  have read some of it. My usually was you know and last night I started it in earnest and have read about half of the preface. Helen and Nan  would devour it if they got hold of it, but I was wondering if I should allow them to read it Don’t you think they are too young?

March 31, 1927

My dear son,

A year ago today if you  remember you started for Washington and I shall never forget how happy it made us all to see you start.  Usually I worried  a little more or less whenever you took a trip, but not on that occasion for I knew you were in a holy place. And when you came home,  I read your eyes as   usual and then I knew.  I am sure you often wonder if we miss you and while I never say that we do, you may be sure that there are many lonely  hours, especially the evenings. We are getting used to it now, and offer it all up and thank God for his goodness to us.

Dad  is in Buffalo this week giving several talks on the revision of the regulations. I am enclosing a picture of Bishop O’Dea that I discovered in the NCNC paper and while I don’t know if he is a relation I think it is nice to know there is some one making the name so exalted in the church.

I was wondering if you didn’t need socks or a tie and if so , may  I bring them to you on Easter Sunday? Also ask Father Skinner if he will allow us to pay your dentist bill and if we use that blank check  that you have or is you have destroyed it  I will send you another. Dad and I would be happy to send money for you necessities if  permitted, so let me know.

April 26, 1927

My dear son,

Your letter arrived early this morning and so Helen and Nan read it before they left for school. Needless to say the contents delighted them, particularly the fact the you are going to try to preach. If they could only “listen in” We will all be praying for you and all the other novices that the Holy Ghost may inspire you to do very well.

Uncle Ben was unable to visit you last week as he had been very busy and half sick too. He had a very trying case at the hospital and after every means known was used, the young man died. He was only twenty-four and Ben was all broken up over it.  He and Bub are going to Buck Hill Falls over the weekend  for a rest and he needs it. he looks miserable.

The Easter collection here amounted to $2283 and the proceeds form the Passion play the week before was $1000/ I though you might like to know how well we are doing.  The collection East Rutherford was around $1400,a and in Hasbrouck Heights $750.

May 5, 1927

My dear son,

We reached home Sunday at 7:45 as the traffic was heavy through  Mountain View, and Dad had a sour experience. We were all very tired and went to bed early. It is  quite warm here today and every one you see passing  seems to act lazy and tired. Even the children are dragging their feet. Spring fever is catching.

The Ford was towed out of ht yard yesterday for which I am thankful and I never want see another piece of such art ion my premises.  Mr.  brown was here yesterday and he is thinking that he may buy a nother car if he can find a good second hand one, and if he only would their place would look respectable again.

There remains but one letter from his father dated March 9, 1927. The letterhead reads “Hotel Woodruff, Watertown, New York.”

Dear Son Arthur,

A few lines which I presume will surprise you coming  from this place which you will remember so well as our stopping place for the night of August 26. The next day  you will recall from your tiresome ordeal in the part you occupied as chauffeur over the long strange roads to Montreal. There are of course many places and instances the trip brings back to our memory which on the whole was  wonderful for us.

I was home yesterday when your letter arrived. All were glad that you are keeping well and happy and  thus far find no hardships with the Lenten requirements assigned to Romans. It is a welcome period for the Catholic butcher, but as I have had to confine myself to slight  ration more or less for some time I do not find it hard to refrain from the forbidden eats.

I was at Oswego today arrived here this evening,  will go to Sackett Harbor in A.M. and possibly spend balance of week at Watertown.  We had some rain Sunday and remained home all day after Mass except  for an auto ride of 40 minutes in the late afternoon. The radio still offers excellent entertainment at home any evening and on Sunday afternoon.

All are well and filling their usual routine duties, the girls at school, music, etc, your mother with the housework, meals. NY. shopping and occasional town visit. All the other rattled families are well and apparently prosperous of late indicated by new vehicles, house improvement, etc.

My business trips  of the usual touring order, hard to tell when or where I am going next. Fortunately I have not had a call from headquarters to go anywhere, so my itinerary has been left to my own promiscuous selections. It  is well that I have district confines or I might have strayed and been lost in Yellowstone Park or other district quarters worthy of my inspection.

We have visited the novitiate so regularly we will all miss the  trip during the lenten period. I believe your mother and the girls have consoled themselves to is as a Lenten sacrifice.  Of course it deprives me of  considerable practice  necessary to acquire the title of efficient auto pilot – but so long as the mechanism of the chariot behaves itself, I am well satisfied not to exert it.

