As a child, sometimes you only remember outlines of people. My Aunt Ka’s outline went something like this: she lived with my grandparents, never married, was a teacher, and went to church regularly.

Oh, and she never, ever forgot a birthday.

Which was quite miraculous, considering she had fifteen nieces and nephews to keep track of. Every year, without fail, we'd receive a gift and a birthday card signed, “Love, Ka.”

She had a way of making each of us feel special.

I remember her dark curly hair and glasses. And especially her voice. Although it was a bit shrill, there was an elegance and patience to it. I loved the way she said “yes” when she agreed with someone. It lasted longer than most yeses. “Yeeeeesssss.”

Born in 1918, Aunt Ka was already fifty by the time I came along. To me, she was practically ancient. But I adored her.

On Sundays after Mass, we’d visit my grandparents for supper. Aunt Ka was usually in the kitchen. I’d run in to get my hug before taking on my important job of bringing the salt and pepper shakers to the table.

Whenever a crowd of O’Sullivans descended upon their apartment, my sister and I would carry the coats up to her room at the top of the stairs and pile them on her bed. We’d snoop around, but there was never much to discover. I remember a tall mahogany bed, neatly made with a white chenille bedspread, and a dresser. Her room reflected everything I thought I knew about her: plain, practical, and understated.

And in typical childhood fashion, I never thought much about her life beyond the part that included us.

Until I found this photograph.

When I showed it to my Uncle Paul, he confirmed it was her.

“That’s Ka.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“Who was the woman on the left?”

“Clearly, someone from central casting.” He snorted a laugh, then collected himself. “That was just one of many trophies she won. In fact, most of the trophies in my father’s trophy room were hers.”

Suddenly, there was a bit more color to her outline.

Curious, I did a little research and found several newspaper clippings, including one from The Boston Globe, dated 1936. She was just eighteen when she rode a horse named Dough Boy over a jump of more than five feet, taking first place. The newspaper described her performance as one of the evening’s most exciting exhibitions.

Who knew?

Certainly not the little niece who thought her aunt was ancient.

I called Uncle Paul back.

“She was quite the athlete!”

“Yes,” he said. “She rode horses, played tennis, and had lots of friends in college. They all called her Kazi.”

“Kazi? Are you implying Aunt Ka was cool?”

“She was popular, yes. And she was head of her alumni association at Regis.”

He remembered that after college, she worked as a secretary for the Hallmark Card Company until she came down with rheumatic fever. She spent much of that year bedridden at home.

“Maybe that’s why she seemed so frail later in life.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But all I remember about that time is that she read me stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table every night.”

“Awww.”

“She was special.”

I also learned that in her forties, Aunt Ka went back to school, earning not one but two master's degrees: one in education and another in Spanish. I probably should have mentioned earlier that she taught Spanish.

And then there was her adventurous side.

She took each of her nieces and nephews to New York City to celebrate their First Communions. What the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty had to do with First Communion was beyond me, but I happily went along.

My brother Brian recalled the time Aunt Ka took him, cousin Janie, and our cousin John to Cooperstown to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. According to Brian, she wore dark sunglasses and drove with one hand on the wheel, holding a cigarette in the other, with a long tube of ash dangling from the end.

“We all took bets on when the ash would finally drop,” Brian recalled, laughing. “But it never did. It was amazing, considering she drove like a bat out of hell.”

Aunt Ka!

But Aunt Ka’s travels took her much farther than New York.

I recently came across a collection of letters and postcards she’d sent home in 1965. The first was a reply to a letter my mother had sent her while Aunt Ka was studying in Spain.

Dear Margie,

I enjoyed your letter very much. You asked if there were mosquitoes here. Some of the students complained about them in the dorm, but there are no fields where I live. I think they would have trouble breeding here.

Oh, Mom.

Aunt Ka continued.

I spent today in Madrid armed with my camera and a map, trying to get my bearings. It is a beautiful city—part of it very modern—with beautiful wide, tree-lined avenues. For the past week, I’ve been hungry for a grilled cheese sandwich—of all things.

Other letters described her travels through Spain, Paris, and London with my cousin Kathy, whom she had met up with after her studies.

Having a ball in London. Last night we visited a pub—still not sure it was the proper thing to do for three lovely women, but we enjoyed it!

A few years later, she returned to Spain, this time with my mother and cousin Anne. My mother recalled attending a bullfight and crying through the whole event while Aunt Ka shook her head and rolled her eyes.

My mother identified with the bull.

Looking back, I remember Aunt Ka traveling to Spain frequently. She brought home marvelous dolls, purses, and little gifts for the family. I was so thrilled with the presents that I never thought to ask:

“Why Spain? We’re Irish.”

Years later, my sister Laurie and I wondered whether those trips might have involved a little romance. We asked our mother:

“Do you think she had a secret lover in Spain when she was younger?”

“No,” she replied emphatically. “She thought men were stupid.”

We both laughed. That sounded like Aunt Ka.

A month after I turned thirteen, Aunt Ka died from a stroke at the age of 63. I felt so sorry for her. Not just because she’d died too young, but because she’d never married or had children of her own. I thought she’d missed out on so much.

Boy, was I wrong. I just hadn’t colored her in yet.

I wish I could run up those stairs to that apartment now and visit with her. I’d have so many questions.

What was it like to jump a five-foot fence on horseback? What were your friends like in college? What kept drawing you back to Spain? Did you ever fall in love? Were you happy?

I like to think the answer to that last question was a definite yes.

I’ll never have all her stories, but I have a few, preserved in photographs, newspaper clippings, letters, and postcards.

And I admit, my heart still leaps a little at the sight of her familiar signature.

Love, Ka.

I found a letter tucked away in a box of my mother’s papers. At the top, in her handwriting, was a note:

Written to the Confidential Chat in response to a “holier-than-thou” writer denouncing women.

Oh, goody!

For non-Bostonians, the “Confidential Chat” was the Boston Globe’s version of Facebook before the internet. People asked questions, offered advice, and occasionally told one another exactly what they thought.

My mother was a frequent flier.

It made perfect sense. She was smart and full of spunk from an early age. She graduated from high school in 1942 at the age of sixteen—so you can literally say she was ahead of her time. She enrolled at Boston University, where she got all A’s.

How do I know? She kept her report cards.

In 1947, at twenty-one, she met her future father-in-law for the first time at his rather imposing estate. As he walked her through a maze of rooms to the parlor, he offered her a beverage.

“What can I get for you, Marjorie?”

“I’ll have whatever you’re having. Thank you.”

“I’m having bourbon,” he said sternly.

“Perfect—make it a double,” she said casually.

Sure, she may have borrowed the line from Ingrid Bergman. But I love that she said it. She wasn’t easily intimidated.

She married my father in 1949 and eventually became a homemaker and mother. But that never meant sitting on the sidelines.

My mother had opinions and a typewriter.

Which brings me back to the letter.

My mother’s letter was addressed to a writer calling herself “Five Foot Two—Eyes of Blue.” Since it was Confidential Chat, writers used pseudonyms. Apparently, Five Foot Two had some strong opinions about the erosion of femininity and proper culture. And she clearly had a problem with the Frug, a 1960s dance craze with plenty of hip shaking and arm swinging to send an entire generation to hell in a handbasket.

Until this week, I’d never seen the woman’s letter. Now that I have, I can certainly understand why it irked my mother enough to “let her have it.”

I’ll let you read my mother’s response first. It’s more fun to imagine what she was responding to. It also sent me to the dictionary to look up a beautiful word I hadn’t seen in years.

muliebrity /ˌmyo͞olēˈebrədē/
formal noun: the quality of being a woman; womanhood or femininity

Enjoy!

Dear Five Foot Two – Eyes of Blue,

Thank you, thank you, dear Savior of Femininity. You have shown me the righteous path to my children’s salvation. O deliver me from my inadequacies, nay, my sins!

I confess that last week I not only learned the Frug, I taught it to my two boys. Even my husband joined the orgy; and to compound my guilt, I reveled in it.

The Bible, I believe, says, “The sins of the Father are visited upon the sons, etc.,” so what can be expected from the daughter of a Dad who did a wicked Charleston? However, I firmly resolve to make amends, do penance, and Minuet the rest of my life.

Furthermore, dear epitome of muliebrity, I promise no more to offend my home life with trash like Peyton Place, Shindig, and Hullabaloo. I shall rely solely on the glorious works of Channel 2.

Do not judge this sinner too harshly, Oh, Lofty One; unlike you, I am one of the herd, so I shall sign myself, merely,

A Member of the Human Race

I love that my mother simply couldn’t let this go. I can just see the woman now, clutching her pearls as she read my mother’s response.

And I love that, all these years later, I can see my family dancing the Frug in the living room, picture what they were watching on TV, and know that my grandfather could do a wicked Charleston.

God, I miss my mother. She was fabulous.

And boy, she sure knew how to tell someone to “Frug Off.”

The Letter That Started It All: The Boston Globe, Confidential Chat, November 1965

The Copy of the Letter My Mother Saved
Which still makes me laugh.

My Mother’s Published Reply in the Confidential Chat

More Artifacts

The Frug.
Five Foot Two would be appalled.

My grandfather, John Mannix.
The man who, according to his daughter, “did a wicked Charleston.” Apparently, bad behavior ran in our family.

Back in the 1940s, there was a ballplayer from New England named Frank Navilluso. By all accounts, he was quite a player. He could field. He could catch. He could pitch. He was even good enough to attract the attention of major-league scouts.

But one day, Frank Navilluso simply disappeared.

He played ball around the same time my father did. My father was a great ballplayer, too. In fact, my father lived and breathed baseball for most of his life.

You would think he got his love for the game from my grandfather. You would be wrong. He got it from my grandmother, who frequently took her boys to Fenway Park to see the Red Sox and taught them to understand the game, not just watch it.

She was a fine athlete herself, breaking the high-jump record at Jackson College, Tufts University’s college for women, in 1914. Baseball also ran in her family. Her brothers were avid players, and her niece—my father’s first cousin, Mary Dailey—played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the war.

I guess you could say baseball was in his blood.

He played as a little boy. He played in prep school. He played for his local town team. He played while serving in the Navy during World War II. And later at Boston College.

Apparently, if there was a baseball game being played somewhere, my father would find it.

Eventually, all that playing paid off. In college, his skills attracted the attention of major-league scouts. Unfortunately, one obstacle stood in his way.

His father.

My grandfather loved watching him play. He just didn't think he should make a living doing it. Even my grandmother told him he would be “yesterday’s news” if he went on to the majors.

Grammy!

But, according to family lore, there was one scout who just wouldn’t take no for an answer. He went directly to my grandfather, showing up at his home in Lincoln, Massachusetts, unannounced.

This did not go well.

After my grandfather sent the scout packing, the scout turned back and said, “Well, if you won’t let him sign, we’ll make an offer to a semi-pro player I hear is just as good, if not better.”

