The Psychedelic 70s

Remember the 1970s?  The strobe lights and lava lamps?  Fluorescent posters with psychedelic patterns?  Glow in the dark stars pasted on our bedroom ceilings?  Bold yellow smiley faces and stingray bicycles?  Bell bottoms and peasant blouses?  Aviator sunglasses, electric typewriters, and cassette players?  We were glued to the television set watching "All My Children," "Dark Shadows," "Mod Squad," "The Odd Couple," "All In The Family," "The Waltons," "Happy Days," "Kojak," The Rockford Files," "The Brady Bunch," "Eight is Enough," and "Little House on the Prairie."  We had the first "black" sitcom, "Julia," soon to be followed by "Good Times," "What's Happening," and "The Jeffersons."  Farrah Fawcett's poster was taped on every boy's bedroom wall, while the girls "mooned" over Donny Osmond, David Cassidy, and Leif Garrett and listened to songs on the radio by the Jackson Five, the Osmonds, Sonny and Cher, the Carpenters, B. J. Thomas, and Bread.  The decade began with the end of the Beatles and the beginning of their individual careers. This was my era.  This was the backdrop of my teenage years.

When I remember the 1970s, I remember my friends and "hanging out" in basements and bedrooms.  Dreaming of our futures.  Excited to have some independence and branching out to explore new experiences.  Our tight-knit circle of friends, that came to overlap other tight-knit circles of friends, melding and stretching to accommodate the changes within each of us as the years went by and we all grew-up.  First loves, first heartbreaks.  Walking for miles to get to the bowling alley, Nunley's Amusement Park, and to the movies, where we saw "American Graffiti," "Animal House," "The Godfather," "Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Jaws," "Young Frankenstein," and "Live and Let Die."

Then came our first cars that took us "crusin'" on Sunrise Highway and racing against other cars on Ocean Parkway.  Taking a drive to the Long Beach Boardwalk and its arcade and rickety old rides that we thought we'd surely die on. Outdoor movie theaters and what my friends and I called, "a' parkin' and a' sparkin."  Ah, those teenage years!

During this decade the Vietnam War ended, Watergate happened and Richard Nixon resigned, Elvis died and we all cried, Bing Crosby passed away, Patty Hearst was kidnapped, and Son of Sam made us all afraid to sit in a parked car.  Rock and roll moved over for Disco.  We all did "The Hustle" and danced to the Village People's"YMCA."  By the end of the decade we entered our twenties.  Within a few years of its end, my friends started their careers, got married, and began families of their own.

Life changed.

Maybe we can't go back, but it sure was fun reminiscing with you.  Hope you enjoyed it!

                                                                                                       

1970

My 13th Birthday Party 1971

                                             

They're still my best friends 1973 

With our Families on New Years Eve 1976

First Vacation without Parents 1977

The original "Walking Dead":  Night of the Living Dead Party 1979

Nixon came to our Toga Party 1979

We had a '70s Party in 1979

Disco Dancing 1980

Hugs

Lately, my mom has been falling a lot.  I spent Halloween in the emergency room with her.  She lives in an assisted living home and every time she falls, they send her to the hospital by way of an ambulance.  This particular time, she had fallen backwards and hit her head on something.  She had sliced the back of her head open and needed four staples to close it.  During the day, our conversation went something like this.  Mom:  "Go home, I'm all right."  Me:  "No mom, when they're done, I'm going to take you home."  Mom:  "I'm not staying here?"  Me:  "No mom, you fell this morning and hit your head.  You're in the emergency room.  When they're done, you're going home."  Mom:  "I fell?  I don't remember falling?" "Yeah, mom.  I know.  But you fell."  (She touches the back of her head.)  Mom:  "Oh yeah, my head hurts."  Me:  "That's because they put staples in."  Mom:  "Oh, what happened?"  Me: "You fell."  Mom:  "I fell?  I don't remember falling."  Me:  "Yes mom, you fell.  You've been falling a lot lately.  You're 92 years old!  You're lucky you haven't broken anything."  Mom (without missing a beat):  "That's because I'm so close to the ground."  (Mom is a petite woman.)  I smile, because it was funny, and because she said something funny.  Mom has Alzheimer's, so the jokes are far and few between.