Trusting that you will remain in good health and be happy and successful with your work, I am as ever,

Your loving father,

D.J.O’Dea

In the summer of 1928, my father went to Haiti with Father Lynahan, another Paulist and friend of the O’Dea family. However, sometime in the next year after his return, my father left the  Paulist Novitiate with three of his Novitiate friends. Together they pooled their money and bought a car and drove to California and back to celebrate their decision. In January of 1931 he received a letter from a Novitiate buddy  who  was now the assistant sacristan at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park California.

Dear Art,

I was sure glad to  receive your letter Art and I  am sure you know that this delay in replying does not indicate anything to the contrary. Although you would like to do a lot of moaning about it if you could get hold of me. You still kill the women, you big virile brute, and one cannot blame the  poor damsels for finding a weakness in you as I have often told you before. Your real future lies in Hollywood but I know you. You hate to leave the home talent to despair to satisfy merely popular demand. I was just wondering whether you are laughing or  whether it is down on the table. Sure wish I was there to see you, but please let me know as I know you will in might strong language. All kidding aside I appreciate your telling me about that little affair  and I wish I had seen the girl. But now I know there is another, s o write and tell me about her.  Remember when we used  to talk those things and many others over…There is much more I would like to say but I must bring this letter to a close. By the way, if you still have the negatives of some of those pictures we took on the trip, I would like to have them, especially the one with the indian, and those around the lake, and that one of myself in your back yard.  I have an album now, so please enclose a snapshot of yourself.

In early February  of 1931 my father received a letter from one of his novitiate buddies who was now in Rome.

Dear Arthur,

Well, as I’ve already agreed, our class is certainly well scattered with three of them here; Paul Ward and Bob Murphy ordained and doing priestly work; you  (to be?)a lawyer; Gavigan a professor; Cyril Barker a happy, married man and a father; Brenne far away in California still studying and not far from the priesthood; Slattery off somewhere doing business; Dever on the verge of getting married, happily I hope; Burke is still at St. Mary’s in Baltimore, and not far from ordination. Gosh who would have believed that the class of 1926 would have dispersed so far and wide! I often wonder back to those days and like to think about them. I can still picture you in your cassock and sash and birretta – you of the rosy red cheeks. Well, God is good and if we only be faithful we shall all meet again.

In June of 1932 he completed law school at New York University. In the same month, he received the following letter  from Father Skinner;

Dear Arthur,

Accept my congratulations on your graduation. You are finishing at a time when the country needs men of  sound principles and courage. I trust you will do your share towards the upholding of Christian standards in the troubled world.

May God bless  you

Yours sincerely in Christ,

Robert Skinner

My father always had a large black crucifix hung over his bed, and I remember being told that it had come  from the seminary days.  I also remember seeing  a small stamp sized picture of Christ kneeling in prayer in a garden. It was  a brown sketch on a white background.  It was held around his neck not by a chain but by two white narrow ribbons, almost like flat cords: from the left corner of the stamp sized picture a cord went to his back where another stamp sized picture was held. Another cord ran from the right corner on the from to the right corner on the back. This was also from    his seminary days…and it intrigued me. The cord was yellowed with age, and I sensed my mother did not have much time for it, or perhaps she would have washed it for him. As a  child, I thought he must have been torn between these two worlds if he still hung onto stuff like that. My mother had a such a strong distaste for the dogmatic side of Catholicism that I was suspicous, at times, that this is what my parents had fought about when they were dating during my mother’s junior year of college.  Because of this disagreement, my mother had packed her bags, put on her beaver coat, and returned to her parent’s potato farm  in Limestone.   What my father then did is perhaps best explained in the following letter  from Gene Meade, a former novitiate buddy who was now at the Apostolic Mission  House in Brookland Station in Washington.D.C.

November 27, 1932

Dear Arthur,

I received your card from “nowhere” in Maine.  When I first looked at the card I thought you were in Ireland. I read Limerick instead of Limestone. HaHa.  Anyhow I hope you got your fill of “pomme de terres” up in Maine. Why did you go  up there? Deer hunting, I suppose. Well, Arthur, I am anxious to know how  the bar exam came out. I hope and pray OK.  I heard part of the Army Notre Dame game yesterday. Did you see it? What do you  think of the election? Why not come down here for the Inauguration? Joe Tray is in Rome, so only Kenny, Barker, and I are left of the old guard. Remember me to all. Let me hear from you soon. I ask your good prayer.

