In the summers we would visit my grandparents and my father’s family in South Londonderry, Vermont, for up to a week or so. Because these were summer vacations my personal experience of Vermont, a state that is associated with snow and skiing and winter resorts, is entirely of its summer, so I can assure those who only know Vermont in winter that in the other seasons the state lives up to the English translation of its name, its state motto: it is all green mountains.

My dad must have skied in the winters of his Vermont youth, but I remember no action photos of him on the slopes or posed outdoors with his skis held in an X beside him in our family albums. I know he skied because there was a pair of skis and ski boots down in the basement of our home in Poughkeepsie, New York. They were above my head down there, held in place along a rafter in the ceiling of the basement, near the washer and dryer. They were locked together, their bottoms against one another, the tops outward, the boots clamped into place.

Over the first few years of my life the evolution of my thought about the skis ran from, “These must be from the people who lived here before us,” to, “These are my dad’s skis, and he had a very different life before I was born,” to, “I should try these on.” Thus, when I was about ten, I attempted to secretly pull them down from their spot with a cat-like silence that I never learned to achieve, and, surprised by their weight, immediately dropped them and watched in horror as the skis and boots hit the ground very loudly and sprung apart into four unique directions and produced four different and unique loud crashes audible in every direction but especially to my parents’ ears.

I don’t remember a punishment—my self-evident embarrassment sometimes must have seemed sufficient to my parents whenever I noisily failed to injure myself or any objects—but I remember that I considered the skis to be fascinating. The downstairs was where evidence of both of my parents’ existences pre-me lay in cardboard boxes stacked on unfinished wooden shelves (the source of my first ten or so splinters): my mom’s scrapbooks from the 1950s (she ADORED Robert Wagner) and her school yearbooks and my dad’s Time-Life series of books on natural history were all there to be explored by me.

I never touched the skis again, and I never asked my dad about his skiing history, which I regret as he is gone now. He died of Covid six years ago on May 10, 2020. His old golf clubs, I was allowed to be a kid with, though, which means that I somehow unwrapped a grip on one of the fairway woods over the years and scuffed the putter by hitting the gravel stones in our driveway. He no longer golfed, but he had some instructional books (also in the basement) from the early 1970s, which means he bought them in my lifetime.

My dad grew up in what appeared to my eyes to be the smallest of small towns anywhere. South Londonderry was where my grandmother was born and lived almost every minute of her 98 years. It was a near-century of continuous and historic change, but change was something that mostly happened elsewhere, away from South Londonderry. I was aware of this seeming antiqueness from very young: my grandparents had a coal cellar and a hand-cranked clothes washer and books laid facedown on their tables as if recently looked at that were from the 1800s. I carried coal up from the cellar sometimes for cool nights and decided that I was a character out of Dickens. Those summer afternoons were always sunny and slow and it could have been 1875 as easily as 1975. At a young age, my father and his two older brothers appear to have decided that South Londonderry would be where they were from rather than where they were to be.

The skis were from that previous life, the life he was from rather than the life he was in, stored away. I expressed an interest in baseball, so a Ted Williams model baseball bat that I had not discovered in the downstairs appeared and was given to me. (I think my dad retrieved it from the barn at my grandparents house and brought it back home after one of our summer trips.) The golf clubs were from his life in Poughkeepsie as a young executive. Thus, maybe, that is why they were available for my sister and me to play with them.

My dad grew up on a small family farm on a hillside, with all that that meant: a cow, pigs, chickens. By the 1970s, my grandparents no longer maintained it as a farm; my grandmother grew flowers in the garden’s three tiers rather than food, and the barn was empty and dilapidated, a wooden jungle gym for my sister and me (the source of the next ten or so splinters). My sister and I were not going to have to live the childhood he lived, he must have decided. We were from Poughkeepsie, the suburbs. We attended school in a school district, not a one-room schoolhouse like he did. He had a nostalgia for his past, to be sure; he LOVED The Waltons, and while he, my mom, my sister, and I watched it he pointed to it sometimes like it was a documentary or a home movie.

There were things he did in youth that I know he did not like. They hunted for deer, and he never enjoyed it. I think I remember that he used a word for hunting that he rarely used: Hate. He hated killing. To this day, I’ve never touched a gun. They fished, and we never fished in New York. Perhaps he didn’t like to fish and was glad it was in the past, so my sister and I fished in Vermont a couple times … but with our grandparents. I do not know, but perhaps he hated skiing, too.

He never declared any of this, that he wanted a different life, not that I have heard. Instead, he lived it. In his descriptions, Vermont and his childhood seemed somewhat exotic, bygone, gone. He worked very hard to construct the world that my mom joined and that my sister and I grew up in. We grew up in a childhood about which we could feel nostalgic when it was our time. I know we do.

