A Perfect Christmas

This Christmas, far from over, was lovely. We went to mass on Christmas Eve, here in New Bedford. Then we stayed up waiting for midnight, a custom from my part of the family and opened presents. My heart was completely content because all our children were home. It is the best feeling in the world. [...]

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Ghosts of Christmas Past – a ramble of memory

I could have grown up into a depressed cynic, who lost the happiness lotto because of life experience and baggage. But, deep down in me always lived the soul of a happy child and an almost boring stability. I was not particularly brave or articulate as a child, but a child nonetheless, like all [...]

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Thanks-filled

Speechless and humbled and filled with joy, I am. Stumbling upon this on this great and bountiful holiday, time stopped.
Thanks-filled
by my daughter, Ana-Maria
I.
I am thankful for this sturdy table,
worked by hand, and cloaked in handworked linen
to mask the stains and gouges left
by the feasts and frolics of many generations.
Lost legacies, stowed away in cupboards,
in [...]

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Barcelona, Lutzelfluh, Savannah, Marinduque

So many things happen, yet so many things stay the same. I have been preoccupied with reading all the World War II memoirs that I can find. I reach back into my own memory, hanging on snippets of conversation I overheard.
Because, dear readers, when you are a child in the Philippines and are sitting [...]

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Summer Monday in July

Before we left for California I had started a huge endeavor of organizing family photos. This is an enormous undertaking, because we’ve moved five times since 1984, and there are categories that get abandoned. The pictures of youthful fun are secondary to baby pictures. Baby pictures shoot up in importance as the babies grow up. [...]

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