Yours, Gene Meade

Arthur O’Dea and Bessie McLaughlin were married in Limestone, Maine on June 14, 1933.

Arboretum continues on July 30.

The Brook and the Bridge by Arthur O’Dea

There was a section of the property called “the brook” where there once was intended to be a separate lot that just never got developed because of a drainage ditch along the westerly line of our property. We called that ditch “the Brook”. It was that side of the house where we rode our sleds down a  slight incline. It was also on that side that Pop built the “cabin” at the deepest  northern end of the property. My best memories come from the “Brook” side of our lot. That is where I learned to drive the old Packard that was parked down there when it was taken off the road. If you planned it well you could get it into high gear running along “the Brook” from North to South. There are great memories about building the cabin with Pop and the stone fireplace back there where we had our cookouts and where I learned how to split rocks but the directions from Susie seem to request the one paramount memory, so that must be “The Bridge”.

At the point where the drainage ditch passed under Mill Street there was erected a stone abutment that we called “The Bridge”. On top of the abutment there was a large rectagonal stone probably blue granite about 5″ thick and  32″ wide x 5′ long. There were many special occasions when I sat down on that bridge. I remember one in particular when my Mother came down and sat there with me. She is the only person who knew how special that place was for me. It was the throne from which my Magisterial dreams flowed. I could sit there for a long time alone dreaming and dreaming as I was so inclined to do as a child.

I had a friend who lived next door. He was my best and closest friend. Once we made statues out of plaster of Paris with some help from his Mom. She worked for a dentist. Now and then Harry Locke and I would have a fight over some child’s conflict and we would separate in anger. When one of us decided to “make up” the protocol was to go sit on the Bridge and then the other would come and sit there and a conversation would begin thereby ending the fight.

Harry’s Dad was a chronic Alcoholic. One day I went over to his house to play.  His Mom was in the process moving out. The furniture was gone. There was a lot of stress. Harry’s Mom told him to say goodbye. They went out and got in the cab and were gone forever. They moved to Michigan and I never heard of him again. Harry was very frail, tall, pale white, coughed a lot – as did his Mom. He was  very smart. He was my first friend because he lived next door and we were the same age.

Gradually the Brook got filled in, the trees died and the Bridge is gone.  Pop or someone saved the big Blue Stone that was the Bridge. When I last saw it there was a bench in front of the flagpole made for the stone. I hope it is still there. Perhaps, if it is, I will stop and sit for a few minutes to dream with Harry and Mom.

Storm Windows by Joseph O’Dea

250 was an older house with green wooden screens and white storm windows.  When not in use the screens or storms were stacked in the attic of the garage.  Every spring and fall a Saturday morning was given over to the task of changing the screens to storms and vice versa.  The screens were not too bad as all you did was hose them off and wash the outside of the window which was not too dirty as it had been protected by the storm all winter. They were also light and easy to handle.  The storm windows in the fall were another matter.

Every year we waited too long so it was always cold.  The windows were heavy and always dirty when you took them down from the garage attic.  You then had to wash the inside and out of each storm window.  Once, long ago, someone purchased number tags, little round flat pieces of metal with a number stamped on it.  There were two of each number and one went on the window frame and one on the storm window.  The theory was you could then match the storm window to the house window it served.  Well over the years either through painting the windows or repairs or the evil mind of a prankster the numbers stopped matching.  Some did and some did not. So what you had was a very large puzzle of which storm window went where.  You would find yourself trying window after window looking for a match.  The first floor was simply frustrating the second floor was exhausting.  You see the ladder we had was an old solid wood extension ladder that nearly killed you when you got it down off the wall in the garage.  You then had to raise it hand over hand while someone held the bottom until it leaned against the house just under the window to be replaced.

Before you could start trying windows you had to wash the outside of the house window.  And, Mom was washing the inside and overseeing your work.  When you thought you had it clean she would start tapping to show you where you had missed and needed more elbow grease.

