The first thing most new retirees want to do is ... nothing. Or, nothing productive. In my case, "play lots of golf" came immediately to mind. And I did. But I also wanted to make use of the skills I picked up along my path through the newspaper world. Much of my work was on the editorial page, so why not write a semi-regular column? Not in the paper, but on that new phenomenon (this was 1998, remember) called the internet. Or the Web. But not right away. There was some catching up to do on the golf course.
And so the days followed each other into time's mists. Another course to play, another shot to master, another score to better. Somewhere in there I created a web site called Pepere's Cafe. But I didn't really know what to do with it. Blogging hadn't been popularized (or maybe even invented) yet. So it sat in cyberspace until I tired of paying the annual fee and let it evaporate into a cloud of electrons.
(This is not a digression but an explanation: In high school, I was nicknamed "The Great Procrastinator.")
Even procrastinators act eventually. So now, Pepere's Cafe.
Let's start a conversation, shall we?
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I'll make my contribution with, to me, a poignant story.
My mother, at 97-going-on-98, is hale, hearty and suffering from mild dementia manifesting itself primarily as memory loss. She remembers what she did, even wore, as a child or young woman. But yesterday's lunch? This morning's visit? What lunch? What visit?
Mom recognizes my voice when I call. But since she doesn't see me often -- she was in Massachusetts, I in Pennsylvania -- she did not recognize my face when I showed up to say, Hi!
When I visited this past August, she said I was my brother John's cousin. She lived with John, so knew him well, seeing him every day. But me? I was "Cousin Ron," she told Sister Annie and other brother Frank.
The last day of my visit, I took her out for a favorite lunch, good old-fashioned English style fish and chips. We talked about how we would have fish and chips almost every Friday, like good Catholics, and where we got the take-out orders. We relived those days of youth and innocence, the friends and neighbors and, of course, Dad and my brothers and sisters. Great memories!
But I was still "Cousin Ron."
After lunch, I took a roundabout route home. As I had done many times with my children when they were young, I guided her along The Tour -- the several neighborhoods where we and she lived over the years.
"Look Mom," I said, as we turned the corner of Collette Street and Ashley Boulevard. "That's the house where I was born!" She nodded. "Yes, that's right, isn't it?" Next, Bullard Street, past a house across from Saint Anthony's Church. "That's where you grew up, wasn't it, Mom?" "Oh. Yes. What a wonderful place to be young." And so on past the tenement on Felton Street where I was raised and my sister Carole was born; Central Avenue, where brother Frank and sisters Annie and Claudie first saw light; Dawson Street, where the family was filled out with brothers John and Danny.
"How do you know so much about all this?" Mom marvelled.
I drove along where Normandin Junior High once was, which Mom attended, and so up Tarkiln Hill Road to our North Dartmouth farm, which was the center of our family for so many years.
"How do you know so much about all this?" Mom marvelled.
I drove along where Normandin Junior High once was, which Mom attended, and so up Tarkiln Hill Road to our North Dartmouth farm, which was the center of our family for so many years.
The way there is along Plainville Road, behind the New Bedford airport. We drove along silently for a minute or two, when Mom turned to me and grasped my arm with her left hand.
"Oh, my God. You're my son!"
She fell silent, and a tear crept down her cheek. And in a plaintive voice she asked, "How can you forget such a thing; how can that happen!" Her voice broke as she asked again, quietly, "How can you forget something like this?"
She fell silent, and a tear crept down her cheek. And in a plaintive voice she asked, "How can you forget such a thing; how can that happen!" Her voice broke as she asked again, quietly, "How can you forget something like this?"
But then she smiled. "You're my son Ron, my oldest, my first born!"
And we laughed and talked about old days, good days, back to The Farm, as I think of it, for that brief while united once again as Mother and Son. Never mind that the moment passed. Never mind I became Cousin Ron again a few days later. For that moment, we were back in the space-time continuum that is ever so fleeting in this temporal life: Now. Today. This moment. Forever.