“Who?” my grandfather asked.

“Frank Navilluso.”

“Never heard of him,” my grandfather said as he shut the door.

That may be true. But he had seen him play.

Frank Navilluso was my father.

My father spelled O’Sullivan backward to create an alias so he could play semi-pro ball in the summers without jeopardizing his college eligibility. The extra money didn’t hurt, either. He sent it home to my mother to save during their engagement.

Using an alias wasn’t unusual among college players who played for semi-pro teams, and my father played for plenty of them—the Brattleboro Maples in Vermont’s Northern League, the Drapers in Hopedale, Massachusetts. The list goes on.

Exactly when and where my father played as Frank Navilluso long enough to fool that scout remains a mystery. But it must have been short-lived, because it’s Frank O’Sullivan’s name that appears multiple times in newspapers across New England—the Brattleboro Reformer, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Evening Gazette.

The Brattleboro Reformer was particularly impressed with his arm, calling it “the best throwing arm for an outfielder we have ever seen in the league.” The paper also noted that major-league scouts had taken notice.

Growing up, we knew our father was good, but we weren’t sure how good until years later. Plus, being an Irish family, we preferred the more colorful stories to pure baseball stats. These were the stories my mother loved to tell.

Like the time the umpires had to carry him off the field, his feet pedaling above the ground, because he refused to accept that he was out at second. Or the time a Boston Herald reporter criticized a play he had made. Dad was so mad, he went down to the Herald and waited for him in the lobby. The plan was to punch his lights out. Fortunately, he settled for a heated argument.

My Uncle Paul, my father’s younger brother, now 92, recalls the time he faced Robin Roberts, who would go on to become a Hall of Fame pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. Roberts struck him out three times in a row.

My father’s response?

“He got lucky.”

That was my dad. He hated to lose. Baseball, tennis—it didn’t matter. And fittingly, he was winning his tennis match when his heart stopped on the court in 1997. He was only 71.

At my father’s wake, a man in his late eighties stood patiently in the reception line, determined to get to us. No one in the family could place him. When he introduced himself, he said he was a former baseball scout and wanted to share something about our father.

He remembered watching B.C. play the Red Sox in an exhibition game at Fenway. Before the game, he saw my father casually standing on the pitcher’s mound during warmups, throwing balls over the Green Monster just to pass the time.

He shook his head. “Your father could throw someone out at home plate all the way from the Green Monster. What an arm.”

My brothers, sister, and I just stood there, staring at each other. We had always assumed Dad was exaggerating about his time on the field.

Apparently, he wasn’t.

How I wish I could have seen him play.

But every once in a while, we caught a glimpse.

My brothers remember Dad teaching them how to throw curveballs and knuckleballs when they were kids. He would demonstrate by throwing crazy, zigzagging pitches to my brother’s friend, John, who laughed so hard trying to catch them that the bubblegum kept falling out of his mouth.

Then there was the time my father was doing yard work and listening to a Red Sox game on our family’s old transistor radio. The Sox did what they did best: they broke his heart. In an act of utter disdain, my father picked up the radio and threw it clear over the roof of our house.

There was that arm.

My father’s love of baseball never wavered, and I’m thankful he passed that love on to us. During summers, when he came home from work, he’d head outside with a tennis racket and a bucket of tennis balls to hit pop flies to any kid in the neighborhood standing at the top of the hill with a glove. He even coached my Little League team. Of course I played right field.

My father left us another gift too: his season tickets. In 2004, after the Red Sox pulled off a seemingly impossible comeback from three games down against the Yankees, they made it to the World Series. I took my mother to Game Two. And they won.

To this day, every time I step inside Fenway, I think of my father.

I still have scrapbooks filled with dozens of old newspaper articles covering some of his best moments in college and semi-pro ball. Now and then, I sit with them and read through the clippings, trying to capture the joy he felt playing a game he loved so much.

And although my father never went on to become a legend in the big leagues, I am certain of this—Frank O’Sullivan will always be a legend in our family.

So will Frank Navilluso.

I only know about the story because of a letter that turned up years later. But I’ll get to that soon enough. First, you need to know a little about my mother.

My mother was a wonderful writer. She wrote warm, funny, loving letters to her children, friends, and family. But when she encountered something she considered unfair, incompetent, or just plain wrong—that person would hear about it in a letter.

I have copies of letters she wrote to the Concord Journal about typos and to The Boston Globe about feminism. Then there was the letter she wrote in 1949 to an employer who forced her to resign after she got married. She sarcastically suggested that perhaps they could change her status to “laid off because of marriage” so she could collect unemployment. They got the message. She prevailed. How do I know? I found her letter and their response mounted in her scrapbook like trophies.

But this letter was different. It wasn’t a letter written by her—it was a letter written to her.

When I saw the return address, John H. Breck, Inc., Manufacturing Chemists, in Springfield, Massachusetts, I knew immediately this was going to be good.

It began like this:

Dear Mrs. O’Sullivan,

Your recent letter to Mr. Breck has been forwarded to me for answering.

My mother always said, “If you want to get anything done, go straight to the top.” But what could have happened that was so bad that she wrote to the president of Breck?

The letter was dated February 15, 1962, and came from James Anderson in Marketing Research. It concerned a hair dye product called Breck Stroke & Color. For context, here’s how Breck advertised it:

INTRODUCING THE FIRST HAIR COLOR MAKE-UP IN A PAD

It’s just as easy as applying make-up.

Gee, what could go wrong?

Apparently, quite a bit.

Back to the letter:

We do appreciate your comments concerning our Breck Stroke & Color Black Pad. However, we would like to impose once more upon your generosity and request you try the product again. We are forwarding to you under separate cover another retail package of Black Stroke & Color.

How nice!

You will find enclosed in the package a single plastic glove. We would appreciate your trying the product once again, using the glove to see whether the use of such a glove would impair the application of a Stroke & Color Pad. Also, we believe the glove is one of two ways that would prevent the color being deposited under the fingernails.

You may be onto something here, Mr. Anderson.

At least now we have our first clue about what happened to my mother. We know she applied the product and got dye under her fingernails. I can see her now in the bathroom with black dye everywhere, fingerprint stains on the cabinets, and a few expletives flying here and there.

And Breck’s solution? A single glove. For three pads.

But wait, there’s more!

Mr. Anderson has another idea.

Incidentally, another idea we have tried to prevent color from being deposited under the fingernails is to first apply cold cream under the nails prior to using Breck Stroke & Color. Possibly you would also like to try this idea.

Apparently, the fingernails were now my mother’s problem to solve.

Then things got personal.

We were wondering whether you would be willing to tell us if it is normal practice for you to wash your hair in the morning, afternoon, or evening. If it is during the evening, do you put your hair up in pin curls and then retire for the evening without taking down your hair until morning?

I beg your pardon?

Suddenly, Mr. Anderson seemed awfully interested in my mother’s bedtime routine.

But the plot thickens.

If it is customary for you to wash your hair in the evening, and then retire while your hair is somewhat damp, then it is possible that some of the excess will appear on your pillowcase.

And there it was. The missing piece. It wasn’t just the fingernails. This dye went rogue and made it all the way to my mother’s pillowcase. I can picture her with black fingernails, furiously typing to Mr. Breck while her stained pillowcases soaked in bleach.

Here’s how Mr. Anderson concluded the letter:

We wish to thank you for your very nice letter and hope you will send us your comments on the new package we are forwarding to you as well as your comments relative to your shampoo habits.

And just like that, my mother was part of the Breck product development team.

Did he ever apologize?

He did not.

Instead, he gave her homework. Yes, Mom. Try this and report back.

But there may have been a silver lining. For all I know, my mother helped usher in the era of plastic gloves tucked inside every box of home hair color. I like to think she did.

Incidentally, they discontinued the product a year later.

Why she kept the letter, I can only guess. Maybe she knew someday I’d go snooping through her things, and when I found it, I’d burst into laughter.

She was right on both counts.

Maybe it was the lunacy of the whole thing. Or maybe she kept it to prove that people really do pay attention when you take things to the top.

Whatever the reason, I’m so glad it made its way into her scrapbook, and now mine.

You understand why I’ve kept it, right? It’s so unmistakably Margie. So unmistakably my mother.

Here’s the original letter from Breck.

Enjoy!

I found a treasure last week.

I recently gave my kitchen a facelift with some new cabinets, so naturally things got emptied, tossed, found, and reorganized. And then there it was.

A spoon from my mother’s 1960s kitchen. I thought I had lost it years ago.

I don’t know why my heart skipped a beat when I found it. It was nothing fancy. Just a long iced-tea spoon with little starbursts on the handle. But when I picked it up and held it again, I grew curious about where it came from before it landed in my mother’s kitchen and eventually mine.

The inscription on the back reads: “Mar-Crest Stainless Steel USA.” According to Professor Google, the pattern dates to the 1950s and early ’60s, and those little bursts were part of the Atomic Age design movement. I didn’t even know that was a thing.

It made sense, though. After World War II, Americans became captivated by atomic anything. Then Sputnik launched in 1957, and suddenly everyone was obsessed with outer space. Starbursts, planets, and orbiting shapes started showing up everywhere, apparently.

By the ’60s, that fascination had made its way onto television shows like The Jetsons, Lost in Space, and Star Trek. And during the ’70s, while the reruns played on the console TV in our family room, I sat at the kitchen table, my feet dangling above the linoleum floor, completely oblivious to the history behind the spoon I was using to shovel Brigham’s ice cream into my mouth.

I loved that spoon. I used it for everything.

Ice cream. Peanut butter. Yogurt. Cereal when all the regular spoons were in the dishwasher. And because of its long handle, I remember using it to stir lemonade and iced tea. Oh, and Kool-Aid! And here’s a flashback: ZaRex. I can still see the bottles of that sugary syrup we used to flavor water and plain soda. It had a zebra on it, and it was always covered in goop.

Come to think of it, that spoon has seen a lot. So did its distant cousins. My mother’s silver.

The silver didn’t mingle in the kitchen with the lowly flatware. It lived in the dining room, tucked into a felt-lined drawer in my mother’s sideboard, as if it were sacred. I remember my mother telling me that having silver was an important part of keeping a proper household.

Ironically, it only came out a few times a year, for holidays or when my mother hosted bridge or women’s gatherings. I can still remember standing on a stool at the kitchen sink with my sister, polishing forks, knives, gravy bowls, and candy dishes with that pungent purple-paste-like substance that seemed to land everywhere.

When you first polish silver, it’s an adventure. You watch with amazement as the tarnish disappears from the prongs of the fork, the back of the spoon, the designs etched into the knife handle. But by your teenage years, you are considerably less amused.

“Oh, Mom. Do we have to?”

“Yes, we’re using the good china today.”

Ah, the china. There’s another story for another day.