After rewashing every window at least twice you could start the process of guessing which storm would fit. You would carry over the heavy storm and rest it against the ladder. Then grabbing from the bottom you would push/slide the window up the ladder in front of you.  When you got to the window you would try and line up the storm with the opening.  If it did not fit width wise down you went for another window.  If it fit width wise you would slide it up and try and connect the hooks on the windows with the hooks on the window frame. On the top of each window were two strips of medal with slits near the top.  These slits were designed to go over hooks attached at the top of each window frame.   If the hooks did not match up down you went for another window.  When finally the hooks matched you pushed the window shut and hoped it fit lengthwise.  If not down you went for another window.  When finally it matched Mom would grab the interior hook on the bottom of the window and latch it in place.

Mom was always in a good mood when the job was done.  In the fall the windows were like eyes to the outside.  They glistened.  And there was a quiet about the house when it was all buttoned up for winter.  In the spring the breeze would fill the house; the curtains would billow in as the fresh air passed through and the smell of spring and outdoors would permeate the house.

It is one of my earliest memories of the satisfaction of hard work and a job well done.

Grandma O’Dea’s Desk by Maureen O’Dea Feeney

Dad always used this desk in more recent history at Mill Street. He kept all his smaller treasures in the drawers like the tiny jade hearts that were inset into his Claddagh rings, his Teillard de Chardin paperweight, his Giant team statistics and of course pencils and rulers. Frank Lucianna gave Dad a dark green leather desk set with a flip out writing arrangement, a leather ruler, and it was equipped with some tiny leather boxes Dad filled with erasers, matches and things a man needed to have at hand. This sat on the desk until it fell apart a few years ago.

Anna Willis O’Dea ordered the desk from Macy’s and attached is the 1927 letter she wrote to Dad who was in the Paulist novitiate at the time. The picture was taken from the newspaper and glued to the upper corner of her letter. The desk sat in the hallway of 250 Mill Street with a rush seated chair and  it matched the woodwork of the desk. Some sat there when on the phone; others did their homework at the desk.

When the stereo came to the hall, the desk was placed in the den under the bay window with the large green glass lamp on top. Dad reclaimed the desk for his use in the front bedroom of the house where he installed book shelves over the desk and it became his office.

Bogart furniture repaired the desk when it came to me. The top of the desk still has a beautiful deep walnut patina which I covered in glass to further protect the finish. The tiny brass drawer pulls just keep getting brighter and with a yearly polish, the finish of the desk has taken on a burled look. The small drawers are lined each year with lavender paper and house all my needs. I sit there first thing every morning and it is the last stop at night. Owen sits at the desk to dry his hair and do his nails. The kids know where to find chap stick, hand lotion and any little need they may have at the desk. So it is a center to keep neat and tidy for the family. Even the tiniest tot can pull up on the desk and open the drawers to examine polish, lotion or make up, while older grandchildren love to play with all Grandma’s trinkets in the drawers while looking at themselves in the mirror over the desk.

I have a great emotional attachment to the desk; to me it is a connection to my Grandma O’Dea and her love of nice things that were pretty and feminine. Never having met, I am left to my imagination to fill in the details of her person using one or two pictures I have seen in albums and this letter from 1927 about her desk and life in general. I love her in this incarnation, and use her as my own fairy godmother in all my endeavors whenever needed. I like to see her writing at the desk and feeling happy there as I do doing what I do at the desk: clean up, get ready for the next event, daydream, play with makeup, and look at myself in the mirror getting to know each person who shows up each decade.

Her excerpted letter to Dad is dated April 7, 1927 and it is mailed from 183 Mountain Way, Rutherford, NJ

My dear son,

Today March decided to come back and let us know he was still around the corner. Yesterday was a balmy spring day, and all the flowers were requiring to open their buds but now all is changed again.

We planned to drive over to a wonderful florist near Hillman’s in East Paterson to see his beautiful flowers, and perhaps select some for Easter. I think we will go this afternoon.

Larry was here yesterday with his new car, he had it simonized and it really looks fine and shiny. He  wants Dad to have ours done, but Dad says he will do it himself. Do you remember how you used to watch the garage men work on the old Durant and then do it yourself next time. I think Dad has something like that in mind.

We were all so sorry for Father Gillis but then God has been very good to them. His father must have been so happy and proud of his good son, and to be able to be with him all these years.

