I,
I wish you could swim,
Like the dolphins.
Like dolphins can swim.
Though nothing
Will keep us together.
We can beat them
For ever and ever.
Oh we can be Heroes.
Just for one day.

 

 

 

 

 

I did something I haven't done in a few decades and that was to see my parent's childhood homes and neighborhoods. I needed to get some shopping done and since I abhor paying more than I have to, I took a jog over to the only Job Lot that's near me, the one on Pawtucket Ave that leads south into Providence.

I stocked up on some winter supplies, found some great wool socks as my feet turn to ice every winter and as I was about to drive home, I realized I was a few blocks over from the home my Dad grew up in. As I drove down it, I saw that it was a poor neighborhood populated by mostly Hispanics now. Back then in the 30's, it was a poor Irish slum. Not much changes but the tenants it seems.

I found the house and recognized it from some old picture of my Dad when he was ten years old standing outside of it. I didn't stay long as I probably looked suspicious as hell. Here is a picture of it below. A typical three-decker home for families who all worked in the mills back then.

 

My Mom's house isn't that far way from Trenton. She grew up in a house on Sterry St and I swung by that. I didn't have much hope that it would be still there but there it was, the smallest shack on the street. It's still painted a dull blue color and I was surprised to realize just how small it was. My Uncle had inherited it from his parents and lived in it till the 80's. This is the house where all the Christmas Eve parties happened and after seeing it today, I can't imagine how they managed to stuff that many people in it. My Uncle raised four kids in that cottage. Today, it's in the same demographic region, Hispanic and poor. But like my Dad's back then, it was all poor Irish Catholic.

 

And again, since I was in the area I swung by the graveyard. I haven't been there in years since my brother has passed. I found all of them and it hit me. There's a lot of bodies from my family here. When I did visit it on a seemingly regular basis...like every two years apart, I'd see the stones and calculate just how long both my parents have been gone. Then leave. What can you do at a cemetery?

Today, I did something different. I saw all three there and I had a quiet mental conversation with all three. It's so typically human though, talk to long gone relatives. But this was a first for me.

“We once were a family, ya know” I said. “There were once some nice times a family enjoys, the beach, holidays and such.”

That was then over run by the dark stuff, as every family is never perfect. We had both, good and bad.

I looked at my Dad's name, realizing the trampy Irish neighborhood he came from and said, “You made it...You made it. You scraped like a dog to climb a corporate ladder, you got out of that mill life that was pretty much the destiny of many of your friends there on Trenton St...You were also a martinet whose sons regularly rebelled like al Queada behind your back! Ah...we had to if we were going to carve out our own personalities.”

My Mom's there alongside her husband. I liked her better as every kid has a favorite parent, and every parent has a favorite child...it goes both ways! The good and the bad memories came up about her as well. She was the kinder of the two and more “human” and approachable vs. Dad. She, like all woman, are the better half of a marriage. She had her faults too, like being an awful cook! And a memory of signing her batshit crazy ass into Butler Hospital all those years ago came up too. Major Depression was the diagnosis an it is completely destructive. I'll speak of that sometime maybe.

Here's where they all “live” now.

 

I came home, dumped my winter supplies onto the table and looked around. There is just one piece of furniture that was here when everyone was alive, the kitchen table. I walked around the house and realized how much has changed since those times. The carpets, other furniture, wallpaper, paint and everything else that makes a home have pretty much evolved and changed as the years flew by. Both of my parents would be aghast at how I turned the living room into a small auditorium, with audio components being the focus and cables snaking all around.

Time marches on as they way and things do change. This is natural.

A memory sticks with me though, one from 1972. I was seven then and the entire family was whole. We were piling the car full of supplies to head to Scarborough beach on a hot Saturday morning then. We were all in good moods. Our neighborhood had a hint of that Leave it to Beaver friendliness as neighbors chatted us up about what beaches they liked. The sun seemed brighter too in my mind. The cheezy AM radio in my Dad's Impala was set to WPRO 930 playing the top 40 of that time.

This isn't some 30 Days of Thankfulness thingy. I didn't mean it to be this but I am thankful that we did own, for a while, happier times when we were all here. Instead of watching terminal illness take us one by one and having to manage that and leaving me the last man standing, I'm left with a summer memory that's nicer. I do know we were all once “Heroes, Just for One Day,” as the song goes.

 

 

The Last One Standing Now Lives Here