A week later, she fell again.  This time I was at a funeral and couldn't meet her in the emergency room, but my younger brother was there.  Her blood sugar was low and she ended up staying in the emergency room from 10 a.m. until a little after 6 p.m.  By the time I got to the hospital, she had already left.  So I rerouted and met her at the assisted living home.  At the end of the day, the aides at the home put all the memory care residents in the "cinema."  The lights are turned down low and an old movie is on a big screen at the front of the room.  One by one, the aides take the residents to their rooms or apartments and get them ready for bed.  Mom was in the cinema when I got there.  She looked up and saw me there.  I said, "Come on mom, I'm going to take you to your apartment."  The woman sitting next to her said, "I wish someone would say that to me.  I wish someone would come and take me away."  My heart went out to her. Memory loss is a terrible and lonely disease.  Back at mom's apartment, I turned the television on and we sat together on her couch.  I put her legs up on an ottoman and I put a blanket over her to keep her warm.  Then I watched her.  She looked so small, so frail.  I put my arms around her and hugged her.  "I love you, mom."  "I love you, too," she replied.

When I was growing up, mom didn't like to be hugged.  She didn't give hugs.  Every night I would politely kiss her good night, but that was as far as the show of affection went between us.  It wasn't just me, mom just didn't like to be touched. I've researched our family tree, and along the way, I have tried to figure out if anything in her childhood made her that way.  From all accounts, her dad was very warm and loving.  I don't remember him because he died when I was a baby.  I do remember her mom and she was not a hugging type of person either.  She was a bit of a trouble maker, actually. Stirring up problems in her old age between my aunt and my, then, teenage cousin whom she lived with.  Grandma did make great scrambled eggs, but other than that, I didn't know her very well.  We spent most of my childhood visiting my dad's family.  Mom told me that Grandma's mother lived with them when she was a little girl.  Her grandmother was afraid of the sound of thunder and every time there was lightening, she would lock herself and my mother in a closet because she was terrified. That must have been frightening for my mom.

Anyway, I suppose the biggest reason I have found for my mom's lack of hugging was her own mom's lack of hugging.

So here I am hugging my mom . . . and she smiles at me, feeling comforted by my hugs.  Maybe, I have been waiting all of my life for the chance to hug her and have her receive that hug without pushing me away.  As a mom, myself, I have never stopped hugging my own kids.  But getting to hug my mom is like filling a life-long hunger.  I tuck the blanket around her and kiss her cheek.  "I love you mom."  She smiles and replies, "Love you too."

Almost Midnight

The house is empty.  The only sound comes from the baseboard.  This is the time of darkness.  Worries that are pushed aside during the busy day . . . return.  Doubts swim up to the surface and  pull me down into the depths of the waters.  But soon I will sleep.  My mind will fill with dreams. Images from the past will mingle with incomprehensible concepts and disjointed settings.  Ideas will flourish through the tangled labyrinth and will give birth to new story-lines.  Breathing life into my characters.  How many of these ideas will have been forgotten before dawn?

Do I hear a sound?  Is it a sound from another frequency?  Perhaps an echo between worlds?  Is that a foot-step on the stairs?  Just the settling of an old house?  The house is empty.  It is almost midnight.  My old companion lies at the foot of my bed, she dreams of running through fields as her paws pump in mid-air.  I whisper her name, she relaxes into silence.  Her existence reassures me, I am not alone.

Turn off the computer, close the light, let the night take over.  For the morning will come and with it the light of a new day.

