Today is a happy day for me. I can rest on the laurels of Al Horford and LeBron James for a full day. Tonight it all begins again as the Celtics go into the first game of their battle against the 76ers. So in that brief interim of victory for both my teams I am also free of pain--rare--and the day is sunny.
Yash and I decide to put together a little gift package for our one and only grand daughter Rowan.
I have stayed away from talking about her because I did not want to see my prose dissolve into saccharine praise. But she is my delight.
My mother Margaret and my mother-in law Hilda both adored my son Joey. At the time I did not understand the intensity of that devotion. Now in retrospect I understand and feel how much it must have hurt them when Joey's father and I departed Pawtucket to venture out to Illinois for graduate school. Joey was only two and a half and neither of us had ever even visited Urbana, Illinois.
Now I see how the Holy Spirit must have guided us -- so ignorant and provincial as we were.
The University of Illinois is a TEMPLE OF EDUCATION and I felt it the moment I stepped on campus and saw the glorious quad.
The amazing library holds millions of volumes and changed the whole experience of writing a research paper.
I made a great choice without knowing it, and it was a lucky place to be. I have been grateful for the last 50 years and I had my first and best experience of what a University could be when I went there in 1966. I had finally found my people .
So we drove to the post office near Saint Teresa's Church and Yash went in to mail the package. After we left we stopped at BK on Newport to get what Yash calls the 3 dollar lunch--their 2 Whoppers for 6 dollars. Then into Slater Park where we ate the burgers and watched the geese while listening to Leonard Cohen --one of my favorites. I decided to take a leisurely tour home so I drove back via Columbus Avenue and down Pond Street.
When I passed the old Memorial Hospital, I stopped the car to look at the building that once housed the Nurses Residence. It is a lovely late Victorian style, gracious and a little ornate. I remember as a child watching the student nurses coming in and out in their capes and lovely caps. Whenever I watch CALL THE MIDWIVES I think of those crisp and lively young women. I do hope that they preserve that building.
Once I am in that nostalgic mood, I want to go downtown. In my mind I am walking it. There once was a drugstore at the corner of Prospect and Pond Street and it was a perfect stop on the way to shopping on Main Street. Now there is just a vacant lot.
Continuing down Prospect Street just before the intersection with Division Street, I would come to a small grocery store. If you know what to look, for you can still see on your right the entrance and window of the store--the first floor of a three-decker. They had a well stocked candy counter, and the girl who was the child of the owners often waited on me behind that counter. How I envied her that job!
I gave her a nickel and pointed to the varieties of penny candy that I wanted, and she gave me a nice selection in a small bag. That would keep me happy for the rest of the walk to the downtown. Once I got to the Main Street Bridge I would stand there and watch the waters foam beneath until I had finished the candy, I was exactly where I wanted to be. I still feel that flush of pleasure when I cross the Bridge and look over to the Slater Mill perched on the Falls.
I am in a Pawtucket state of mind.
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