Miss Lyndham spent the weekend with us and we enjoyed having her. She loves the country, but of course, did not get much of it here. We have invited her to Cedar Lake and are going to bring her to Mt. Paul soon.. Ben and Carrie invited us all over to their house for supper Sunday eve. And we had a wonderful time. The children are so smart, and they all performed for Miss Lyndham. Tommy is dear and says he is your boy. Bub is still a Paulist and is anxious to write you a letter.

Last night Father Murray spoke over W.L.W.L. His text was “Play Fair”, and he is certainly a good preacher. It came over clearly and distinctly.

I am enclosing  a picture of my new library table desk on which I am writing this letter. I bought it in Macys last week and they advertised it in the paper last night so I am sending you the picture. It is made of walnut and I hope it will help keep things out of the sideboard that don’t belong there. I have always wanted one and now I am like the Irishman “I am in the parlor at last.” I have also my long coveted rush bottom chair to match the desk.

Lovingly, Mother

The Dining Room Table 1 and 2 by Anna O’Dea Morris

I am Dining Table 1. I came to 250 Mill Street sometime in the fall of 1939 from my first home in Rutherford, New Jersey. I came with my family; the server, the buffet, the china closet and, of course, my six dark green upholstered chairs one of which had arms and always sat at the head.

I worked very hard as all meals were served on me. Some were special occasions. I would be all dolled up in a linen tablecloth and set with simply beautiful Limoges china. These lovely place settings were white with grey blue tiny flowers adorning the brims of each elegant piece. Green, apple green, long stemmed goblets stood beside each place. It was not until the fifties that Gorham’s buttercup sterling silver climbed aboard.  Dessert plates like you have never seen kept me dressed up t the very end of such an event. They were apple green too, but in the shape of a large leaf, even the edges were designed to be uneven as  a maple leaf might be. As time passed I wore newly acquired things like a really large turkey platter. It was sort of brown in color theme with an outdoor scene on it. It was Johnston Brothers. It sat in front of the place where the arm chair was. As fast as a fancy event was over, I would get cleaned up and for a long time, or until the next occasion, I wore a flannel backed oil cloth type cover.

By 1942 most of chairs were full, or at least promised because we accepted apart timer called high chair to make a very tiny occupant happy. So Mom and baby were at one end, the girls on one side, the boys on the other side, facing the buffet mirror, and Dad at the head of the table, nearest the kitchen. They always sat in the same place.

If I could talk (I can only write) I could tell you so many stories. That was the one perk of working so hard – three meals a day, snacks, a cup of tea long after dinner, birthday parties…sometimes there were so many extra chairs, even benches were dragged to my side. Sometimes I got wet when milk or cider spilled out of a knocked over goblet or glass. I always wore a thick flannel protector under my pretty cloth. I was quite beautiful under these clothes. I was a rich dark wood, maybe mahogany or cherry or walnut. A carved trim was etched all around my edges. My size was for a family of six and I fit perfectly into the Mill Street dining room.

I began to fail, though, as my legs wobbled and my old friends, the chairs, were even frailer. One day we were all taken for a ride. Those years were the best and the most interesting ones a beautiful table like me could ever have.

I am Dining Table 2. I came to Mill Street in a truck with all my friends; china closet, buffet, server, and six gold upholstered chairs, one of them with arms. It was great to leave the auction house. I have a lot of work to do now. I inherited some lovely coverings from the previous occupant, and as time went by I acquired some new and lovely ones. One was a white Swiss batiste cloth with white appliqued flowers on it. Once I was dressed up in pure Irish linen with napkins to match. There were lots of fancy affairs in my time; weddings, anniversaries, graduations, christenings, and parties, parties, parties. I wore Waterford now and sterling silver, a big sugar bowl and always ready to go with a little cup with alphabet cubes in it with numbers. Scrabble and it only took two minutes to see how good you could be at it.

My chairs were reupholstered a couple of times – once by the head of the house. What a tedious job that was! All those tacks that had to be hammered in just the right place! Ugh! We were all quite beautiful. Made of rosewood and walnut burl – something I understand you cannot get anymore except in some already made old furniture- with lovely wood carved designs we were quite large though, and so server went upstairs to a bedroom where it had plenty of room.