Road Trip

Sometimes at night, I dream of her, and she is a toddler once again.  Her big brown eyes in her sweet little face look up at me as we walk down the street.  She stops to pick up a pretty leaf, one among many, and places it in her brown paper bag.  I can hear her laugh and listen to her voice as she sings a song.  It has been a long road since then, and much has changed, but those memories and my dreams keep those moments alive for me.

When they first put her in my arms, I studied my baby's face.  I wanted to memorize every bit of her.  I was in awe at the miracle that she was.  I remember my sister telling me that I had so many wonderful moments ahead of me.  And my sister was right.  When my baby went to Kindergarten, I watched her leave me with such confidence and excitement.  She stood then, at the brink of her life and started her walk away from me.  When she became a teenager, I was fortunate to still be included in her life.  Not every mother gets to experience that.  The birthday parties, the Disney sleepovers, the school trips, the tarot card readings, the adventures, the long discussions with her and her friends, all of these, memories along the road.

She left for college and our lives separated.  New technologies allowed me to peek in on her life.  I treasured every picture, every phone call, every text, and then our reunions during the breaks.  She changed.  I changed.  But we met again and again along the road.

While college was within a day's drive, graduate school was further.  We decided to take the road trip across the states together.  Along the way we listened to books on cd's and talked for hours on end.  In Virginia, we saw the magnificence of the Natural Bridge  and the quirkiness of the Star Museum.  In Tennessee, we stopped to see the reproduction of the Parthenon in Nashville and then went on a ghost tour in Franklin. We even stayed in The Heartbreak Hotel in Memphis and saw Elvis' Graceland.  In Mississippi, we visited friends and toured a petrified forest.  At the journey's end, I helped her set up her new home for her new life. And then I left.

But at the end of her first year, I also returned.  We drove back home and along the way stopped to see the beauty of Savannah. We watched dolphins jump out of the water and bought old books in a quaint bookstore.  We stopped at South of the Border, a place I had heard about since I was a little girl but had never seen.  We visited family in Virginia Beach and then saw wild horses on the beaches of Chincoteague.

She wasn't home for long, she spent the summer in the Amazon learning an indigenous language and then returned to her new life by way of a road trip with her father.  She won't be home this Thanksgiving, she will spend it with her new "family," the friends she has made in New Orleans. And so it will continue, her life separate from mine, yet connected by the times we spend together along the road.

From the street outside of our house, to her travels to the ends of the Earth, I will continue to enjoy watching the journey of her life.  She will go to places I will only dream about.  Her road trip may have started with me, but it will continue beyond me.  Even long after I am gone, I will always be there to watch over her and peek in on her adventures.  She is my daughter.  And I feel so lucky to have shared my road with her.

A Family Tree: Mysteries Uncovered

The first time I uncovered a mystery, I had just come home from the hospital (see: "Comas Come With Gifts:  A Case of Misdiagnosis Continued").  I turned on my computer to find an e-mail from a distant cousin named John. This was before Facebook and before I was on Ancestry.com. Communication between relatives was limited to visits, phone calls, letters and e-mails (imagine that!)  At that time, all of my information came from interviewing relatives and the few documents that my mother had in her possession.  This e-mail from John gave me a clue that he and I needed to solve a mystery.

My uncle had told me that his mother, my grandmother, had visited her "cousins" in the 1960's. These "cousins" were John's grandparents.  What I didn't know, was if John's grandparents were her first cousins or more distant cousins.  If they were her first cousins, that meant that John's great-grandfather, Giuseppe Sconzo, and my great-grandmother, Marianna Sconzo Noto (the widow of Antonino Noto, who had died in 1912), were siblings, rather than cousins.  This information is needed in order to properly connect our families while mapping out our family trees.  Accompanying that e-mail was an old photograph of men in top hats from about 1913. It was taken at the wedding of one of Giuseppe's sons.  John had identified most of the men in the picture.  The man who was seated in the first row, furthest to the left, was identified as Agostino Noto, brother of Giuseppe's wife, Francesca Noto.

