The Long Commute Home
Written by
Annmarie Hickey Georgopolis
www.ahg7.com

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"Introduction"

January 1998 ------------- Hi there, my name is Annmarie. I am the daughter of Bill and Ann Hickey of Plum Island, in Newbury, Massachusetts.

I was sitting on a train, docked at North Station in Boston, Massachusetts, waiting for the train to pull out and take me homeward. The destination of the train was Lawrence, Massachusetts where my husband Jerry would pick me up for the last leg of my commute home. I had recently taken a consulting position and my first assignment was in Quincy, Massachusetts. My daily commute from work consisted of the red-line subway, to the orange-line subway, to the commuter train and a half-hour drive with Jerry. Quite a long commute, wouldn't you say? The whole thing took up to 2 1/2 hours, one way. It was on such a ride one night that I came up with this idea....

The train I was on did not depart until 6:55 p.m. and it was only then 6:45 p.m. So, to kill time, I browsed through some catalogs that I had thrown into my L.L. Bean tote bag that morning. The catalog I was looking at was actually full of, what I call, 'old ladies' clothes. It arrived in the mail at the house one day, the previous week. I found myself thinking how some of the outfits would look great on my 66 year old mother. This past Christmas, I had bought her a very simply-styled, black dress from this particular catalog. Petite size 12 fits Mom to a "T". She joked to me about how she did not want my father to see her trying the black dress on because he would think she had ordered it prematurely for HIS funeral. That'll give you a sense of my Mom's brain in progress. Remembering this stirred in me the desire to take pen in hand and to capture these types of antics and idiosyncrasies of theirs on paper.

My folks are great people. You'd really like them. Well...as long as you didn't have to live with them. But I guess all kids say that about their parents, at least those of Irish decent. I am their 7th child, and 1st daughter. Every time I think of some of my folk's crazy stories, a smile comes to my face and a chuckle churns in my belly. To give you a little background about my folks, they are first-generation Americans. Both Mom and Dad's parents came from Ireland. Mom and Dad were both raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts during its heyday. Mom is one of eight children whose father was a meat cutter and whose mother was a part-time seamstress. We called Mom's father Little Grampy and Mom's mother Nana. Dad is an only child whose father was a chief engineer. Dad's folks were upper middleclass; his Mom did not work. His Mom died unfortunately, when Dad was but seventeen. Dad's father was known to us, as Big Grampy. Big Grampy's hobby was playing the violin. I never knew Big Grampy, because he died the year I was born. We have a picture of Big Grampy playing the violin at Mom and Dad's wedding. He was a huge man, tall and barrel-chested. Mom and Dad had 9 children of their own, 7 boys and 2 girls. They moved their 'troops' out of the Lawrence area, to Plum Island in Newbury, Massachusetts in the early 1960's. My Mom spent her time cooking, cleaning and raising us while my father worked day after day, as a mailman in Lawrence, until he retired in 1984. Upon his retirement, my mother took a job at McDonalds in Newburyport, to keep her sanity.

I would very much love to share a few of their stories with you now...

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Annmarie can be contacted at - 603-382-3563 or annmariegeorgopolis@comcast.net

©1998 Annmarie (Hickey) Georgopolis