A few weeks ago, to celebrate my mother's 90th birthday -- which is also on September 11 and more fun to think about! -- my older sister and I took her to her hometown of North Billerica, Massachusetts. In some ways, it was like revisiting a lost world, one where my mother had grown up getting milk from a neighbor's cow and where she and her sisters had walked everywhere because their family didn't own a car. For me, it was especially interesting to hear her talk about what it was like growing up; not only the fun stuff she did with her sisters, but also the challenges of dealing with a depressive father and a mother who didn't quite fit in with her husband's family (she was from Canada, he was born and raised in Billerica), which instilled in my mother a desire to leave -- or escape -- that I found very familiar and relevant to the way I (and probably a lot of others) think about childhood. I recorded much of the trip -- along with some observations -- and edited the audio down into my first -- and possibly last :) -- podcast, which you can listen to below.
Here's a link if you can't see the banner, and below are some pix.
The Faulkner Mill. (Or maybe it's the Talbot -- I'm not sure!)
The house on Mason Avenue in Garden City (a neighborhood in North Billerica that was originally built for union workers by the B&M Railroad) where my mother was born.
Ninety years ago, my mother was a baby in the corner apartment of this house.
Here she is at a house on Treble Cove Road, where she lived as a teenager (again, in an apartment on the side).
My mother and her sister Linda at the North Billerica train station.
The Middlesex Canal, where they used to go swimming and ice skating.