With the information that John's great-grandmother was a Noto, the picture revealed that Giuseppe and Marianna were siblings. Let me explain, I knew that Agostino Noto was the brother of my deceased great-grandfather, Antonino Noto.  I suddenly remembered a conversation that I had had with my Aunt Mary who had since passed away.  In the conversation, she had told me that a Noto brother and sister had married a Sconzo sister and brother.  So this picture, connecting both families, with the existance of Agostino Noto, seated along with all the Sconzo men, proved that not only was John's great-grandfather, Giuseppe, the brother of my great-grandmother, Marianna, but that John's great-grandmother, Francesca, was also the sister of my great-grandfather, Antonino.

I remember seeing an image in my mind of our ancestors jumping up and down for joy in heaven. They must have been so excited to see that we had finally figured it out.  Finding this connection didn't change any facts, the facts were the same whether if we discovered them or not.  But the satisfaction I felt at having solved this mystery, especially when I had come so close to death and might possibly not have returned home to see this e-mail and photograph, was bordering on euphoric. Let's just say that this discovery hooked me on ancestry research.  Yes, I was already trying to map out the family tree, but at this moment it became more of an obsession than a hobby.  It was 2002 and it was much harder to find information then.  It took years to do what we can now do in minutes.

With the documentation available on-line through censuses, birth, marriage, and death certificates, military records, etc., we can see that, sometimes, family memories are not always accurate.  But piecing the puzzle together with the memories and the documents, combining that information with information gathered by other branches of the family tree that are reunited through Facebook, and most recently, with the ability to document DNA and find family through genetic matching, has propelled the art of mapping the family tree into the stratosphere.

My family tree now includes 2,550 individuals.  Although I enjoy discovering new family members and branches, my most rewarding work ends in not just names, but stories of who they were. When I uncover the mysteries, I uncover the stories, and when I write those stories, our ancestors can "live" for generations to come.

Lessons to Learn

When your child goes to college, there are lessons to learn in the classroom and lessons to learn outside of the classroom.  What do you do when your child calls you from college and tells you that something is wrong?  This is the child you used to tuck into bed at night, the child you cared for and loved, the child you would give your life for, and yet, now he isn't a child anymore and he's living too far away for your to reach him in an instant.  I know, it's part of letting go for us, and part of growing up for them.  They need to learn what to do on their own if there is an emergency or a problem.  Sometimes they need to learn consequences and/or the fact that life is not always fair.  And sometimes they need to learn how to take care of themselves, even if that has been your job for the past eighteen years.

When my son called me the other night and told me he wasn't feeling well and that there were indications that something was wrong with his health, my head, and my heart, starting spinning.  It was at night and on a weekend, so I doubted if the clinic on campus was open, but I knew he should seek medical help as soon as possible.  So I knew I had to think clearly and figure out what to tell him to do . . . on his own.  I told him to find he RA (Residents' Assistant) or RD (Residents' Director) for his dorm and ask them if the campus clinic was open or if there was a 24-hour walk-in clinic in the area and I told him to bring his medical insurance card with him.  He texted me a while later to tell me he was in the emergency room of the nearest hospital.  I texted him back and asked if anyone was with him, he responded that he was alone.

As difficult as it was to be away from him when he needed me, there were lessons he needed to learn on his own.  He learned that emergency rooms on Saturday nights are very busy and it takes a long time for the doctor to see you unless your arm is cut off.  He learned how to handle giving his information for his health insurance.  He learned how to pay the hospital for their services (with the debit card we keep funded . . . ).  He learned that medical help is not always conclusive, as he was released without an answer to his problem because they needed to do a culture test that would take 48 to 72 hours.  But in the end, he did learn how to take care of himself . . .  and I learned how to let him do that.  I think he had the easier lesson to learn.