My mother’s silver now lives with my nephew Dan. We found it while clearing out my brother’s house after he died last year. When I opened the drawer and saw the familiar pattern staring back at me, I greeted it warmly. “Well, hello again.”

“Was this Grammy’s?” Dan asked as he stood beside me.

“Yes, it was. And this is special, so hold on to it. But it needs to be polished.”

When he asked what he should use, I smiled.

“Silver polish. I’ll get you some.”

That was last summer. Today, he’s coming to visit with his girlfriend Emily, and I have a surprise waiting for him. I have some extra polish, and I’m going to demonstrate how to use it on my own silver and then send him home with that little tub of magic. He appreciates family heirlooms and the stories behind them as much as I do. That’s why caring for them is truly a labor of love, a family tradition, and a nod to the past.

Part of me wants to drive out to Western Mass and polish my mother’s silver with him one last time. I can still see all the people who dined with it over the years: my grandparents, my parents, extended family, and my mother’s friends from Concord. But alas, it’s time to pass the polishing cloth to the next generation.

I’m perfectly happy with the sole surviving Mar-Crest iced-tea spoon I still have.

It’s been sitting on my desk all week, waiting for me to write about it.

I mean, I just had to. It’s been returning memories I didn’t know I still had.

When it reappeared, so did the avocado-green appliances in my parents’ kitchen. The mural my mother sketched in pastel of the battle at Old North Bridge on the kitchen wall. The picnic table we used as our kitchen table, covered in a green plastic tablecloth that was always littered with Rice Krispies and spilled milk. Our brown melamine cereal bowls.

Eventually my mother upgraded her kitchen with new appliances and abandoned the Mar-Crest pattern for Oneida. But she kept a few of the old pieces, probably because of the utility of the iced-tea spoon. I’m so glad she did.

It’s funny how you begin to recognize objects as old friends when you begin losing so many of the people who once surrounded them.

My parents are gone. My sister is gone. My brother is gone.

But somehow, the spoon is still here.

Perhaps it’s my “constellation” prize.

Get it?

Yes, I know how to spell consolation. I prefer my pun.

So what will my little spoon and I have today?

I think a little yogurt sounds nice, don’t you?

There were the usual complications. Somebody thought they forgot a toothbrush or didn’t pack enough socks or underwear, and my mother would plunge her arm into the abyss of our bags to double-check. Most middle-class kids didn’t have luggage back then. We used pillowcases and trash bags to pack our clothes and bedding. Because of this, it looked like we were heading to the dump instead of the Cape. Then again, on changeover days, every station wagon rolling south on 128 looked like a suburban reenactment of The Grapes of Wrath.

My sister and I would sit in the backseat, roll down the windows, and play Mad Libs and I Spy, giggling at the ridiculous results. Then without fail, I would announce, “I have to go,” while stalled in traffic at the Bourne Bridge. Our dog, Chrissy, would bark in solidarity. “You’ll have to hold it,” my parents would say in unison.

Upon arrival at the cottage, we would scurry out, leaving all the doors open as we ran toward the ocean. We would leap down the splintered wooden steps to the sand, leaving my poor mother behind to unload everything. I would drink in the ocean air, tilt my face upward toward the sun, feel its warmth, and relish the anticipation of the week ahead.

The cottage belonged to a retired priest. It was simple and sparse, and had three bedrooms and a small kitchen. I remember the fireplace had a ship in a bottle on the mantel; the walls were decorated with a wooden cross, one faded painting of a sailboat, and a ship's wheel mounted to the dark wood paneling. The furniture was uncomfortable and worn, but we didn’t care. A vacation on the Cape was meant to be spent outside. That is, unless it rained and then we were all forced to stay inside, watching one of the three grainy stations that came in through the rabbit-ear antennas on the old television.

My sister and I spent our days swimming, building sandcastles, and collecting shells. Brian and David would go deep-sea fishing with our father. I can still smell the bluefish my father caught and stored on ice in the trunk of the car. My sister and I spent the car ride home with our heads hanging out the window to keep from gagging.

Evenings always settled into a familiar rhythm. My father would stand at the shoreline, fishing pole in hand and an Owl Tip cigar balanced in the corner of his mouth. The soft scent of tobacco lingered in the air as the familiar voices of Boston radio called the Red Sox game on our paint-stained transistor radio. We each took turns spending time with my father while he fished, helping him bait the line, trying to cast it ourselves, or simply sitting in the sand beside him.

After fishing, we enjoyed a dinner of grilled Fenway Franks and hamburgers, followed by a bike ride to the tiny village center, where we’d get ice cream and inevitably wear more of it than we ate.

One day of every vacation was reserved for a trek to Provincetown—“P-town” for short. I would press my face against the windows of the candy shops and watch the owners make fudge on big slabs of marble. They would scrape it and fold it and cut it into squares. My parents would buy three or four boxes that our sticky little fingers would break into on the ride home.

One year my parents paid the street artists to sketch our portraits in pastel. David’s came out perfect. Laurie was beautiful. And then there was me, with a pixie haircut and buck teeth. I looked just like a boy, and so did my portrait. I would beg my mother to take it off the family room wall when I had sleepovers.

The week we had at the beach always went by too fast. That was always the hardest part of being on the Cape—the day it came to an end. I would stare at the waves with a towel wrapped around my shoulders. My father would see my disappointment, walk down the steps to the sand, take my hand, and pull me to my feet.

“Don’t worry, Meggie. The ocean is always here for you. We’ll be back again next year.” He handed me a smooth stone to skip in the water, which sank the moment I threw it. On my way back to the stairs, I picked up one last shell for my collection and wiped the sand off my bottom.

Thinking back on those summers, I wonder where the gravitational pull of the ocean began. My father’s family spent their summers in Scituate, my mother’s in Dennis. Did their grandparents start this tradition? Or was it just the thing to do in New England? Or maybe it was an Irish thing. Perhaps it was an unspoken act of gratitude for our ancestors who crossed it and started a new life for all of us.

All I know is that every summer I still feel that need to be with family and the ocean. Every August, my husband and I make the two-hour trek to the Mannix family reunion, aptly named Mannix Madness. When we arrive, we open the gate to my cousin Maureen’s beautiful home, where we are greeted with a multitude of hugs. Long hugs—the kind with conversations attached to them. “Thank you for coming.” “How are you?” “It’s so great to see you.” “I love you.”

If you want to picture it, imagine a kitchen overflowing with food, side conversations in every corner of the yard, loud laughter over competitive games of cornhole, and toddlers darting underfoot. No one ever seems to know exactly where everybody is, but somehow we're always together. After everyone settles in, we suit up and head to the beach.

Our multigenerational gaggle scatters towels and chairs across the sand, then walks into the ocean. The older generation—somehow, now my own—floats together, sharing updates, memories, and stories about those we have lost. But those conversations are quickly interrupted by footballs and tennis balls sailing across the water, tossed by the younger generation and returned with surprising skill by the "oldies," as my niece so graciously calls us.

It’s our little slice of heaven, if only for a day. The saltwater rolls past us, sometimes over us, joining our conversations. I tilt my face toward the sun and let its warmth settle over me. Suddenly I’m ten again.

My father was right. The ocean is still there for me.

There’s just something about the Cape.

Instead, he got a call from his baby sister. That would be me.

We spent twenty minutes on the phone talking about aging, how much Advil to take for our arthritis, and the surprising benefits of using pickle juice for muscle cramps. Somehow, that led us to conclude we’d both rather be pickled than buried or cremated. We wondered whether we could purchase giant, human-sized pickle jars. That way we could be preserved in juice, and the nieces and nephews could just wheel us around in jars to future family gatherings.

It was a typical Meghan-and-Brian conversation. Silliness has always been our common language. We’re twelve years apart, but laughter always seems to close the gap. Over the past year, we've spent more time together, checking in on each other and the family we have left. And I realized something I'd never really thought about before. We grew up in the same family, but not in the same childhood. I knew my brother, but I didn’t know the little boy he used to be. Why would I? I wasn’t born yet.

Growing up, I only knew Brian's early years through the stories my parents told me and the clues I stumbled upon, like the day I found a birthday card my mother had addressed, "To: Gug."

“Who is Gug?” I asked.

It was the nickname my parents had given him when he was little. I always wondered whether it was his first word, the way he pronounced his own name, or his attempt at saying “dog.”

Then, while I was finishing this essay, I finally got my answer.

“David couldn’t say my name,” Brian told me. “He could only say, ‘Gug.’”

And just like that, another little piece of his story fell into place. There are still fragments of my brother’s childhood I’m putting together, one story at a time. And I have a feeling there are plenty more waiting for me.

It made me realize something else, too. I'll never remember my brother as a baby, a five-year-old, or even a ten-year-old. Those memories belong to everyone else. Mine began much later.

The Brian I first met was a rebel—the fun, almost grown-up sibling, halfway between childhood and adulthood.

I remember the afternoon he came home to show off his new (used) blue convertible. He took me and Laurie on a joyride. We had two steep hills in our neighborhood, and he flew over them at high speed. Every time we caught a little air, we squealed with delight. We had the top down and the wind in our faces, and it felt like we were on a roller coaster at Canobie Lake Park. There were no seatbelts in the back. We just threw our arms in the air, grinning from ear to ear, while “Bennie and the Jets” blasted from his eight-track.

That's the Brian I grew up with. The little boy who came before him, though, I only knew through snapshots and family stories.

In the first photo, my brother is impossibly adorable. Look at that crew cut, the cowlick, the smattering of freckles across his nose, and those mischievous eyes. He looked like he’d been pulled straight from central casting for every family sitcom of the 1950s and ‘60s.

Wasn’t he cute?

Well, not so fast.

Here’s the other photo from the same photoshoot. Ah, yes. Now this is the Brian I’d heard so much about.

According to my parents, Brian’s mischief started around the age of six or seven, when he decided it would be fun to hide from my mother in grocery stores. He’d yank his hand away from hers and disappear, watching with delight as she panicked, searching for him. This became his favorite pastime—analyzing human behavior.

Eventually, my mother took drastic measures, putting a leash and harness on him for these types of excursions. That’s when Brian decided that if he was going to be treated like a dog, he’d act like one. He dropped to all fours and crawled around on the sidewalk. He even panted and barked to make his point. What a performer.

But my mother, God bless her, never flinched.

Instead, she tied his leash to a sign outside of Brigham’s Ice Cream in Newton, patted him on the head, and announced that no dogs were allowed inside. She then reminded him that dogs can’t have ice cream.

Psychological warfare was my mother’s specialty.

Mom: 1. Brian: 0.

My father, however, wasn’t a match for Brian. When he told Brian to put his clothes away, Brian threw them down the stairs instead.

“If I see one more piece of your clothing come down these stairs,” my father warned, “you’re going to be in big trouble, mister.”

So Brian threw my parents’ clothes down the stairs.

Brian: 1. Dad: 0.