Today would have been Steve’s 72nd birthday 🎉

And honestly … there’s still a part of me that can’t believe he’s not here to celebrate it.

Steve wasn’t just a good man—he was my man. Solid, loyal, smart, and the kind of person who showed up every single time. No drama, no nonsense … just strength, love, and that quiet way he had of making everything feel okay.

I still think about the little things … the way he’d smile when he walked into the room, the way he made me laugh without even trying, the way he just knew how to make life feel steady. Those moments? They stay with me. Always.

We built a life together—through everything—and I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. That kind of love doesn’t go anywhere.

Do I miss him? Every single day. In ways big and small that never really get easier.

But today … today I celebrate him. The man he was. The love he gave. The life we shared.

Happy 72nd Birthday, Steve
Still loved. Still missed. Always mine.

Merry Everything and Happy Always … I hope you’re celebrating big up there.

Yesterday we interred my brother Johnny’s ashes in a nearby cemetery. He passed from Covid-19 very early in the Pandemic. My mother kept an urn of his ashes and also my father’s ashes in her bedroom and would not part with them.

Since my mother recently passed, I was able to inter both my mother’s, father’s and Johnny’s ashes. We had approximately 20 family members and very close friends there. The minister gave a beautiful service and my son Sean played the guitar and sang beautiful and meaningful songs and so did my husband. They read the poems I chose: “Crossing The Bar” by Alfred Lord Tennyson and “Death Is Nothing At All” by Henry Scott Holland. We shared many memories of my late family members.

My dear and special friend Mary Mantell was present for which I was grateful. We helped and supported each other through the past six years of complex grief since Mary lost her beloved husband Mike to Covid . The formal memorial service and burial finally occurred. Now I can visit my original family that I grew up with at the cemetery. I have some peace that they are finally together.

May they all rest in eternal peace .

It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that it’s been six years since losing you. When I think about something that was so deeply a part of who you were, I always come back to soccer—especially Liverpool. I can still picture you waking up early, no matter how tired you were, just to watch a match. It wasn’t just a game to you—it was something you truly loved.

Some of my favorite memories are of you sitting there with your bagel, and once Elsie came along, she made that time her own too. She’d sit on your lap, sneaking bites—most of the time taking more than her fair share—and you never minded. You just held her close and watched the game together. Those quiet, simple moments meant everything.

And now, every time Elsie steps onto the field, she’s carrying a piece of you with her. The love you had for the game lives on in her—in the way she plays, the joy she feels, and the heart she puts into every moment. And she honors you in such a special way, wearing the number 24—your birthday—close to her every time she plays.

It’s her way of keeping you with her, of making sure that you’re part of every game and every step she takes on that field. She may not fully remember those mornings, but they are a part of her, woven into who she is. In so many ways, she’s honoring you every single time she plays.

Terminal

At the end of the line,
Coney Island and Stillwell,
There is plenty of time
and there is no time.
The wait for your next train
to assemble itself uptown.
You’ve shown me the works
In the conductor’s car already,
After waiting outside
The employee lounge for you
On the second floor, staring at
The bright summer sea,
what ride I believe to be
The parachute jump.
But that’s all past now.
I’ll be gone for months.
It’s our fourth date,
I will solidify the all-along
plans to move here,
And at some point we’ll bid goodbye.
But I’ve learned already that
the sweethearts’ sweet sorrow
parting is not for us. The pizza store
is for hellos, not goodbyes.
You never release me to the day
without escorting me home
Or at least to the last possible
subway stop before we part
company. And now we’re sitting
in an empty car near your booth
As you rattle off random transit trivia.
You smile your tufty mustachioed grin
and talk about your shift, jerk your
head out the window through to the
terminal silently populating,
you look around, rattle off a fact
and another fact, dart your eyes,
and quietly admit, “I can kiss you now.”
I couldn’t spit back your train factoids
if a gun were to my head, but when the
coarse lip hair grazes my lips, I can
name and taxonomize every scent,
touch, thought, and permutation
of each that hits my senses.
This kiss must do. You cannot do
PDAs in uniform.
You never kiss me in public
at all except at the pizza store
Or whenever we’re alone.
When the train runs and you shift
into conductor mode, the last goodbye
Is a swift acknowledgement
At the booth window,
Gone as soon as it is delivered.

You, you are more practical.
You can live without the
proper lovers’ parting embrace.
You’ve just always wanted to know
I was riding your train.
I want to believe, always,
That you’ll sense me on the other side
Of the car door, knowing and acknowledging
What’s what and where it’s all going,
Feeling the same turns and rumbles
Of everything moving forward.