Surviving World War II: Louie's story

Radioman 3rd Class Petty Officer Louis Dodaro celebrated his twentieth birthday on March 18th, 1945.  I hope he got to celebrate a little before he had to report for the late shift as radio operator on board the USS Benjamin Franklin (aka Big Ben).  Perhaps that was the reason he either forgot or lost his cap.   Either way, he reported to duty in the Combat Information Center of the aircraft carrier without it.   He knew that being without his cap meant being out of uniform.  So when he came off duty, just before dawn on the 19th of March, he took the lesser-traveled passageways to the kitchen for breakfast.  Normally, he would have been on the "chow" line with his buddies in the cafeteria, but not wanting to be caught without his cap, instead, he ate breakfast in the kitchen.  He had no way of knowing that these insignificant series of events would save his life.

He hadn't seen his family since the USS Franklin had left the Brooklyn Navy Yard for training exercises on the newly christened aircraft carrier in June of 1944.  Perhaps while having breakfast on the ship that morning, he thought back to his childhood and remembered seeing his cousin, Phil Rizzuto, running through the streets of Ridgewood in 1937.  Louie had called out to him and Phil had responded, "I can't stop right now.  I've got to get home and talk to my parents.  I just got signed by a farm team of the New York Yankees!"  He was proud of his cousin, who by 1945, had already made a name for himself in the big leagues, but during the war, like others, he had to take a short break and instead was playing on the Navy baseball team.

At home, Louie had left his mother (Teresa from "A Girl and Her Wolf"), his father, his younger brother, Frank, and his little sister, Gloria.  Both of Louie's older brothers were also serving their country.  Del in North Africa, where he survived contracting Malaria, and Marty who had survived The Battle of the Bulge as part of a Destroyer Tank battalion.  Now as the war in the Pacific continued on, Louie was about to live through one of the most amazing survival stories of the war.

Just before dawn on the 19th of March in 1945, a lone Japanese plane pierced the cloud covered sky and dropped two 550 lb. bombs on to the Franklin's deck.  At the time of the attack,"Big Ben" was under the command of Captain Leslie E. Gehres.  The first bomb penetrated the hangar deck and ignited fires on the 2nd and 3rd decks, while also destroying the ship's Combat Information Center.  The second bomb hit the hangar deck and caused a succession of additional explosions.  The planes on the aircraft carrier were full of fuel and when the fuel ignited into flames, it also caused the rockets and ammunition that were loaded onto the planes to explode.

As fire erupted in the kitchen, Louie made his way through the passageways and eventually, followed others up a ladder to a porthole that led to the compartment above.  But just as the man ahead of him went through the porthole, another man in an asbestos suit who was already in the above compartment, pushed Louie back down into the lower compartment of the ship and locked the porthole.  With that avenue of escape cut off, Louie continued on, traversing the lower deck, trying to find another way out.

When he finally reached the hangar deck, he heard someone yell the order to "jump ship."  Other ships were pulling up along side the Franklin and he saw some of his friends jump into the sea, but he chose to stay on board.  He joined the other men who were trying to put out the fires and tend to the wounded. This was made extremely difficult because the ship was now tilting at a 13 degree starboard list.  The USS Santa Fe pulled up next to the Franklin and it took on the wounded and the men who had jumped into the sea.  By the time the fires were extinguished, only 106 officers and 604 enlisted men still remained on board.  724 soldiers had been killed and 265 had been wounded in this single attack.

Louie found out later that the radioman who had taken over for him after his shift ended, had been decapitated by the bomb.  Louie said the guy had to be identified by his dog tags.  His buddies, who he should have been standing with on-line in the cafeteria, all died.  He said their bodies were plastered all over the ceiling from the impact.  The man in the asbestos suit who had pushed Louie back down from the porthole and blocked him from the above compartment, had saved Louie's life. There were poisonous gases in that compartment that had been released by the fire.  The men who went through that porthole in front of him, all died.  Louie lost his best friend, Peter Fiesel from Yonkers, New York in that attack.