One Christmas, Brian set up an elaborate scheme to catch Santa Claus. He strung yarn all over the living room, right up to the fireplace mantel. When he didn’t catch him, despite the soot footprints my father had carefully created leading from the hearth to the tree, Brian grew suspicious.

“That’s it,” he announced. “There is no Santa Claus.”

“Why would you say that?” my father asked.

“Because this trap was foolproof. I definitely would have caught him.”

“Well, what about the footprints?”

Brian shrugged. “Well, I asked for a shovel, and I didn’t get one.”

My father paused.

“Well, sometimes when Santa’s in a rush, he drops things. Let’s go outside and see if maybe he dropped your shovel.”

Brian reluctantly followed him outside, looking at the ground.

“He wouldn’t have dropped it there, Brian. Look up.”

And sure enough, there it was—Brian’s shovel, stuck on the roof.

Dad wins this round. Well done, Dad.

It turns out the rebellious teenager I remember wasn’t all that different from the little boy my parents described. He’d just gotten bigger.

It’s funny how the stories I was told have become my own memories, even though I never witnessed them. Somehow, I feel like I was there.

If you’re wondering what became of Gug… he grew up to become a therapist. Fitting, isn’t it?

Even at seventy, now retired, he still carries all that boyish mischief inside him. In fact, I’m fairly certain that as I write this, he’s online searching for human-sized pickle jars.

Happy birthday, Gug.

Keep the stories coming.

I especially enjoyed it when he called me on International Talk Like a Pirate Day. His usual “Hey, what’s up?” was always followed by a spirited “ARRRR!” It always made me laugh.

I haven’t heard those three marvelous words from him in over a year. In fact, the last time we spoke was on Father’s Day 2025. He had just seen String Cheese Incident with his son Kevin. It was his favorite band after the Grateful Dead, which he followed around the country in his early twenties.

I teased him about it. “Of course you would love a band with a goofy name like String Cheese Incident.”

“Meg, they are awesome.”

Awesome. His favorite word.

I don’t remember him using it much as a kid. Somehow, the word just magically appeared with fatherhood. Whether it was a lopsided birthday cake, a barely executed double play, or three lines in a school production, everything was awesome.

So, I was fully prepared to hear about how awesome his Father’s Day had been. He waxed poetic about the concert—how much he danced, the bands he heard, and how much fun he had with Kevin.

Our routine was always the same. David would call me from the road. We’d exchange updates, solve the world’s problems, and then I’d ask, “How are the kids?” That’s when I’d put him on speaker and start cooking or cleaning. After all, I had to stay productive for the next thirty minutes.

“Dan is awesome,” he said proudly. “He’s so active in the local community that we can’t go anywhere without him running into someone he knows. Meg, it takes an hour to get out of the grocery store.”

“Hmmm, who does that sound like?” I prompted.

We answered in unison.

“Dad.”

“And you,” I added.

David loved people just as much as Dan and my father. He could talk to anyone about anything and somehow make it interesting. Well, almost anything. He sold mulch for a living, and despite his best efforts, I never quite developed his passion for wood chips. But I could patiently listen to his rants about politics, sports, and how to make the perfect chocolate malted frappe.

His secret ingredient? Whoppers.

My brother found fun in everything. At least once a year, a video of R.E.M. dancing with the Muppets would appear in my inbox or Facebook feed. No note or explanation, just a link to Michael Stipe jumping around and singing along with a bunch of furry monsters.

It's exactly how I imagine David dancing at concerts.

Growing up, he was the kid who organized neighborhood hockey and baseball games. He collected friends and kept them for life, which is why it was no surprise that his funeral was packed with familiar faces from childhood.

David would have loved it. As the crowd swelled, I turned to my brother Brian.

“You know what David would say.”

He nodded.

In unison, we said:

“This is awesome.”

Then his fraternity showed up, the young and the old. Hundreds came through the line in green blazers, tears streaming down their faces. Brian and I spent much of the wake comforting them, assuring them how much they meant to our brother, too.

When one young man introduced himself, I smiled. “Oh, I know who you are. You built that composting company and have a really cute dog on your website.”

He looked surprised.

“How did you know that?”

“David showed it to me when he came for a swim.”

A swim.

There it was. The wave of grief that can dismantle you with a single word or memory.

“Will you excuse me?” I whispered.

I walked away to catch my breath. A week before he died, David came to the house, and we spent the afternoon floating in the pool, just talking about everything and nothing. I could still see his yellow bathing suit draped over one of my loungers to dry. He always forgot it.

Then the sobs came.

It’s hard to explain the difference between losing a parent and losing a sibling. I don’t know why it’s different; it just is. I once described it this way to a friend:

“When you lose your parents, it’s heartbreaking. When you lose a sibling, it’s dismemberment.”

That’s certainly what it felt like when his company disconnected his phone, and our family group texts updated automatically with a message that read:

“David has left the conversation.”

But the truth is, our conversations never really ended. I still talk to him every day.

I talk to him about his kids, Mary, Dan, and Kevin, and how proud he would be of the way they've handled the enormous grief that comes with losing a father, how they've kept moving forward with their lives, and how they still take time to visit his grave and sing him his favorite songs. I laughed out loud when they told me they'd sung “Sunshine Day” from that goofy Brady Bunch episode we used to joke about.

I tell him that our nephew Matt and Alicia had a baby girl, Claire. He would have pushed past all of us to be the first to hold her.

I reminisce about our childhood, how lucky we were to have Margie and Frank O'Sullivan as our parents, and how much our cousins missed him at the family reunion on the Cape. David loved swimming with them in the ocean and tossing a ball back and forth in the waves.

I bellyache about how the world we grew up in seems to be disappearing and how upset I am that he disappeared, too.

He listens patiently.

Then I tell him how much I miss him. How much I love him. But most of all, I tell him that wherever he is, I hope it’s awesome.

My mother always introduced me to her friends as “a handful.”

“This is my Meggy. She’s a handful.” Then she’d explain why.

On this particular day, it was because I had carelessly tossed my white tennis sweater on the court beside my racket cover. She shook her head, picked it up, and placed it on the bench.

“She’s always leaving a trail behind her.”

Her tennis friends smiled and laughed—until we started playing the round robin.

Every summer, my mother would volunteer me to “fill in” for any of her friends when they couldn’t make contract time at the courts. Now, not to brag, but I was quite the tennis player in my youth. I was ranked in the juniors, won a few state championships, and even played in college. But in my mother’s eyes, this just meant I had “SUB” permanently stamped on my forehead.

“Oh, Jesse is sick?” I would overhear her say on the phone, and right then, I’d begin changing into my tennis gear. Back then, I dressed like Andrea Jaeger, the 14-year-old tennis phenom. I parted my hair down the middle, wore two ponytails, and sported a striped terry cloth headband.

Headband + braces + freckles = perfection.

Mom would always pair herself with me, proud of my ability to pummel her opponents. But I preferred to slow things down a bit for the older ladies. I would start by gently hitting a soft serve that landed right within reach of Petey’s forehand for a solid return that caused my mother to dump her volley into the net.

My mother turned around immediately.

“What are you doing?” she asked with a stern frown.

“I was being nice. I don’t want to wipe them off the court.”

“Well, I do,” she said, walking toward me with the ball. She always wore her short white tennis dress, with ruffled panties, and sported a soft brown bob that remained perfectly in place, even after a long set.

Then she would speak in a stage whisper that I’m sure the other ladies could hear.

“Now, take this and ace her with a flat serve right up the middle.”

“Okay,” I said back flippantly in my stage whisper. “But you realize they can hear you, right?” I obliged, reluctantly, and aced poor Petey.

“Margie, can I play with Meghan for the next set?” asked Petey.

“Nope. Meghan is filling in for Jesse today, and Jesse plays with me this week. Rules are rules,” she said, throwing the balls to the other side of the net.

Petey just shook her head. It’s no wonder that after she first played with my mother, she marched up to the front desk at the Thoreau Club and declared, “Don’t you ever pair me with that woman again.” They eventually became best of friends.

My mother was very competitive, almost to a fault. After winning the club’s mixed doubles championship with my father, she celebrated by dancing an Irish jig on the coffee table in the clubhouse.

And she was always certain she knew best on the tennis court. One time during a celebrity tennis clinic with Billie Jean King, my mother tried to correct her backhand.

Thankfully, my mother was better behaved at the round robins, where my favorite part of being a sub came after a morning of tennis—lunch!

The ladies would put down their rackets, disappear into the clubhouse, and parade out with curry chicken salad stuffed into fresh croissants, potato salad, muffins, and vegetable dips. It was heaven. I had no idea that homemade food could taste this good.

My mother would emerge with a pitcher of store-bought lemonade.

Cooking was not her strong suit. Mom’s specialty was broiled chicken or hamburger, canned beans, and burnt Minute Rice. Who burns Minute Rice? My mother. And we would always have an iceberg salad drenched in Ken’s Steak House Italian dressing. It’s not that she couldn’t cook; she didn’t have much interest in it. This led most of the O’Sullivan children to learn to cook at an early age.

“Meghan, have some more potato salad,” said Petey, thrilled that I was devouring it with such delight.

“That’s okay, Petey, Meggy’s had enough.”

I glared at her and said, “Says who?” with a mouthful of potato salad.

“Says me. You’re starting to get a belly.” I put my fork down and sipped my lemonade, feeling defeated and self-conscious.

“She is not!” said Petey.

“Well, if she keeps eating like that, she will. Did you know this one quit the Brownies because they didn’t serve brownies?” The ladies all giggled.

“They served graham crackers and juice, mother,” I quipped back. “It was a classic bait and switch!”

Mom had a marvelous way of getting under my skin, but I knew how to fire back. “And don’t worry, Mom, I’ll never get fat eating your ‘gourmet’ meals.” She let out a spirited laugh and threw a grape at my head for being fresh. I skillfully ducked as the grape flew by, not even looking up from my salad. I knew it was coming.

“You’re lucky I love you,” she winked.

“I know,” I said, popping another forkful of potato salad into my mouth.

My mother wasn’t just feisty with me; my siblings got their share of it, too. When my sister was home from college and working a summer job at Stop & Shop, she begged my mother not to come into the store after tennis.

She did anyway.

She would march straight through the automatic doors wearing her short tennis dress and frilly panties, completely unfazed, while my sister died of embarrassment. Then my mother placed her groceries on the checkout counter and, with a big wink and a smile, said loud enough for everyone in the store to hear, “See you at home, Dear.”

As I unpacked the iceberg lettuce, canned beans, and broiler chicken from the brown paper bags at home, I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands. Inspired by the culinary skills of my mother’s friends, I borrowed dozens of Bon Appétit and Gourmet magazines from the local library that summer.

I quickly discovered I loved cooking, which was a treat for my father since he would finally get to enjoy a meal or two that actually followed a recipe. But my mother’s “belly” prediction was right, and that year, thanks to pasta, butter, and chocolate chip cookies, we all began to thicken a bit around our middles as my mother described it.

