a Winter's day

The snow is small... big flakes no snow...,small snow - watch out... I'm watching as I wait for Audrey to come home after a day up in summerside (how's that for a misnomer on a day like this?). I was out earlier and the roads are icy and slick and I am glad to be back in the house. I took the dog for a brief stroll but neither he nor I wanted to be out in this mess.

Ben (the younger cat) is sitting on a box that I put together for step aerobics. He seems to think that if he sits there and purrs, I will reach down and pet or do something to him... Fat chance...nothing against fat... I'm getting there myself in retirement and I don't want to imply that there is anything wrong with a few extra pounds.

Meanwhile I sit and watch the white blow across the window and hope that all is well on the road. Strange how something you would not think twice about becomes a concern when someone you love is out in it and you are sitting waiting, wondering, unable to do anything but wait and wonder and watch.

Watching, wondering, waiting, wishing, wanting it all to end and the comfort to return. Comfort, care, concern.

First Memories

Joan: 5:30 pm. I rushed to the maternity ward at Washington General Hospital because when I got home there was just a note from your mother that you were on the way. I arrive and they tell me that I can't go to the labor room because your mother has already started her meds. I go anyway and talk and then leave to pace the waiting room as is the traditional role of expectant fathers. At 6:10 the Doctor comes into the waiting room with a long face and takes me aside for the bad news - you have a girl but both mother and daughter are well and healthy. I rush to see you in the baby pen and the nurse brings you over and I am happy to see you. The doctor could not have been more wrong when he said that having a daughter was in any way bad news.

Joe: After months of preparation we head to the hospital in the evening. The doctor arrives and in keeping with our desire to have a natural birth and not use a general anesthetic, he does a "caudal block" which means he injects a novacaine type drug into the spinal column. It doesn't work. It by-passes the cervical area proceeds up the spinal column and proceeds to paralize your mother's diaphram. She can't breathe and is making motions to me to do something. I am the comforting coach as directed and I mop her forhead and nod understandingly and offer positive comments until she starts grabbing for the call button for the nurse and I finally get the picture and push the button. All hell breaks loose when the nurse arrives takes the blood pressure and determines that all is not well. I am shoved out of the way told to proceed to the waiting room and your mother is rushed to delivery. Later I see you with a noticable red mark in the middle of your forehead where the forceps were used, you have an oxygen mask in place and you are breathing well and look okay. I rush by because I am not sure how your mother was. As with Joan it was the next day before I got to hold you. Ah, according to the old german proverb I was two thirds of the way to a successful life because I had fathered a son(????).

Kate: As with Joe, we did a long preparation, determined this time to have as little
medical intervention as possible. We do the natural childbirth classes again and when the time comes we are ready. It was a wonderful experience seeing you red wrinkled and screaming as you are delivered and then sponged off and then we get to hold you and shortly thereafter we go to a quiet room where there are warm blankets for mother and daughter and a place where I can hold you and rock you which is probably why you always wanted to be carried around and rocked for the first three years of your life.

Love

Dad

First Communion

I believe that this was in 1946. I was in Grade three at Nativity of the BVM school. The school was of course part of the parish of the Nativity of the BVM. Now BVM is not a vehicle for the virgin such as an MGB or BMV. No it was short for Blessed Virgin Mary to be distinguished from the other Nativity in Christendom, namely the nativity of the Christ Child which we now celebrate as the birth of the special person or some such.

Note the fine tailoring of the F.C. suit. Since I was the third in the family to wear this holy garb it was tailored once again by my talented seamstress mother.

Note the bags under my eyes which even at that early age came from reading in poor light being a flashlight under the covers.

I am standing in the backyard of 428 14th Street Buffalo New York where I grew up. A fence similar to that behind me encased the yard and confined my siblings and I to the relative safety of a small but functional play area. That is until (aided by Big Brother Richard) I learned the fine art of fence climbing. Thereafter on saturday mornings when my mother slept in for a few well deserved minutes of rest after sending my father off to the bank in his freshly pressed white shirt, I would climb the fence (to the dismay of my younger brother Jack who was unable to master this feat) and scurry away for a day of running free whereever my feet took me.

Mostly I walked the length of Massachusettes avennue to Front Park which began under the Peace bridge between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo. In this park which at that time covered a large area were ball fields, tennis courts and down the hill to the river there was a marina which on a saturday morning bustled with activity. I watched the boats, watched the water rush by on its pell mell course from the eastern end of lake Erie to the mouth of the Niagara River and thence to the glorious Falls of Niagara. The water was frightening in its speed which i tested by throwing twigs into the water and racing along the shore to see if I could go as fast as the water. I lost! Even years later I could not keep up with th speed of the water at that point.

Out in the middle of the river mouth, under the shadow of the Peace Bridge sits a large concrete device shaped like an old flat iron. I was told by someone and I can't remember who, that the device was placed there to divide the water so it would flow more evenly down the river where a number of hydro electric plants had been built.

I was in third grade in the Nativity of the BVM school. In grade two and three I had the same teacher, the only non-nun I had in the grade school system. In fact the only non-nun I ever recall. The Sisters of St. Joseph,the order of nuns who ran the school at BVM were also the ones who ran the big Sister's Hospital on Main Street in Buffalo (where later Ann Callaghan - later wife of my younger brother John
worked for many years). So teaching nuns were in short supply in 1946 and so the school - parish brought in a lay person to teach in the second and third grade which was combined that year. The need for the nuns in the hospital was due to the number of wounded vets who returned from the WWII in need of medical attention.

I hope the picture comes up. Imagine I was just a year older than Aidan and Erin and like them had a sweet enigmatic smile. Almost angelic - wouldn't you say or perhaps fallen angelic - devilish???