The Franklin was reported as "sunk" by the Japanese radio station.  But in spite of that report, the Franklin was towed by the heavy cruiser, U.S.S. Pittsburg, for a short distance until it raised enough steam to reach 14 knots.  Then it continued its journey, stopping once at Ulithi Atoll for emergency repairs.  Big Ben limped all the way back to Pearl Harbor, under its own power.  On the long trip to Hawaii, a controversy simmered on board the carrier.  There was a discrepancy as to whether or not the order to abandon ship had ever been given.  If it hadn't been given, then those men who jumped into the sea would be considered deserters.  Once in Pearl Harbor, essential repairs were made.  The men were given a 24-hour leave to go celebrate their surviving the attack and accomplishing the task of bringing their ship back to American waters.  Louie said that after a night of drinking, one of the men, while walking on the plank that led back to the ship, fell off the plank and drowned in the harbor.

The repairs at Pearl Harbor allowed the Franklin to continue on its journey through the Panama Canal and back to New York.  Big Ben pulled into the Brooklyn Navy Yard on April 28th, 1945, forty days after the ship had been attacked.  Once docked safely in New York, Captain Gehres accused the men who had jumped into the sea of abandoning the ship without an order to do so.  Gehres proclained 704 members of the crew as members of "The Big Ben 704 Club" because they had stayed with the heavily damaged carrier until they reached Hawaii.  But later investigations uncovered that only about 400 men were actually on-board the Franklin on the entire journey back to Pearl Harbor.  Some had been brought back on other ships.  After further investigation, all of the charges against the crew members who had jumped ship were quietly dropped.

After surviving the attack and the entire voyage back to New York, one more crew member died before reaching home that day.  He fell in the subway, onto the tracks below, and was killed by a train.



Louie ran through the streets and hitched a ride on a trolley.  He arrived safely at his family's home and opened the door to their astonishment. They hadn't even been notified that his ship had been heavily damaged and that many of the men had lost their lives.  Shortly after Louie's return, he and his family were devastated to receive the news that his cousin, twenty-one year old Army Private Joseph Guarascio, had lost his life on April 15th, 1945 in Kia.  Like their cousin, Phil Rizzuto, Joseph was a great baseball player, but WWII had ended that dream for him.


In the years that followed, Louie became a New York City Police Officer and Detective. He married and had a son and two daughters. Louie passed away on August 9th, 2013, while surrounded by his loving family.

He is their hero.

Race Relations: Getting To Know Each Other Better

I was born in New York in the late 1950's and the town that I grew up in was mostly white.  I was four years old the first time I saw a black man.  This man was digging in our front lawn and installing the first sewer system in our neighborhood. I stood at the front door amazed by the color of his skin.  I remember opening the door a little to have a better look and then announcing, in a very loud voice, "There's a chocolate man!"  My mother, who was in the kitchen, shushed me and and told me to close the door.  At the time, I had no preconceived notions of race, I simply thought he was made of chocolate.

It wasn't until I attended junior high that I met any other black people.  There were a handful of black students in the school.  I can't speak about how they felt, but my perception at the time was that they were accepted well and not treated any different than any other student.  It was now the early 1970's and civil rights was still a new idea.  But being children, I think we were probably more open to it than our parents were.

In 1980, before I was married to my husband, I met an older black couple who were friends of his parents.  Their names were Jimmy and Julia.  They had previously moved to New York from North Carolina.  They were probably the first black people who felt like family to me.  I remember them telling me a story about their daughter, Caroline.  When Caroline was a little girl in the early 1960's, segregation was a way of life in North Carolina.  There was a park in their neighborhood that was only for white children.  They told me that one day, Caroline asked Julia if she would paint her white so that she could go to the "whites' only" park.  Hearing this, broke my heart for the little girl who had had to live through that experience.  