In 1993, we all went to different places. China closet now hold a TV console in Manasquan where she is the center of attention. Server lives in basking Ridge looking as elegant as ever and still works, serving hard. I am not sure where buffet is, nor do I know exactly where I am now, but I know exactly how I can find out. Just go to Google.Com, but in my world you spell that O’Dea and then do GPS.

The Dining Room by Elizabeth O’Dea Kennedy

My O my I never shall see a dining room as charming as thee.

A mammoth table is center stage with a hanging lamp by Tiffany.

There’s a buffet table against the wall whose drawers house cutlery, pictures of brides.

A silver domed turkey tray sits on top with elaborate candlesticks at its sides.

A large hanging mirror reflects it all.

Four large windows form a bow, each with a view–it’s quite a show.

In spring the forsythia can be seen.  The next frames a hundred foot evergreen.

Then comes a slope to the erstwhile brook, the fourth a passage, no need for a screen.

A china closet with an interesting drawer filled with bank books, check books, matchbooks galore

Stores glasses and dishes,  treasures for sure.

The tea cup-topped server stands ready to brew from a silver service–magnificent too.

Then a glass enclosed breakfront proudly displays valued possessions, a sight to be praised.

And last but not least adorning the wall, a Parisian scene comes to the fore.

This charming room remains no more but lives on and on in the deep heart’s core.

The Hall Closet by Susan Dorsey O’Dea Boland

It is hard to talk about just one room or just one object when it comes to 250 Mill Street. There was a little round red table in the kitchen where you sat only for a serious one-on-one with Mom.  When you sat at the dining room table with your morning coffee, you could see the rhododendrons through the dining room windows. Rhododendron leaves curl in a direct relationship with the temperature  allowing you to decide which coat to wear to school by how tightly the leaves were curled.  The coffee table in the living room was a large slab of polished Connemara marble which my father shipped from a quarry which he had visited in Ireland.  There was a wall of books in the den which included three or four sets of encyclopedias on the lower shelves and above that a large and diverse collection of novels, biographies, poetry, and short stories.  These are all very dear memories of the house on Mill Street in which my parents raised their seven children. I have walked through this house in my mind trying to find that one thing that would truly summon up for me my experience of growing up as the youngest of their seven children. I have decided that this would be the downstairs hall closet.

If I were to show you a floor plan of this house, you could see that the hall closet was situated in the center of the ground floor. The closet was at the physical core of the house. It was the width of a typical one-door closet, but it was double the typical closet in its depth.  Everyone’s coats, a couple of umbrellas, and numerous pairs of winter boots were in this closet, as well as the vacuum cleaner.  The phone – this was the 1960s and the house had one phone- was on a little table near the hall closet and important phone numbers were scribbled in pencil on the inside part of the closet door.

We all reached an age, usually at the start of our teens, when we wanted to talk to our friends on the phone in private.  When this happened at 250 Mill Street, the only place to talk where no one else could hear you was in the hall closet.  You would have to tell whoever called you to wait a minute while I get in the  closet, and then you would  set yourself up as comfortably as you could way back on the vacuum cleaner and close the door TIGHT before you would say to whoever – OK I can talk now. These conversations would last until someone else expecting a call knocked on the door and said Get off the phone, Susie!

But there was something wonderfully exciting about sitting in the dark on the vacuum cleaner way back in the hall closet.  While in that closet I was creating the new grown-up me on the phone with my high school friends who all knew me as Susan. But when I left the closet and wandered out, maybe into the den where Dad would be watching TV and smoking a cigar, I was once again Susie, the baby of a wonderful family. As I began to make my way through my teens, the hall closet showed me how to move  between these two worlds  as the red kitchen table, the rhododendrons, the Irish marble, and the row upon row of books in the den  were always right there for me to safely return to when Susan’s world wasn’t quite right.  I could always go home.

One day the kitchen door replaced the closet door, when I eagerly left 250 Mill for  so many  far-away places.  On my wedding day, I left 250 Mill Street by the front door on the arm of my brother, as my father had already passed away.  Eventually, life takes all of us away from home to be with our new friends and  on to our own families. But whenever I returned to 250 Mill Street to visit my mother,  Susan remembered what it was like to be Susie growing up within those beautiful gracious  rooms.