That’s when Mom enrolled me in Weight Watchers.

Every Tuesday night at seven o'clock on the third floor of the Howard Johnson’s Motel in Concord, my mother and I would stand with our little passport books to get stamped and weighed in like prize pigs.

“If you freeze the grapes, you won’t eat as many,” the lady with the annoying voice would say. “Be wary of bites, licks, and tastes, ladies; everything adds up.” The older women would nod in agreement as they tended to their knitting and needlepoint.

I would roll my eyes at my mother, and she would wink back and point to the exit. We would then sneak across the parking lot to the hotel’s restaurant for hot fudge sundaes.

“Now is the best time to cheat,” Mom would always say, while shoveling a spoon of ice cream and hot fudge into her mouth. “Do it right after the weigh-in. But then we have to be good the rest of the week.”

I nodded with delight.

She was a walking contradiction. Pick up after yourself, watch your weight, but by all means, misbehave.

How I loved my mother’s mischief.

I think we all know who the real handful was.

And boy, do I miss her.

As long as I can remember, my parents saved letters. The letters they kept almost always held evidence of love, relationships, and important moments.

I cherish the letters my grandparents sent to my father while he was at boarding school in the 1930s and the ones my father sent home during World War II. I love reading the notes my grandmother sent to my mother in the 1960s. They were always signed, “Love, Mother.” I still wonder if that was simply the convention at the time or whether it revealed the temperature of their relationship. Maybe it was both.

I’m deeply moved by the note Robert F. Kennedy sent to my mother, thanking her for helping sort through the sympathy letters sent to his family following his brother’s assassination.

Sometimes, my parents held onto lighter things, like the devilish little notes my brothers, sister, and I left for each other around the house.

“Laurie, I hate you and you better shut up.”

My mother even annotated it: David to Laurie—1st grade. Apparently, sibling rivalry was worth saving too. It couldn’t have been for his spelling or penmanship.

But there is one letter I have come across more times than I can count. I can never discard it, probably because my parents couldn’t either.

It’s from an American soldier stationed in Da Nang, Vietnam, thanking them for a care package they had sent him. The letter is dated September 22, 1967. In the bottom left-hand corner of the stationery is a small map of Vietnam and the word “me” written beside an arrow pointing to his location.

It starts out with:

“Hi Folks, Well I received that package today. Thank you so much. Everything in that package is great. I can use the blades because I just ran out of blades. They’re my brand also. The bandaids are good for my blisters. The candy and treats tasted fabulous. The cold aids will help during monsoon season, which will start soon. It’s so great to know that there are people nice like you who care and remember us over here.”

He then explained his role in his unit.

“I am an arty F.O. I call in the artillery when it’s needed. So, I have quite an interesting job. But I’m glad I’m doing my part over here. I know that I’m doing my job for America’s Freedom. I’m so glad that the war is here and not back in the states.”

There is no last name. No return envelope. Just his signature. “Love, Dick.”

Every time I hold the letter, I can’t help but wonder: Did Dick ever make it home?

When I showed it to my husband Cary, he became curious and tried to research soldiers stationed in the area. But after reaching out to Facebook groups and military forums, he learned that an artillery forward observer had one of the highest casualty rates in Vietnam.

So I began searching The Virtual Wall, an online Vietnam War memorial, for any Richards from Massachusetts who died between 1967 and 1968 and served in the same region and role mentioned in the letter. I found a young man from Lowell named Richard, who disappeared in the Thu Bon River during a combat operation in 1968. It was the right location, role, and timeframe. But I can’t be certain it was him.

There’s so much I’ll never know about this young soldier. But one thing is certain—Dick was in love.

“I’ll be glad when my part is over and I can come home to my country, friends, relatives and the wonderful girl of mine. I’ll be so glad to be back with her.”

That last line moves me every time.

Then I think about my parents. At the time they sent the care package, they had two boys under the age of twelve, had just adopted my sister Laurie at the age of three. They had also just learned they were pregnant with me, but they still took the time to send a little comfort halfway across the world to someone they had never met.

Their compassion and tenderness continue to move me. So does their decision to keep his letter.

Among the piles of letters and notes from parents, politicians, and children, they kept it. He clearly mattered to them, and now, he matters to me.

I don’t know how Dick’s story ended. All I know is that his letter survived, and because of my parents, I like to think a small piece of him did too.

It’s my mother’s Lanz nightgown.

I take it out of the closet and place it on my bed. I brush my hand over the soft flannel fabric and lace collar. I love its playful stripes and delicate patterns. But despite my attachment to it, it never automatically stays. There’s always a moment of contemplation. Should I still keep it?

My husband glances over. “Ah, your mother’s nightgown.”

“You don’t understand,” I say.

I walk back to the closet and pull out everything I haven’t worn in a year, placing it on the bed beside it. Eventually, almost everything makes it into the donation bag.

Except for the nightgown.

I pick it up and hold it. I press it against my face. The scent is faint, but familiar. Maybe it’s the cedar-lined dresser where she kept it. But that scent was hers too, so it feels like she’s still here.

My favorite memories of her wearing it are from my mid-thirties, after I moved back home to Concord. In the mornings, I would stop by on my way to work with a Dunkin’ coffee and a cruller. I would call up to her bedroom, “Hi, Mom!” Minutes later, she would magically appear in the kitchen in her Lanz.

We’d sit and talk at the kitchen table—laughing, and sometimes crying too. I’d ask for her advice as I navigated that new chapter of my life.

“What if I never find someone, Mom? What if I’m alone forever?” I asked, breaking off a piece of her cruller.

“Oh, brother. Why do you always have to be so melodramatic?” she said, smiling as she sipped her coffee, one leg crossed over the other, her bare foot dangling beneath the hem of the nightgown.

She was right.

A few years later, I remarried.

Then a few years after that, I lost my mother—and with her, all the conversations we would never have.

As we began clearing out her house, I never once thought, I need to find her nightgown. There was no mad dash to her dresser. No tug-of-war between my sister and me when we found it. My sister just smiled at my request to keep it.

“Sure, you can have it,” she said, shrugging it off.

So I slipped it into my bag.

My mother’s nightgown has never made it into the category of things I can let go of. But once, it came close. I don’t remember why I placed it in the donation bag. It stayed there for the rest of the day, until my husband came upstairs to take it out to my car.

“Wait!” I shouted.

I found myself on my knees, rummaging through the black Glad bag in a panic. I pulled out the nightgown and held it close.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

I looked at my husband. “I’m not ready yet.”

I stood up and carried it back to the closet. “Maybe next year,” I said, setting it back in its place.

Later, while driving to Goodwill, I kept thinking about why I still held on to it. What would she think? I recalled the conversation we had the morning I drove her to Boston for open-heart surgery.

“You know, Meggy, we’re very close,” she said. “Sometimes I think too close.”

“I know, Mom.”

“So, I want you to promise me, if anything happens to me…”

“Stop. Nothing is going to happen.”

“You know what I’m trying to say,” she said, her voice firm. She paused. “Just don’t overdo it.”

“You mean don’t fall apart.”

“Yes.”

I smiled, remembering how well my mother understood me. Would she think keeping her nightgown was overdoing it? Probably.

In a moment of defiance, I pulled into Dunkin’. At home, I sat at the kitchen table, opened the bag and took out the coffee and cruller. I took a sip and broke off a piece, just as I had done so many times before.

I sat there, waiting for her to reappear.

She didn’t.

But I could hear her voice.

“Meggy, why on earth do you still have my Lanz nightgown?”

Today I saw an anomaly. Well, first I heard it. I honestly thought it was a pack of coyotes in my yard, but when I opened my window, I realized it was children. Then one by one they appeared as they flew past my house on their bikes. One, two, three, four… wow… five, six, seven… oh, wait, one more, eight. Eight kids pedaling down School Street to the playground. My heart leapt. I haven’t seen kids on bikes in our neighborhood in what feels like seventeen years. Sure, that’s a random number. But so are eight kids on bikes!

Naturally, seeing kids playing outside draws me back to the nostalgia of my 1970s childhood. Sure, it wasn’t perfect—we grew up against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the fight for equal rights. But growing up in a small New England town, when childhoods still played out in neighborhoods, mine came pretty close.

My brother David and I always agreed those years seemed to float above all the others. They were light, carefree, and weightless.

Maybe I’m just remembering the feeling I had flying down Tarbell Spring Road on my bike, my arms stretched wide, the wind blowing through my hair. Or leaping down the front steps to catch the ice cream man, as I clutched a handful of sticky, lint-covered change I’d collected from couches and coat pockets. Maybe it’s that our days weren’t planned or structured in any real way. Maybe it was because I was ten.

Back then, all you had to do was step outside and games would unfold across front lawns and in the street—Red Light, Green Light, Red Rover, kickball, Wiffle ball. Activities were chosen and organized by us, not the adults. And everyone was welcome to play, even the weird kids. Sure, they got picked last, but they’d always get a supportive pat on the back as they made their way over to the team that finally picked them. Let’s face it, we were all a little weird.

We made up our own rules. If a fight broke out, we learned to resolve any grievances and injustices on our own. Parents might listen from an open door after they heard the screaming, but they didn’t interfere. They would question us at dinner and nod approvingly if we handled it well, suggest another approach for next time, or make that embarrassing phone call for us to apologize.

Neighborhoods gave us real-world experience. Together, we were building the skills for life, and we didn’t even know it.

And maybe that’s why seeing those kids on their bikes delighted me so much. Today children’s activities are usually planned by schools, programs, and parents. But this—this was clearly spontaneous. Watching them sail down—wait, School Street? Without parents? That’s a dangerous, winding road with speeding seniors in Subarus.

Hold on...

Okay, they’re safe.

But remember that? The spontaneity?

Our house had an open-door policy of kids in the neighborhood, randomly stopping by.

On Saturday mornings, Mrs. Hopkins would call my mother, “Is she there?”

“Is who here?” my mother said jokingly, sipping her coffee. My mother knew perfectly well who she was referring to.

“Becky!” she said emphatically.

My mother would then untangle herself from the long, spiral telephone cord and shuffle in her worn-out slippers and Lanz nightgown to the family room. And sure enough, there was Becky, our six-year-old neighbor, sitting on our couch in her pajamas, clutching her Mrs. Beasley doll, watching cartoons. Completely unbothered. Completely unsupervised. Just… there.

“She’s here, do you want me to send her home or feed her breakfast?” And there we all were, sitting at the kitchen table, Becky included, eating Rice Krispies with milk and bananas, my father flipping through the morning paper, completely unfazed.

Parents were just the steady backdrop of our lives back then. If I said, “Mom, I’m bored,” she’d say, “You have a dozen toys and friends up the street. Figure it out.”

And we did.