Jimmy and Julia moved back to North Carolina, and in 1984, my husband and I went south to visit them and stayed at their house.  Although I had been to Disney World once in Florida, I will say that this was my first time in the "true" south.  We had a lovely time with them.  I remember Jimmy's pride as he showed us his garden.  They also took us for an over-night trip to see the reservation in Cherokee, which opened my eyes to the plight of the Native American people through the story of "The Trail of Tears."  These things weren't taught in history classes back then.  The history that was taught was a "white" history, and we were only taught what our white society wanted to teach us.  I learned more about race relations in that one trip than I had in my whole previous life.

One afternoon, we were sitting in the shade on chairs in Jimmy and Julia's driveway, when a car broke down in front of their house.  In the car was a white woman and her two small children.  Jimmy walked over to see if he could help them.  She looked utterly terrified to be approached by him.  He offered her a chair to sit in the shade while he took a look at her car.  She backed away from him as if he were infected with some disease she might catch if she got too close.  I was stunned!  I knew Jimmy was one of the sweetest and kindest men that I had ever met.  I could tell that he was hurt by her reaction, but he still went ahead and helped her anyway.  That experience still haunts me.  It was just a small taste of what others have had to endure for generations.  But it was enough to open my eyes to see how fear is a product of ignorance.  Ignorance is not stupidity, it is not knowing.  If this woman knew Jimmy, she wouldn't have been afraid.

I hope we have made progress over the last thirty years and that we have had a chance to get to know each other better.  I think that instead of this being seen as a national or global issue, it needs to be seen as an individual issue.  We just need to get to know each other better and then the rest will follow.

Love and Loss

Ten years ago, I sat in the veterinarian's office with my dog, Duke, who was lying next to me on the floor.  He was my first dog and I had never had to put a dog to sleep before.  Duke had come into my life when my daughter was two and a half, and within days of acquiring Duke, I had had a miscarriage. Thankfully, Duke was a great distraction for my daughter at a time when the sadness of my own loss seemed to consume me.  At first, he was just a little ball of white furry energy that ran around the house and the yard, commanding our love and attention.  But soon he grew to be one of the tallest Labrador Retrievers I had ever seen.  His huge tail had a habit of knocking over anything in our house that was at the height of a coffee table.  Although Duke was very loving, his strength and size made me cautious when three years later, my son was just starting to toddle around.  Even though Duke's powerful tale did knock him down a couple of times, they soon became best friends.

Duke was eleven years old when we decided to move to a new house.  Although the move would not require our children to move schools, it was still a difficult time for them.  Moving from the only neighborhood and home that they had ever known was a traumatic event.  I remember that the door to my son's bedroom had become his easel upon which he displayed his much loved sticker collection. When I told him that we were moving, his only question was, "Can I take my door with me?" Unfortunately, that was not possible.  We moved to our new house and Duke moved with us, but he was not well.  I didn't want the children to lose their dog at the same time that they lost their old home, but I knew that Duke was not going to live much longer.  Two months after the move, it became obvious that it was time.  Duke's good days had become far and few between.  Duke's veterinarian told us that he believed that Duke had cancer.  Treatment for a dog as old as Duke was not recommended.  Finally, I determined that it was kinder to let Duke go.  We could have held on to him a little longer, but it only meant more days of pain for him.  So I sent my children off to school without telling them what I had planned to do that day.

