Is Meets Was

Sitting on our front porch, wearing my Easter corsage c. 1947. (From left to right: Cousin Leila, me, Freddy, and Cousin Mary.) The holidays were wonderful! Every Easter my father would get us girls a corsage and a box of Loft’s chocolates. There were always colored, hard-cooked eggs, chocolates for the boys, and jelly beans of course. There was a bunch of daffodils, purchased on the way home from Mass, for my mother. My father always managed to make a little overtime just before Easter, so somehow there might be a new pair of shoes or even a new outfit. I especially remember a suit that my sister, Mary, made for me while she was in junior high school, P.S. 73. It was a hunter-green gabardine with a pleated skirt and an Eisenhower-style jacket. Another year she made a jacket out of grey flannel with a dark blue bow at the neck. Me and our Christmas tree draped in tinsel c. 1952. (This was a black and white photo that I hand-painted.) Christmas was always magical. Our ...

This anecdote is not intended to be educational, but to make you aware of the significance of our Catholic faith.  Mom (front left) with her family in 1917. Mom's mother died the following year. My mother, Aunt Dot, Uncle Fred, and Uncle Gil were left motherless by the Spanish flu epidemic. Mary Elizabeth Fitzgerald Merrill was taken away from her husband and children in 1918. My mother was only seven, and Aunt Dot was not much older. Some of the aunts and uncles that aided our grandfather, “Pup”, in raising his children were Protestants. Nonetheless, Mom and Aunt Dot stayed true to their Catholic faith. Unless you attended Mass with my mother or Aunt Dot, you would never understand the devotion and love of the faith these two sisters had. I was not more than 5 or 6 when I realized the importance of the Consecration of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of our Lord. You just had to look into the face of my mother, and you too would believe. Sometimes my...

Back row - Jimmy, Dad, and Billy; Front row - Dotsy, Mary, and Freddy. c 1941 Sometime just after the war, my father was injured at work. The middle finger of his left hand was cut off just above the first knuckle. As a result, the union settled financially with my father for the injury, and my parents were able to buy a new living room set. Before this, the living room housed an iron bed with a feather bed mattress. That is where my brother, Fred, slept. I don’t remember a couch at that time, but there must have been some sort of place to sit. I was still sleeping in the girls’ room in an iron crib. When the new furniture arrived, out (to the Junkies) went the iron bed, mattress, and all. Out went the crib, and out went the stuff I can’t remember. In came a new couch and two easy chairs. Freddy got to move onto the couch to sleep, and I moved from the crib to the two easy chairs pushed together, to make a bed. Back row - Mary, Jimmy, and Billy; Middle row - a friend of ...