When we discovered the excitement of using the doorbell, we rang them incessantly at each other’s houses. When it rang at ours, I would wait behind my mother to see who it was. Yes, it’s my friend Marina! She’s here to pose the all-important question: “Can Meghan come out and play?” Before my mother could even give an answer, I’d squeeze through the barely opened door and wiggle my way outside.

“Bye, Mom,” I would shout, hopping with two feet down each of the twelve back steps.

Who needed adults when we had a gaggle of kids to play with?

Greg, Mark, Rob, and Phil aren’t in the photo because they were breaking into our clubhouse. Yeah, we know it was you.

Back then, we relied on our parents for sandwiches, hugs, and rides to White’s Pond.

But who needed rides when we had our bikes?

Our bicycles were everything. We performed acrobatics on them, sailed down the streets with our arms by our sides, shouting to our friends, “Look, no hands!” Eventually our bikes carried us to friends’ houses a little farther away, newspaper routes, and the 5&10—just far enough from parental supervision so we could try adulthood on for size. If we got banged up, a neighbor’s mom would slap a Band-Aid on our knee and then we would run off again.

We practiced adulthood in other ways too. Babysitting, lawn mowing, plant watering. Or my favorite—retail.

On weekends, my sister and I would set up a lemonade stand at the end of our driveway. We used one of our mother’s bridge tables and sat patiently in lawn chairs, reading Nancy Drew books and listening to Linda Ronstadt belt out songs on the family’s beat-up transistor radio. Every so often, we paused to pour lemonade into paper cups for the thirsty fathers taking a break from mowing their lawns with push mowers. Other kids in the neighborhood would scrounge up enough coins to support us, then ride off on their bikes, one hand on the handlebars, the other gripping their sticky cups of lemonade as they coasted down the hill.

That was the rhythm of life in our 1970s neighborhood—our little corner of the world, warm, human, and wonderful.

I’m so glad I got to see those eight kids on their bikes today. They were out on an adventure. And I hope, in that moment, they felt light, carefree, and weightless.

Look, no hands!

Even our kitchen reflected Concord’s place in history. My mother created a mural on our wall. It was a sweeping pastel depiction of the battle at the Old North Bridge, with the Minutemen facing off against the Redcoats. At the base, gently drawn into the sandy foreground, were the names of each of her children, as if we, too, were part of the story. Back then, it felt like we were.

I remember all those Patriots’ Day celebrations well. But attending them these days feels different.

The town looks familiar, but all the familiar faces are gone.

It’s a surprising feeling—to be homesick in the town where you grew up. I live in Carlisle now, right next door to Concord. But I still spend much of my time there, shopping, going to church, taking long walks. And yet, it just doesn’t feel like mine anymore.

The first time I felt it was after my father died. He was woven into the fabric of the town, serving on multiple committees and town boards. He knew everyone. After he died, every place I went felt empty, until all the stories started showing up. People would share how he helped them solve a problem, find a job, or simply made them laugh aloud. For years, those stories sustained me until the people who could tell them started to disappear too. They either moved away or passed on.

Years later, the homesickness returned when my mother died. Occasionally I would run into one of her friends. I’d get a funny “mom” story, a hug, sometimes a wink at the adjacent checkout counter. Many of her friends were younger, so for a while they were still around. But eventually I recognized more people in the obituaries than I did downtown.

That’s when I started relying on planned get-togethers or Facebook to stay connected to people from my childhood. I’d post a picture from a walk at the Old North Bridge, and the memories would arrive there instead. I would get a comment, a message, a like. It helped, but it wasn’t the same as having a random conversation outside the Cheese Shop.

As the faces disappeared, places soon became just as important to me as people. I still feel like I’m visiting an old friend when I stop by Helen’s (formerly Brigham’s), the hardware store, or the Concord Bookshop. When my sister was still alive, I would drive by the old Country Store and call her to reminisce about how our father used to take us there on Saturdays to get penny candy.

Any kid growing up in Concord back then knew the place. It was a rite of passage, a memory you carried with you long into adulthood. I would climb onto an old wooden stool to admire the candy in the clear glass jars. Mrs. Nichols—a fragile older woman with a white shock of hair and the patience of a saint—would click her hand counter as we carefully made our selections.

“I’ll have one of these,” I would say, pointing to a Tootsie Roll.

“And one of those,” pointing to a candy necklace, watching carefully as she deposited it into a small paper bag.

We would leap down the two creaky wooden steps outside and run to the car with a gob of something sticky and sweet already lodged in our mouths.

But I can’t call my sister anymore. I couldn’t share my disappointment when the new owners of the Country Store painted it gray.

“It’s an art gallery now.” I’d tell her in an imagined conversation.

“They also painted the Colonial Inn yellow.”

I know exactly what she’d say: “Blasphemy.”

We would laugh.

The store where we once shopped for perfume, nightgowns, and makeup is now gone. Snow’s Pharmacy, which became the Concord Toy Shop, is now a high-end candy store. Congratulations—you can now spend four hundred dollars on a few bags of chocolate-covered nuts.

On occasion I drive by my childhood home. We sold it years ago, but it still felt like ours in some way. I drove down Tarbell Spring Road, the same way I’d raced down it hundreds of times on my sled as a kid.

And that’s when I saw it.

The new owners remodeled the front completely. The brick facade was gone. There was a new arch over the door. The trees and beds where my father once planted hundreds of impatiens were gone too.

I sat in the car and stared at it like I was on some kind of stakeout. I called my brother David.

“We’ve been erased.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I’m outside Mom and Dad’s house. It’s not our house anymore. The brick is gone and all of the trees.”

“Hmmm,” he said. “How does the rest of the neighborhood look?”

“The same,” I said. “Just worn down a bit. I guess the houses have aged, just like us.”

“Meg, that’s life. Things change. It’s not singling you out.”

I didn’t want to hear that. But I knew he was right.

I know I should embrace the changes rather than resist them.

Instead, I find myself resigned to them. I had my first swimming lesson at Walden Pond—and now, apparently, I have to share it with Don Henley. I spend more time visiting with family at Sleepy Hollow than with those above ground. When I walk through the downtown, I’m often among strangers now.

Last year, at the 250th anniversary of the battle of Lexington and Concord, I stood among people new to the community, and children new to the world. I watched them make their own memories as I recalled mine.

I remembered how in 1975, thousands of people, including President Ford, descended upon the town for the Bicentennial to honor that historic day. And for me, the celebration was grander than ever—not because of the crowds or the President, but because my father and sister were marching in the parade of the century.

But as I watched last year’s celebration, I felt like a ghost moving through the crowd. I was just a silent observer. Suddenly, someone standing next to me says, “What a great parade!”

Startled, I nod. “It’s a beautiful day for a parade,” I say.

I refrain from telling him that it’s a fraction of the size it was in 1975.

Then I do what I’ve done for years. I search the crowd for familiar faces. And that’s when I see them.

I see my sister at age eleven, marching in her Girl Scout uniform, badges on full display as she passes. I see my mother across the street waving me over to the perfect spot she’s found. I see my father standing on the lawn of the bank, smoking a cigar, holding court with fellow town officials. I see my childhood classmates sitting on the curb, clutching small paper bags of penny candy. I see my brother and his friends fly by on their bikes. And for a moment they’re all still here.

I smile and keep walking through the crowd.

Patriots’ Day, Concord, 1975.

It’s Easter weekend, and I find myself thinking about all the times I dressed up for Easter Sunday when I was a kid.

I can remember the darling little dresses made from tulle, chiffon, and lace, the Easter bonnets, white tights, and Mary Jane shoes. It was the only time my mother splurged on clothes. She bought all our dresses for special occasions at Kussin’s in Concord—now Fritz & Gigi’s. My parents would gather us on the back deck for photos. Why all our family photos were taken there is beyond me, but that was our routine. At least until the awkward teen years.

My wardrobe in my teen years was, well, limited. When it came to back-to-school clothes, my brothers, sister, and I each got two pairs of pants, two shirts, and a pair of shoes. We usually bought them at Marshalls or the Maynard Outdoor Store. Occasionally, I ran into classmates who were just as embarrassed to be seen shopping there instead of the mall.

By the 1980s, Concord had shifted from its middle-class roots into a haven for wealthy tech executives. Many of the new kids had different-colored Nikes for every day of the week, spent spring break at Disney, and had their hair styled on Newbury Street in Boston. They shopped at Benetton and Bloomingdale’s. Of course they did.

So, with my limited wardrobe, I resorted to raiding my sister’s closet, my mother’s closet, even my father’s, cobbling together looks I would see in magazines and John Hughes movies. One morning, I bounced downstairs in one of my father’s button-down shirts, ripped jeans, and mousse-spiked Molly Ringwald hair.

My mother pushed her glasses down her nose, peered over them, and said, “Oh, is that what you’re wearing?”

And that’s all it took. I turned around and trudged back upstairs to change into one of the outfits she had picked out at Marshalls.

And forget about dressing stylishly for the holidays during your teen years, especially at Easter. For some reason, it always snuck up on my family, even though we participated in Holy Week. It was as if we were surprised by the sudden arrival of Easter Sunday.

Late Saturday, my sister and I would be in a panic, trying on skirts that no longer fit, pants that were too wrinkled, blouses that just… ugh. And I could never find anything pink or spring-like.

So, I foraged into my mother’s closet to find something. When I tried on my mother’s pale pink chiffon dress, I looked like a linebacker. It had big shoulder pads, was roomy up top, and fell just below the knee.

But hey, it was pink, so it would do.

I slipped on my penny loafers and stared at the alarming ensemble in the mirror.

Without hesitation, my mother—like a stagehand—approached me, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and her white pumps in the other. They were an older pair, slightly scuffed, but fine.

Problem solved. I had my outfit.

When Sunday morning arrived, I got out of the shower and pulled out a pair of pantyhose. I sat on the edge of my bed to put them on. Of course they ripped. I grabbed another pair. Those were pre-ripped. My mother and sister were having the same problem, discarding pair after pair on my mother’s bed.

My poor father had to run down to the local pharmacy (the only place open) and pick up some L’eggs pantyhose, which, coincidentally, are sold in large plastic egg containers. He returned with two nude pairs and one tan.

Guess who got the tan?

When I arrived at church, sweaty-palmed and anxious, I found I wasn’t alone in my plight. There were at least three other girls who were in their mothers’ dresses and one girl in pumps two sizes too big. We were all going through our awkward teen years. But I still felt like the odd duck that Easter. There I was: short hair, freckles, pasty white skin up top, dark tan legs below, my feet squeezed into white pumps, with spring grass clippings on the bottoms.

Happy Easter!

I was never happier to get home and change. It’s probably why I don’t dress for the holidays anymore. I mean, I do—but not like I used to. I don’t think anyone really wears Easter dresses now, except for little girls.

