Tag Archives: childhood home

The Hana Chronicles: Month 8, Day 17

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, Family, Hiking and Nature, Historical, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

September 7, 2026- Neither Hana or I are working paid jobs, but we did our share around the house. Hana likes to put her own tray on the high chair-and she knows how to do it. Of course, some adult dexterity is needed to fasten it securely, but she likes to start the process. She also wants, very badly, to climb up and out of the playpen. There are no footholds, though, and we’re not providing her with any.

Labor Day, for the family, was very productive. We finally got a foundation and drywall specialist who was a straight talker and was not interested in selling us his services, on the spot. He recommended a holistic course of action, which addressed the matter of water-sucking shrubs and small trees. We had three of them removed, this afternoon.

HANA’S NOTE- I am so glad that my grownups listen to me, when I need my diaper changed. I also like getting bits of cut fruit, when they have their lunch or dinner-after I’ve had my big meal. I like being part of their gathering.

YEAR IN REMEMBRANCE-2021 Year Two of the Pandemic saw more in-person classes resume, as the danger of infection abated, somewhat. Masks and physical distancing were still big things, as were virtual meetings. Our Baha’i gatherings were still largely on Zoom, as there were too many people with compromised immune systems, and we lost one elder in the summer of 2020.

This was the year that my mother moved out of our childhood home- a place in which she had lived for 66 years. I made two journeys across country this year- first, to ascertain Mom’s state of mind, at her new place of residence and to help clean out the old house, once it had been sold. So, in May, I went back to Saugus, and spent five days helping to with the process. The road east was still COVID protocol-led, from New Mexico to Connecticut. Once in Massachusetts, things had abated somewhat, though for obvious reasons, I went into Mom’s residence masked up and wearing gloves. She made me remove my mask and gloves, when I entered her room. The place was taking care of her, to the extent she let anyone do so.

I went back to Prescott, stopping in Carmel, NY; Oley (for a home-style dinner); Bedford, PA; Terre Haute; Jefferson City, Wheatland and Lamar, MO; and Grants, NM. The COVID protocol was less stringent already.

July brought me eastward again, through Grapevine, TX, so that I could celebrate Aram’s birthday with him and Yunhee. The route then took me to the Greenwood section of Tulsa, where a mob massacred large numbers of Black people, a hundred years ago; then came Memphis, and a visit to the Museum of Civil Rights and Beale Street. In Crossville, TN, I visited with friends and hiked to Fall Creek Falls, in the rain. Harrisonburg did not have Artful Cafe, any longer, but it had Duke’s, a similar place of welcome, in the same location. I made a stopover at Oley, on the way up to Saugus. I had a fine visit with maternal cousin, John and his wife, as well as spending time with Mom and my MA siblings. In Maine, I paid respects to paternal cousin John, and his parents, now all interred in a National Cemetery in Augusta.

Going back was a northern route: Concord, NH; Albany; Du Bois, PA; Mishawaka; Wilmette; Madison and Hudson, WI; Minneapolis-St.Paul, (where I met up with a first cousin, once removed and her family; Fairmont, MN and Sioux Falls (where I made a boo-boo and needed some radiator repair, as a result). Nebraska and Colorado saw me safely back into Home Base.

Late September brought the end of Elantra. As I was headed to work, on a country road, I stopped for 5 seconds and proceeded, A landscape vehicle, going twenty miles over the speed limit, came over the hill and hit the Hyundai exactly between me and the gas tank. I was cited for not having waited 10 seconds at the stop sign. The landscaper was taken into custody. The Hyundai was replaced by a 2007 Saturn Vue, for which I paid cash. While I waited to take possession of the Saturn, whose owner was getting ready to move and just needed the vehicle until her moving date, I had a rental car, paid by the landscape company’s insurance. With that rental car, I made a trip to Chaco Culture National Historic Park and to Ghost Ranch, spending a day in each place.

In December, the Vue and I drove to Santa Fe and Taos. A Christmas visit to Santa Fe had become my self-indulgence for two years, before COVID and it seemed like a good time to jump start things. I visited the Georgia O’Keefffe Museum, having been inspired by the October visit to Ghost Ranch.

Life was becoming normal, and full, again.

Interdependence

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Education, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

July 4, 2022, Saugus- I walked past my now-renovated and much enlarged childhood home, and over to the short hill that served as backdrop for many adventures, back then.

My childhood home, reconfigured for a new generation
Side view of the new “old house”.
Blueberry Hill, Saugus, MA

It was on the above-seen hill that I slid down with my eyes closed, on both a disc and sled, somehow knowing just when to turn and avoid the tree that my sister was afraid I would hit. It was here that I told fantasy tales of ghosts and imaginary communities, to my cousins visiting from Lynn, who knew it was all bollocks, but grinned and said “Wow”, anyway.

The hill now has well-placed homes on each end. One of them has been here since the 1950s, built by a First Nations man, who reared three children here, with his Scots-Irish wife. There is an ecologically-pleasing home, slightly above it, on the hill.. On the northern end, another home or two sit, across from the Intermediate School, which thankfully looks a lot less like a prison than it did as a Middle School, built in the aftermath of the school fires of 1963.

All this reminiscing reminds me of just how interdependent we all are. What belonged to one, in the past, belongs to another now. What was a refuge to someone, decades ago, is a home to someone else today. Things like schools, hospitals, parks that were built by people of one generation may very well continue to serve their successors, without restriction based on some historical pride of place.

The other aspect of my current journey that enforces the notion of interdependence is the increasing awareness of geography, across humanity, and interest in visiting even the most remote communities. A recent visit to L’Anse aux Meadows, at the northern tip of Newfoundland, saw about ten other passenger cars and a busload of tourists, making their way around the seemingly bleak and windswept bogs (on boardwalks, of course) and gazing at snow-covered hills.

