A mother’s heartache, a son’s return
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- December
- 18
My paternal grandmother was, to be blunt, a tough old bird. She survived several wars, was widowed twice and worked many blue-collar jobs in rural Greek villages, then in New York City, to support my father and three other children before she could finally retire to her dream house in Marble Hill.
So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when my father said that the only correspondence she sent him in Vietnam was a newspaper clipping, upon which she had scribbled this William Blake poem:
My mother groaned, my father wept
Into the dangerous world I leapt
Helpless, naked, piping loud
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
My father hadn’t told his mother when he would be arriving home in March 1968 – he didn’t want anyone to worry about his travel arrangements, and he also wanted it to be a pleasant surprise. Click on the audio link below to hear his story.
Check back tomorrow morning for the final entry in this blog – for now, anyway.