Still, I’m already obsessed with looking at fancy dresses for our newest spring arrival—my sister’s granddaughter, Claire Lauren Rivers. She’s the only granddaughter on both sides of the family, so this Easter, we’ll all be buzzing around her like bees to honey. She won’t be short on dresses.

In the meantime, on Easter Sunday, I’ll put on my Eileen Fisher pants and wear a pink poncho over a T-shirt. No pantyhose. No frills. Just a little lipstick.

And as I stand in front of the mirror for a final glance, I’ll inevitably hear my mother say, “Oh, is that what you’re wearing?”

And I’ll answer her,

“Yes.”

Note: This is dedicated to my sister Laurie, who suffered through the awkward years with me, and my brother David, who did the best impersonation of my mother saying, “Oh, is that what you’re wearing?” It cracked me up every time. I miss you both.

It’s my First Communion dress.

Like my faith, this dress has lived with me for a long time — over fifty years, in fact. I kept it in case I had a daughter who might wear it someday. Now I hold onto it because it marks a precious moment in time, that short window of childhood when everyone you loved was within arm’s reach, your world was still intact, and faith came so easily.

During the Lenten season, many Catholics will check in on their faith to see where it needs mending. The truth is, I check in on mine every time I open that closet door. It stares back at me with questions.

Remember me? When was the last time you went to church? How about that novena you were going to say?

The dress isn’t judging me. It’s just gently reminding me: “I’m still here.”

The dress originally belonged to my sister Laurie. I can still see her wearing it like a bride on her wedding day. She wore a veil with hers, which we must have misplaced, because when it was my turn to wear the dress four years later, I wore a ring of daisies on my head instead. I looked like I had just returned from Woodstock.

I remember how the dress felt. It was so delicate and rigid, I was afraid I would rip it if I raised my arms. And I especially remember this: it itched.

Despite the mild discomfort, the excitement of the day took hold. As I walked down the aisle to receive the Holy Eucharist for the first time, I felt nervous. I didn’t want to forget my line. “Amen, Amen,” I whispered to myself as I waited patiently for my moment.

After the ceremony, we piled into the Church basement at Our Lady’s in Concord for coffee and donuts. I remember all the proud families filling the room, taking photos. First Communion was a big occasion for an Irish Catholic kid in the 1970s. It was a rite of passage, something our parents and extended family treated as sacred — so we did too.

Back then, faith was routine. Sundays were always reserved for church and family. Our father would stuff all four children into the car and take us to the 11:30 folk Mass, where there would be guitar music, tambourines, singing, and clapping. I was blissfully unaware that not all Catholic parishes allowed such celebration. It also didn’t hurt that our pastor had kind eyes, dark hair, and a beard. Why wouldn’t my faith be strong? I hadn’t just learned about Jesus. I’d met him.

As I grew older, faith didn’t come as easily.

Like many people, I questioned suffering, loss, grief, cruelty, and the unfairness of the world. And I still struggle with all of the “whys.”

This past year, however, I began to look at faith a little differently. It happened right after I discovered the immigration story of my great-great-grandmothers, Bridget and Catherine Whalen, who at ages nineteen and seventeen made the treacherous journey from Ireland to America.

They didn’t arrive on a large steamship. There were no family members waving white handkerchiefs for their arrival at Ellis Island — it hadn’t been built yet. They arrived instead on a crowded sailing ship bound for Boston in 1850. They had witnessed the horrors of famine, left their family and home behind, and endured an eight-week journey in the cramped, unsanitary quarters of steerage.

They stepped off that ship with nothing in their hands but each other’s.

That took more than courage. That took faith.

So on the days when my faith wavers, I stay faithful to honor theirs.

Today that little dress doesn’t just connect me to moments of my own childhood. It gives me a sense of belonging to something greater. It reminds me that faith is a thread passed down through generations — one that will always run through me, even on the days it feels frayed, worn, or fragile. Although my faith has changed over the years, it remains meaningful, even if at times it’s tucked away. And like the dress itself, I’ve decided to keep it.

Right then I knew I was destined to be a keeper — a collector of artifacts and stories.

I should clarify that I’m not a hoarder. I donate my unwanted clothes to Goodwill, throw out receipts and random pieces of paper that accumulate in pockets and drawers, and make a habit of bringing lightly used board games, dishes and garden tools to our local swap shed.

But I do have boxes and boxes of photos, old wedding invitations, college term papers, playbills and children’s drawings. I have dozens of telegrams, postcards and birthday cards from family members long gone. I have stacks of handwritten letters from high school and college friends; page after page of long updates about nothing.

Over time, I’ve set clear boundaries between what I keep and what I let go. Whenever possible, I send old letters and cards back to the sender, who often replies with a text or voicemail to say, “Wow, not much has changed,” or “Wow, everything has changed.” Cards from strangers, photos of people I’ll never know and items with no emotional connection, I part with.

What remains gets organized into something tangible the next generation can understand and access. This past year, I’ve scanned, categorized, annotated and stored all the items that have historic significance, that make me laugh, and that document our family’s history and our love.

Nothing is buried anymore. Nothing is lost.

I have a piece of paper with my grandmother’s handwriting tracking where each of her sons were during World War II. And I have the letters my father sent home from the U.S. Naval hospital in Corona, California, where he served in 1944. You can feel the worry on the page when he asks his parents about his brothers’ whereabouts. If Billy is in India, do you know how long? Still no word from John?

In a letter to his sister Katherine, my father focused on the familiar terrain of home, commenting about his youngest brother, I’ll bet Paul is excited that the Red Sox are almost in first place. And then a postscript: Have we got a dog yet? He was just 18. Of course, he was excited about the Red Sox and getting a dog. He was still half anchored in childhood. The letter is a poignant reminder of a young life interrupted by war.

I’ve kept the sashes from my sister Laurie’s Brownie and Girl Scout uniforms. They hold dozens of neatly sewn badges, her little circles of accomplishments. I kept them because she kept them. I found them after she died in her 40s, still neatly folded in a box in her basement. I can still remember the pride I felt watching her march in the Patriots’ Day parade in Concord in 1975, when we celebrated the bicentennial. Thousands descended upon our small town, including President Ford. I waved at her wildly as she marched by and raised a fife to her mouth to play “Yankee Doodle.” I thought my sister was famous. She was 11.

I have a 1977 Boston Pops playbill that my mother saved. It features Arthur Fiedler on the cover. I have my parents’ polio vaccine records, the bank book from their first mortgage and a 1954 job offer letter for my father from Smith, Kline and French Laboratories for a position paying $4,750 a year.

The things I keep tell stories that I won’t be able to tell when I’m gone, too. They reveal what was important to the people who came before us — a concert they loved, a job offer they were proud of, a milestone they celebrated, like buying a home.

Holding on to these objects is my way of keeping everyone here just a little bit longer. I hope they don’t mind.

My hope is that someday, when a niece or nephew spends time with an old photo of my mother caught mid-laugh, they’ll laugh too. I hope they read a handwritten letter from a relative they’ve never met and delight in the ‘aha’ moment and say, “So that’s where I get that from.” I hope they feel inspired and motivated when they read the newspaper articles about my father’s role in town government or my mother’s volunteer work and choose to participate in the world at a time when it can feel easier to step away from it.

And, I hope that these artifacts will comfort them even in the throes of profound loss. The way they’ve comforted me in my own grief.

This past summer, my brother David died suddenly at the age of 63, and I’m heartbroken. We spoke every day. When I told him I was documenting our family history, he was thrilled. He would stop by and look at old family photos with me. Now, on the days I can’t stand the emptiness, I immerse myself in the family archives — the very things he adored, too.

My friends ask me how I’m coping with all the loss, and I tell them about my relics and the family archive, the things that keep me tethered. I tell them what I’ve learned. That life isn’t about what we lose; it’s about what we keep. And I keep all the stories — and all the love — others left behind.

This essay was recently published in Cognoscenti, the ideas and opinion section of Boston’s NPR station, WBUR . I’m grateful to the editors there for giving this piece a home.

For those of you who haven’t met my Uncle Paul, he’s a gem. I enjoy introducing him as my father’s “baby brother” because it makes me laugh since he’s ninety-one.

Uncle Paul is a rescuer. He rescues people, animals, and anyone he considers an underdog. And speaking of dogs, he loves them too. We’re a dog family.

Cats, on the other hand, are another story. Although they’re cute, cats can be mean, manipulative, and dangerous if they scratch or bite. I’m also fairly certain they account for one-third of all the homicides in the U.S. No one ever questions the cat, but they should.

So, you can imagine my uneasiness two nights ago when I got this call from Uncle Paul.

Me: Hi, is everything okay?

Paul: No, not really.

Me: What’s up?

Paul: Well, there was a cat outside my sliding glass door. He was crying, so I opened the door and let him in. Now I can’t find him.

Me: Well, shit.

Paul: Yeah.

Me: Okay, whatever you do, don’t pet him. Cats can get nervous and scratch and bite if they don’t know you.

Paul: Okay, but I already pet him. He seemed okay.

Me: What?!! Well, don’t pet him—not until we know if he’s domesticated. Did he have a collar?

Paul: No.

Me: (Pause) Are you sure it’s a cat?

Paul: (Laughing hysterically) Yes, it’s a cat.

Me: Okay, stay put. Don’t corner the cat. Don’t look for the cat. And seriously, don’t pet the cat.

I grabbed my coat, a few dog bowls, and my keys. My husband Cary shouted at me on my way out, “Don’t pet the cat!”

Me: I’m not going to pet the cat. I’m going to find the cat.

I went to the store and bought cat food and kitty litter to make a makeshift litterbox using an old plastic storage bin. I arrived carrying my stash of stuff, like a college kid coming home to do laundry. I slid open his door with a free finger.

Me: Hi, any response from the community? (His neighbor had posted an all-points bulletin to the apartment community.)

Paul: No. And I still can’t find the cat. Maybe he snuck out behind me when the door opened. Maybe he’s not even here anymore. Now I feel foolish.

So, I conducted my search and rescue, confident I would find him. But still — no cat.

Paul: I don’t know what to do at this point. Maybe I’m losing my mind.

He leaned back in his recliner and pressed the button to raise his feet. That’s when I saw the black-and-white fur emerge as the couch opened up its gaping mouth. It was like Jonah and the whale. Only the couch was the whale; Jonah was the cat.

Me: Oh, my God! It’s the cat! Don’t move!

Paul froze – mid recline.

The cat screamed.

I screamed.

I opened the sliding door and out went the cat.

Me: Oh, thank God.

I looked over at Paul, who looked worried.

Paul: Why did you let him out?

Me: Well, isn’t that what we wanted? We wanted him to go home, right? So we avoid rabies, sepsis, and a potential murder?

Paul was not amused. Now I’m convinced I’m the worst person on the planet. And Uncle Paul’s face confirmed that too. I watched as the cat tried to figure things out. It took shelter under my car and then a neighbor’s car.

“Oh, shit,” I thought. “The cat doesn’t know where home is.”