When I sat in the veterinarian's office, I thought about leaving and taking Duke home for a few more days.  It didn't have to be done that day.  But I also knew that it was only delaying what must be done.  I stayed with him and held him when they gave him the injection, and he calmly grew limp under my hands.  I went back out to the waiting room and started to cry.  As I sobbed, an older woman approached me.  She asked, "Is this your first dog?"  I said "yes," through my tears.  She was very kind and she stayed with me and talked to me for a while.  As she walked me out to my car, I said to her, "What am I going to tell my children?"  She said, "Tell them that his spirit will come back to them in your next dog."  Before the children came home from school, I cleaned the whole house of any sign of Duke.  I saved a few of his toys and washed them and put them away, just in case I needed them.  When the children came home from school, my thirteen year old daughter cried, but my eight year old son tried to hide his feelings of loss from me.  I heard him go into the bathroom and lock the door.  In what he thought was the privacy of the bathroom, he spoke aloud to Duke saying, "I'll miss you Duke."  My heart broke again when I heard those words.  When my son came out of the bathroom he asked me for a zip-lock plastic bag.  He then went on a mission through the cleaned and vacuumed house, trying to find stray dog hairs to add to his little bag so that he could keep a part of Duke with him.  He then asked me if there were any of Duke's toys left.  I retrieved Duke's favorite soft stuffed toy that was in the shape of a bone and gave it to my son.  For years after that, Duke's toy was in his bed every night to keep him company.

Eight months later, my husband and I heard about Daisy, a rescued yellow Lab who had been through a lot of hardship in her first years of life.  The veterinarian was unsure of how old Daisy was, but thought she was somewhere between two and three years old.  We were hesitant to take another dog who's time with us would be shortened simply because she was already several years old, but she needed us and, it seemed, we needed her.  When Daisy first came to live with us, her nose was black, her fur was almost golden, and she didn't seem to shed.  But within the first few months, her nose turned pink, like Duke's.  Daisy's fur became shades lighter, almost, but not quite as white as Duke's, and Daisy began to shed just like Duke had.  Daisy started to lay under the table like Duke always had and she seemed to display more and more of Duke's personality.  My children and I marveled as the woman's words seemed to come true.  Somehow, Duke's spirit had come back to us in Daisy.

The past nine years have flown by and our children are in college and grad school now.  Daisy is still my constant companion.  She has come to mean more to me than I could ever have imagined.  She's become "my" dog.  But now she is about eleven years old and life is getting painful for her.  She is not sick yet, but she is getting old.  Last night she must have had a dream and in the middle of the night she made a horrifying noise.  It was so frightening, that I had to turn on the light to see if she was alright.  I called her name, and she, thankfully, lifted her head in response.  I shut the light off and tried to go back to sleep, but all I could think of is that Daisy's days are coming to an end.  As much as I loved Duke, I have come to love Daisy even more.  I worried about how will I ever deal with losing her.  But then I thought of the years I have had with her and I am so grateful for those years.  It will be very difficult when she leaves me, but in the darkness of the night, I realized that waiting for her death and focusing on the loss that will follow, is not how she would want me to spend this precious time.  She loves me beyond the capacity of human love.  And that love that she has shown me, has taught me so much. There was something that I needed to learn from her, and that is that love should be enjoyed and not feared because of the loss that may follow.  Without the risk of loss, love can never be so dear.  I will make the effort to enjoy these last months of her life, rather then to fear for the inevitable day when she leaves me.

So, I say to you, my readers, be courageous!  Whenever or wherever you find love, take the risk.  Even if you have already experienced loss, don't fear loving again.  For as Alfred, Lord Tennyson said, "Tis better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all."

Good-bye to my Cousin Mike

At the base of a tree is a root, and at the base of my tree you were there.  From those early days we grew, and as branches of a tree tend to do, we grew in different directions.  We are only two years apart but you had your children earlier in life then I did.  Your life had its sorrows, especially the loss of your son, Will, who was hit by a car while crossing the highway.  Although I didn't know Will very well, he has been the strong spirit who has brought my father to me during both of the psychic readings I have been lucky enough to have.  He knew your sorrow and wanted to lift it from you by telling you he was all right.  Now you are together and he can tell you, himself.  You are another light in heaven now.  You are there to brighten the way for those of us who will follow. Watch over your daughter and your siblings. they need you now more than ever.  And light the way for your mother who is standing at the threshold.  Rest in peace, my dear cousin.