If I could walk into 250 Mill Street today, I might just crawl into the hall closet and sit myself down way in the back like I used to, closing the door tight.  I cannot remember one conversation that I had with any one while I sat on the vacuum cleaner, nor would I be trying to.  Rather, I would pretend that upon opening the closet door I could walk back into the kitchen with the little round red table, the dining room windows framed by rhododendrons, the living room with its slab of polished Irish marble, and the den with its row upon row of books.  In the end, though, I think I would be left in the dark to wonder…….why in the world were we all in such a hurry to grow up?

250 by Thomas O’Dea

When I think of “250″ , which is often,  I have only happy memories and realize how much of my adult successes stemmed from spending the first eighteen years of my life in that home. 250 provided me not only with shelter and sustenance as any house can, but more important it provided me with membership in a family. Within that group I felt loved, wanted and deserving.

Whenever I was away from 250 I would  look forward to returning.
Always happy to bound up the front steps after a long walk from the bus stop or returning from a movie or pizza with my grammar school friends in town . Later on when in high school parking the car in the garage and walking in the back door, always unlocked, and Mom and Dad asleep confident that I would do the right thing and arrive home safely. At 250 there was an atmosphere of comfort and security. This was created not by the house but by those living in the house. My parents, brothers and sisters. They liked me and told me they liked me not with words but with loving acts. There was never any deep  hostility or jealousy from any of my siblings.

I noted only respect and admiration. Is it any wonder I felt I could achieve anything  as a youngster? I well realize the nurturing environment I experienced at 250 was created and continued by my Mother and Father. Somewhere in their  past it was instilled in them the value of “family” and the necessity of creating not only a safe and secure environment for one’s family but an environment also filled with love respect and devotion. It is no accident that my brothers and sisters continue to be so close and caring about each other.

In the mid 14th century a man built a home for his family. It was the O’Dea castle in County Clare, Ireland. Built for his family ,its strong walls sheltered and protected his family. The perils may have been a little different at that time but the purpose of that castle was the same. To enable his family to be safe, secure and to give them the opportunity to grow, prosper and pass to the next generation of O’Deas the traditions and values he believed in. Several generations later in County Bergen New Jersey another O’Dea built his castle for the same reasons. We all were a part of it and what a glorious experience it was.

When I am teaching sentence patterns to my students, I always stumble on this simplest of sentences.

The dress is green.

dress is, of course, a noun, with The being the article preceding  the noun.  At this point in class, we have already talked about action verbs and linking verbs, so my students identify is as the verb, and they know it is a linking verb, as well.

But green, or any color I decide upon that day,bewilders me. In this sentence pattern, if green is a noun, it is a noun complement and  if green is an adjective, it is an adjective compliment. My students have already been introduced to this idea in easier sentences like these:

The woman is beautiful.   Beautiful is an adjective complement.

The woman is a doctor.  Doctor is a noun complement.

But as I stand at the board in front of my class and study the sentence about the color of a dress, my mind starts to generate so many other  sentences using color —- The woman is green (inexperienced).  The woman is blue (sad). The woman is red with anger.  The woman is white as snow.  The woman is black. Color is complex, but my students  just want an answer  – not a theoretical debate – so I usually explain that  green  is an adjective complement because it describes the dress. Sometimes I see just a shadow of doubt pass over some faces, usually my Asian students, most usually Japanese or Korean, who have another  sensitivity to color but who would never question their teacher.

Is color – green, red, yellow -  always an adjective?  The dictionary first gives a string of definitions for green as an adjective, saying that  green is the color of foliage, green is verdant, or green is not ripe, as in This peach is still green. However, the dictionary moves on to define green as a noun, with the first definition getting down to the brass tacks. Green (noun) is the color between blue and yellow on the spectrum, an effect of light with a wavelength between 500 – 570 nm.

Color is a complex phenomena. Each thing in this world is a play of energy and this play consists of electromagnetic waves – waves which flow in different frequencies. All colors are present in each thing in this world, but the colors are unseen because the object – the thing itself –  absorbs those colors.  The one color that an object rejects is the color we see it dressed in. In other words, the dress is green because the dress has absorbed yellow and blue and all other colors in the spectrum, but the dress rejects green. So, it is in this rejection of green that the dress is green.

So I could argue that green,   in    The dress is green    is a noun compliment, as that green refers to the effect of light with a wavelength between 500 – 570 nm!