I flagged down some neighbors outside. They were young people who could crawl under things. Yay — we’re rescued! They took one look under the car and suggested I call animal control. Thanks for the help, my fine young millennials.

I called animal control and listened to the operator’s sighs as she took down my information. Five minutes later, she called back.

Animal Control: I know you just got the cat outside, but can you get it back inside? We found the owner. They’re coming over.

Okay, at this point I’m wondering, “Am I on TV?” Because it definitely feels like a prank now. Plus I had an eerie feeling I was being watched. And I was—by the cat, who was now staring at me from outside the sliding glass door. He was not amused.

I put some wet food outside to rebuild trust. He approached cautiously and gobbled it up. Then Paul opened the door and I put a plate of dry food inside. The cat tiptoed in and ate that plate too. Paul shut the door behind him, but the cat got spooked and ran behind a chair before coming back out to investigate.

Me: Don’t move, Uncle Paul. And whatever you do, don’t pet the cat.

He did. He pet the cat. And then smiled at me rebelliously.

I shook my head.

Then I looked the cat square in the eyes and spoke calmly.

Me: Look, you be a good kitty. We found your mom. She’s coming. So, no funny business.

The Cat: Fine. Just don’t make any sudden moves and nobody gets hurt. Got it?

Me: Got it.

Ten minutes later, the cat’s mother arrived. We found out his name was Oli — short for Oliver. He was picked up and snuggled, cuddled, and kissed. He was a mama’s boy. We locked eyes. He looked at me not with embarrassment, but with pure entitlement.

Oli: You really could have handled this better, you know.

Me: I know, Oli. I’m sorry.

Oli: We cool now?

Me: Yeah, Oli, we’re cool.

And so, Oliver was fed, saved, and reunited with his family.

Uncle Paul survived without a cat bite, rabies, or a future surprise under his recliner.

And I got a good story.

As I drove home, I felt tired and yet oddly rewarded. And as I reflected on the evening, all I could think was this:

I wish I’d pet the cat.

A note of thanks to my veterinary neighbor, Stan, who helped me navigate and communicate with the cat, and to my sister-in-law Alison, a social worker, who helped me communicate with Paul—even though he still pet the fucking cat.

Holding this charming antique reminds me how important home movies were to past generations. Cameras were an investment, film was expensive, and processing took both time and money. Creating a home movie was a thoughtful and intentional act. It wasn’t spontaneous, the way today’s smartphones capture an endless abundance of videos for easy consumption on Instagram or TikTok. If everything gets recorded, how will future generations know what really mattered?

My grandparents seemed to understand this instinctively. Through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, they carefully decided what would be filmed and what deserved to be remembered: family, place, and a handful of special moments. I am grateful for their restraint and for what they chose to preserve.

Because of them, I have priceless footage of my father as a boy squinting into the sun, smiling the same O’Sullivan smile I would come to know so well.

I have footage of my mother too. The camera was rolling on her wedding day. She is the most darling thing I’ve ever seen on film, carefully walking down the steps of her childhood home in Belmont, then waiting with her father for the car that would take her to St. Joseph’s. I never met my mother’s father, but I met him here.

I have live-action footage of my aunts and uncles in their youth riding horses, sailing over jumps, feeding livestock, chasing their youngest brother, Paul, across the lawn.

I have reels of my grandfather investigating his oil wells in Oklahoma during the 1930s, evidence of the business venture that launched the son of Irish immigrants into a new chapter of prosperity.

I especially adore the footage of my grandmother tending to her gardens in Lincoln. You can feel her pride as she poses in front of her roses. She was the daughter of a farmer, still happiest with her hands in the soil. I also love the easy affection she shows to their Great Dane, Rufus.

I love observing my grandmother and my grandfather in these home films. Beneath their smiles is a quiet wisdom, as if they knew how much these little moments mattered and how quickly they would pass.

I have footage of my Uncle John and Uncle Bill in uniform in the 1940s and a lovely Christmas gathering of the entire family in the 1950s. I love examining the cars, the clothes, and the hairstyles.

These films didn’t just preserve my family’s likenesses, but their quiet hopes, their joys, their very human uncertainties. As the camera pans over my aunts and uncles in their early twenties and thirties, I notice how they shy away from the intimacy of it. They were private. They had dignity. They didn’t want their entire lives recorded. They just offered us an occasional glimpse, and I’m so glad they did.

I treasure this camera because it captured what mattered most to my grandparents: their family, the life they built, and the quiet memories they left behind.

Happy Birthday, Dad. Today you turn one hundred. Congratulations!

We lost you when you were just seventy-one, but I can still congratulate you. After all, a life doesn’t end when you stop breathing. Your life is still in motion, not just in memory, but in all the ways we still live and love because of you.

Here’s what I love about you, Dad. Always.

I love that you could never tell a joke without laughing through it. The jokes never made us laugh as hard as we did watching you try to tell them.

I love how committed you were to people and causes throughout your life. You were a leader and a joiner, serving on several town boards. You were instrumental in bringing low-income housing to Concord, which is still in use today. Each year, I visit the plaque they dedicated to you.

I love that you were a top salesman because you knew it was never really about selling; it was about relationships and connecting on a human level.

I loved your competitive spirit, whether campaigning for a local candidate, cheering for your beloved Boston Red Sox or BC Eagles, or battling it out on the tennis court. And I loved the Frankie Wall of Shame in the basement, where all your broken tennis rackets lived until retirement.

I loved that you were an exceptional baseball player, and that while you were playing for Boston College, a scout came to convince Grampy to let you play professionally. He warned that if he couldn’t sign Frank O’Sullivan, he would sign another promising player they were also watching in the minors in Vermont: Frank Navilluso. Which, of course, was you—moonlighting for a minor league team with your name spelled backward. You loved baseball that much.

I loved that years later, you still had that magic arm the scouts talked about, using it to hurl transistor radios over the roof of our house whenever the Red Sox or Patriots broke your heart.

I love that you came home early from work to hit pop flies to any kid in the neighborhood standing at the top of the hill with a glove.

I love how you could “zing” anyone at the drop of a hat. Like the time we drove past Mr. Lynch’s house while the Lawn Doctor was there, and you made me roll down my window so you could shout, “Hey Bill, you don’t need a doctor—you need a priest,” then drove off with a honk, leaving Bill laughing in his driveway.

I love that tears streamed down your face outside Mass General while Mom was getting a breast biopsy. It turned out to be nothing. But it was the moment I realized she was your everything.

You loved your family deeply and weren’t afraid to show it, like the moment you burst into tears when your brother Billy’s hearse pulled in front of us for the funeral procession. He was only sixty-one, and your best friend. But in surrendering to your grief, you gave us all permission to join you with ours.

I love how you chauffeured me to countless tennis tournaments, stayed for every match, and always tooted the horn when you dropped me off at school. You thought it would embarrass me, but I loved it.

I love that you took us to the penny candy store in Concord every Saturday. It was so special to us, we called it Penny Candy Day.

I love how you swore you hadn’t gotten into the cookies I baked for school, even though your face was covered in chocolate.

I loved picking blueberries with you and Laurie at Horseshoe Pond, so that Mom could make pie. And I loved that every time it snowed, you made homemade fudge. I can still see you at the sink, a towel over your shoulder, beating the fudge over a cold ice bath.

I love that you adored Christmas and that tacky Santa Claus, which lit up our front steps every year.

I love that you quietly bought coats at Filene’s Basement every winter and donated them to the Pine Street Inn. You kept this your secret for years.

I love that you took me trick-or-treating when I was little. One Halloween, when I was Minnie Mouse, it was so cold you made me wear a coat over my costume, and it looked like I’d been fired by Disney and you were escorting me off the lot. I can still feel my tiny hand in yours.

I loved watching you smoke a cigar and cast a line out from the shores of the Cape, while the wind teased your hair.

I love how you took such tender care of Mom as her vision worsened with age, driving her to her art classes and helping her set up her easel.

I love how you delighted in your grandchildren. You were giddy when you were around them. It was as if you became a kid again yourself, enjoying the toys alongside them.

I love that so many people turned out at your funeral to share stories about how you helped them, quietly and without expecting anything in return. For years, I would hear Frankie stories whenever I ran into someone you knew.

I loved how much you loved our family story. Exploring and reliving it has become one of my greatest joys.

When you died on Thanksgiving Day, it somehow felt appropriate. You were the most giving man I’ve known. I don’t just congratulate you on turning one hundred, Dad. I congratulate you on your life.

You embodied love.

And to borrow the words from our favorite song, “I’ll be loving you, always.”

In a previous post, Merry Christmas, Laurie, I was able to recapture the magic of the holidays by reading my late sister’s journal entry from 1976. I’m so glad I got to relive that Christmas with her. I needed it.

This Christmas wasn’t as joyful as a twelve-year-old’s. It wasn’t joyful for many of us. We were moving through the loss of a brother, a father, a beloved uncle. It wasn’t a season we celebrated so much as one we survived. But we survived it together.

Holding each other in the darkest moments can also be a gift—even when it feels like your insides are on your outsides.

This year, the gifts looked different.

• The warm, reflective smile on my nephew’s face when he opened his String Cheese Incident T-shirt. It was the last concert he went to with his father. They had a blast.

• The gentle care and attention the family took reading through a book titled Dad, filled with dozens of my brother’s photos and artifacts from childhood.

• The quiet joy of having my niece return to the fold, after spending so many holidays away from home. As I stood at the kitchen sink, I caught a glimpse of her passing by out of the corner of my eye, heading to her car to fetch something. For a moment, it felt as if she were eleven again.

• The enormous belly laugh my husband Cary and I shared over the absurdly small Christmas tree we bought this year. It took only twenty minutes to decorate, and we didn’t even need a stool to place the angel on top.

• The anticipation of a new arrival. We all swooned at the thought that our next holiday will include a new family member — my sister’s first grandchild, a little girl arriving in March.

• The gift of laughter, especially when I declared myself a master of felted wool creations—and unveiled my deformed works of art. My nieces laughed so hard and begged to have them and I obliged. Maybe they’ll sit on their desks for years, still making them laugh, even when I’m gone.

  

• The gift of grace and restraint. My instinct was to boost the spirit of my older brother when he arrived, looking so clearly grief stricken over the first Christmas without our brother. Instead, I gave him room to feel exactly what he needed to feel. And it gave me permission to feel my own grief too.

• The gift of phone calls and visits from cousins and friends who reached out to share their sorrow, their love, and their prayers for healing. Thank you.

• And then, a Christmas miracle. My father-in-law came through an emergency quadruple bypass and is already resting at home. In a moment where we thought our world was about to collapse all over again, we were spared. Every time I hear his voice, I am grateful.

And of course, the one gift I keep close at hand year after year, through joy and sorrow—the recipe for homemade Brigham’s hot fudge sauce.

For all you keepers.