My mom

My first emergent memories of earthly life were of being with my mother in our sunny home, in the living room, looking at a photo of my father, a lieutenant in the Army. It was wartime and he was gone, and she was keeping his memory alive. She had designed the house, and they had built it and then gone about having a child. By the time I was born, America was in the war. They hadn't changed their plans, even after Pearl Harbor, so I was born on schedule. But by the time I was 5 months old, my father was gone and I knew him best by looking at that photo.

I knew the shiny stripe on his hat meant he was a lieutenant. My mother told me things in regular language, not baby talk, and I she meant she was proud of him. Later she changed the photo so that he could be seen with the new decoration on his cap, two bars. He was now a captain. I remember her telling me about that. I was not quite 2 1/2.

When my father was called to active duty, he was a teacher of English at Wethersfield High School. My mother took over his job, and I went to Mrs MacBeth across the street.

So the war made big changes in our family. It changed everything, my mother admitted years later. For me, it meant happy days with just the two of us. And they weren't quite that happy ever again.