I have recently found myself in places drenched with color, most usually picturesque places brimming with light and subtle shades. When in these surroundings I have found myself trying to better  comprehend color and its underlying principle, which is new to me, with the underlying principles of  a language, which for me is more familiar territory. Languages are designed over hundreds and hundreds of years by its speakers, and the languages which speakers create  for themselves manifest ideas inherent in their culture.  My students must be taught English sentence patterns which are based on the Subject/Verb/Object  pattern because  in their first languages the pattern may be Verb/Object/Subject  as in Is green dress! But differences between cultures manifested through language run much, much deeper than structure. For example, Gaelic, a language heavily  influenced by the Druids, does not allow for any expression of ownership, as in the Druid world, no one owned anything. So my husband is expressed as the man at me, and  my house is expressed as the place where I am staying.

 There is much I can  understand of another culture through studying  the design of its language, but I find myself struggling to understand my creator through the design this world – specifically, color.  How does this design–rooted in my only being able to see what is rejected- manifest my creator? What is it that this divine spirit is trying to tell me?

On reflection, I know I am guilty of looking at a person and seeing only what they are rejecting rather than trying to see and understand what they have absorbed. The student who aggressively questions a final grade, a young man who wears his pants low, so low that it is way past my acceptance of  decency, a relative who tells jokes I cannot laugh at; I only remember them for what they are rejecting that I have absorbed – and I (arrogantly) feel they should absorb, too.

But then I am brought back to that rainbow on that mountain. Who could witness a rainbow and not believe in the goodness, the inherent goodness of the world in which we live? In that arc of prismatic colors in the heavens created by the reflection of  light in a soft and mellow mist of water – just there  nothing is absorbed and nothing is rejected. The creator’s complete palette is  in plain sight, for a moment, maybe two,  to be witnessed.

I remember walking the oak-shaded trees of my New Jersey hometown holding my young son’s hand. We would head out from Gram’s house for the fifteen minute walk to Main Street, where we could get a bowl of home-made ice cream. The sidewalks which we followed to town were cracked and buckled, not so much from age as from the huge roots of those oak trees. My son would ask for the same stories each visit. About my best childhood friend who lived in the house across the street whose parents still live there. About the people next door who knew my family before I was born, and still live there. About climbing trees that were big when I was little whose very roots were now ripping up the sidewalk. He would sigh and dream aloud to me about what it would be like to grow up in such a place, where nobody moved, where Gram lived around the corner, where Aunt Reeny’s ear was a bike ride away, where cousins lived in the next town. And he would promise me and himself aloud, that when he grew up, he would raise his family in a place just like this. A place with strong and deep roots.

That’s when I’d start to worry. A mother wants to give her children everything they wish for, especially aunts and uncles who are a part of their daily life. But my life had taken me far away from my immediate family, as it has for so many of my friends. What does this transient lifestyle do to our children? Dragging them around the country, the world – two years here, a year there. Was this fair? At that point those oak trees seemed to come alive, like that scene in The Wizard of Oz, telling me in a deep oak-tree voice that I was making one big mistake. Nature simply did not intend for children to be raised like that.

After years of worrying about this, I found myself in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There was a magnificent old banyan tree in the back yard of our house. A banyan tree does not have a traditional root system like the oak tree. On the contrary, as the banyan’s branches grow out and up toward the sun, a vine will sprout from the branch and make its way from the branch to the ground, where it will root. Through this natural rerooting system, the vine grows to form another supporting trunk for the tree. As a result of this system, one banyan tree will appear, at first sight, as a stand of trees until you get under it and look up, only to discover it is but one tree.

My handful of friends who are natives of the area are the oak trees, and it really is nice to know that there are still some of them around. But the rest of us, it appears to me, are banyan trees, putting down roots wherever we happen to find ourselves. No rules of nature are being broken; the children will be OK. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be OK. The banyan tree allowed me to understand that, and those big old oak trees up in New Jersey don’t intimidate me anymore.

On a little league bleacher several years ago another Mom and I were swapping stories. Hers will help me make my point clearer. It was a Christmas long ago, and she and her husband were up to three or four kids – all under the age of 8 or 9. Her husband was packing the car for the long road trip to spend Christmas with his folks. The four-year old appeared at the door and said “Daddy, where are we going?” His father responded that they were all going home for Christmas. Then the little boy said “But, Daddy, I thought this was home.” Her husband then unpacked the car.

Because that Christmas it was.