“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:21
Greetings from Portugal as I walked my first 17 miles today along the Camino Portuguese Coastal route. Just a beautiful route in every way as I went from my hotel in Porto to my next hotel in Povoa de Varzim. In honoring my Mom and my Dad for this Camino I have reached out to my siblings in the hope that they too can participate with me on what I hope will be a very gratifying reflection of the many ways Mom and Dad gifted me with their presence.
Two of my earliest memories of Mom and Dad surfaced for me on this initial walk and both occurred at the age of 5. I’m not sure which one came first but here it goes. Back in 1960, Dad worked the night shift at a printing company on Canal Street in Manhattan which meant we did not see him much as that shift was from 2pm to 11pm. But Dad had a special way of surprising Cathy, Dennis, and me. He would often stop at McDonalds which had just opened on Route 4 in Paramus on his way home and he would always get extra French fries and milkshakes. Dad wouldn’t get home until after midnight but if we were still awake, we would come down for that tasty late night snack. I can still taste those fries. Dad wouldn’t get much sleep because we would often see him before our bus ride to Mount Carmel in the morning , the parish grammar school.
In that same year, I struggled a lot emotionally being away from Mom. Kindergarten back then was either in the morning or the afternoon because so many kids were being born as part of the Post WW II baby boom and I was in the afternoon group. I would often complain to Mrs. Simon, our matronly kindergarten teacher, that I missed my Mom and wanted her to come get me. The kindergarten was located in a cute house across the street from the church and Mrs. Simon would have me wait in this room on the second floor as she called home and I would stare out the window waiting anxiously for Mom to pick me up with our family car which was a 1951 blue Chevrolet. Every time I am back at Mt.Carmel, I always make it a point to stop and stare at the old kindergarten building which is now a doctors office. It makes me feel super close to Mom and how trying it must have been for her to see me struggle like that.
Preserving memories like these with Dad and Mom — which are among my earliest ones — are worth writing about because they help me realize the great sacrifices they made for me and my siblings and how each of them was doing the very best they could with no manual on how to do it. But, as I get older my gratitude for what they provided me gets stronger and deeper as I wait patiently in the hope of rejoining them again in that special place called heaven.