People who never saw those from other nations and cultures now routinely greet those from across the globe. People who could barely identify the major cities of their own state or province can now readily match countries on other continents, with their capitals and major cities. Thanks to more heterogeneous travel and immigration, regardless of cause, people in even the most insular communities are becoming familiar with those whose ethnicities’ names, ten years ago, they could barely pronounce.

When I was a kid, I was regarded as odd, for being so interested in people and cultures far afield from this little town, north of Boston. Nowadays, there are plenty of other people who could run circles around me, in terms of global awareness. I regard that as a good thing.

A Brief Look Backward

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Education, Family, Historical, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

December 31, 2021- Betty White chose an awkward time to leave, but it was her time. It was almost a fitting end to a year that took us up, down and sideways-and turned us every which way but loose. I don’t want to say that last one too loudly. We could use a few more years of Clint Eastwood being among us.

As it was, there were a number of people dear to my heart, some of renown and some not, who left this earthly plane in this year now itself winding down. My extended family whittled down, just a tad: My aunts-by-marriage-Sabina Kusch and Dorothy Madigan; Aunt Dorothy’s stepson, John-one of the cousins closest to me, over the years; Charlie Kusch, Jr., another cousin who made his friends and family laugh, much as his father did before him. Diane “Dee Dee” Bean- was the first girl I ever dated-not that it ever worked out. Richard “Dick” Dow, was a next door neighbour, from childhood, who kept his family home and his father’s business running, until he could scarcely move, himself. Two educators from my scholastic past, Anthony Struzziero and Eugene Hughes, both of whom I knew as fair-minded administrators. The bulk of the losses were fellows in Faith, Baha’i teachers, one and all: Val Latham, Jr., Gisela McCormick, John Eichenauer III, John Kolstoe, Joel Oron’a, Ethelene Crawford, Wilfred Smallwood, Donald Streets and Dwight Allen. I lost a car, and gained an SUV.

It was not a year defined by loss alone. A grand nephew, named Liam, came into our lives, early on. Strong new friendships emerged. I was able to return to California and Nevada, after a year’s hiatus. I made two long trips across country, both largely around the sale of our family home, and mother’s voluntary relocation. A week spent in Texas was a perfect springboard for my seventy-second year. I was able to pay respects to those fallen in the name of freedom, though not to the extent I might have. Still, time spent in north Tulsa and in Minneapolis was a step forward, for this one who preferred solitude, for so many years.

Our community has held its own against one or another viruses. As if to seem a strange return of normalcy-the flu is back. The nation resisted the temptation to default on democracy. Both major parties are learning that complacency is dying out among the masses-and a moribund attitude will not fly. We Baha’is paid homage to ‘Abdu’l-Baha, marking one hundred years since His passing-and renewing our commitments to live as He did. That renewed spark of Faith is finding its way to friends of other religious traditions as well-as witness the Baptism, on Christmas Eve, of a man who had found his fortunes sinking.

We did not master disaster, and there were far too many lives lost-in California, the Pacific Northwest, western Canada, Montana, Louisiana, Kentucky and Illinois. The latest conflagration, in Colorado, took no lives, but left another pair of communities with scenes out of a war movie. Two dozen other countries, from Mexico and Peru to Kenya and Indonesia, saw tragic losses in both infrastructure collapse and from the forces of nature. Then, there was/is Ethiopia, a country I only recently was hoping to visit in a year or two. Now, it is riven in pain, and we can only pray for sane attitudes to rise to the fore.

2021 will be history, in short order. How different the year that is thirteen minutes away will be, depends largely on how many of us have absorbed this year’s lessons-and to what degree.

The Long and the Short of It

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Posted by on in distraction issues, Family, impediments, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, Striving

May 10, 2021- As get ready for a road trip, there are always good things that happen and challenges that interfere with what I need to do, day to day. The dental check-up I had this morning shows that regular care has stemmed the decline that had plagued my poor mouth, up until ten years ago. Tomorrow, I will get my car serviced and expect that all will be well, given the regular care the Grey Galloper has had, these past five years.

That leaves the device on which I am writing this piece. There are some issues with Windows 10, specifically the recent tendency for the screen to jump about and show a menu, starting with emojis. I will need the laptop for Zoom calls and for this blog, during the journey, so a long delayed servicing will wait until I get back. In the meantime, patience and a light touch will get us through.

My overall health is good, and I anticipate fine results from a physical exam, on the first of June. Exercise and good wellness practices have gone a long way to keeping this aging frame relatively robust.

With that, in two days’ time, I will be away from this salubrious Home Base and headed towards the home of my childhood. It will be time for a fond farewell to the house where so many memories of my youth were created.

Further Changes

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, Education, Family, impediments, Personal goals, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

May 8, 2021- I received a supportive message from the principal of the school to which I referred yesterday. There will be some discomfort, for some people, but the children will be safe.
In a few short days, my mother’s life will become more secure. I will be on the road, towards my childhood home, and will help with whatever needs to be done, for at least a week. This was not expected-at least not this month, but life does not compromise with want-only with need.

I received word, this evening, that her next door neighbour of 66 years is dying. He is in hospice- a man’s man, reduced to lying in a single bed. I can only hope that his extended family, his cousins and closest friends, can be with him. If he is still with us, when I get to Massachusetts, I will pay a visit and thank him for being a faithful friend of our family, like his parents were.

The next few days will see preparatory activities- a Mother’s Day call, a dental check-up, a car servicing, laundry and packing. There will be time, tomorrow, for a visit to a magical place: Montezuma Well. My Home Base will be secure, while I’m gone, and there will much to be done, when I get back .

School, though, will wait until Fall, or maybe Winter, as I honour marching orders, sent from a place unseen.