Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord … Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her…
Ephesians 5: 22, 25

I left the Paterson News to become sports editor at the New Jersey Herald in 1973, although I still worked the night shift.

Mom bought me a puppy – a purebred AKC registered Irish setter. I swore she got ripped off when I held this little puppy who looked nothing like an Irish setter (not even the rust-colored fur) in my hand. But Harrigan grew … and grew .. and grew – not in intelligence but in size. He was so stupid he insisted he could fit under the straight chair and always got stuck. But he loved to run and Joe and Dee liked to play with him. Mom put up with him. He was too big for her taste, so I bought her a schnauzer, which we kept until she nipped at Dee.

Mom was busy landscaping the yard. I remember planting those forsythia twigs for her about every 20 feet or so along the east side of our property. Last time I passed by the house – about 10 years ago or so – those forsythia twigs were full fledged bushes. I procrastinated about finishing off the basement … prompting more of that look whenever Mom backed the car out of the basement garage with a load of laundry on the front hood.

I remember three specific incidents involving Joe and Dee that tugged at your Mom’s heart. The first was Joe’s first day in school in September 1974. He was all dressed up in his checkered pants, white shirt and red sweater, took his lunch box and headed to the street to wait for the school bus. We watched you from the door and Mom just started crying. “My baby,” she whimpered. What a softie!

Another was when Joe independently decided he was running away. I remember it because Mom woke me up to ask me what to do, then looked at me incredulously when I said, “Let him go.” And off he went … to the top of the driveway. He walked down the cul de sac. He came back. He walked the other way past the house. He came back. This went on for about an hour before he walked back into the house to a misty-eyed Mom and announced, “Did you miss me?”

The third thing I remember was a phone call I got at work. It seems little Miss Deanna started to sleep walk. It wasn’t a big deal until that night when Mom called me to say she walked out the front door. She scooped her up, brought her back in and tucked her back in bed. The next day we got a new lock, but by the following night she figured out how to open it … and out the door she went. I finally had to get a top-mounted chain to keep her in!

And we became pregnant again.

To be continued …

THOUGHT TO REMEMBER: Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift.