I’m not sure why, but watching the snow fall outside has me thinking about the past. Perhaps it is merely the reality that I won’t be venturing out today. Winter has finally struck. First, several inches of white snow to be followed up by a bitter cold snap. Yes, this is the time for snuggling up to some comforting memories. Well, memories at least.

I thought we might escape winter entirely, a thought that left me with decidedly ambivalent feelings. The unaturally warm temps were welcome, of course. Still, what they meant in the longer term was unsettling. No matter, Jack Frost has arrived to get his due.

Oddly enough, I don’t have many pics of winter scenes in my collection of childhood photos. Most seem to have been taken when tines were sunny and relatively warm, though I am bundled up as my parents display me in the first pic. They seem proud to have me. That is odd since I never felt wanted as a child. I always felt more like an inconvenient possession to be paraded in front of others on occasion.

I’ve just finished a book on the Harvard Grant Study where a cohort of young men from that hallowed institution were prospectively tracked for over 7 decades. According to one of the principal investigators of this study, familial warmth experienced in early years was a strong predictor of later success. That is, feeling loved and protected while maturing is a critical factor to later success. But how does one appreciate that? We only have our own recollections, which are idiosyncratic and personal and decidedly subjective. Who can compare their internal feelings with what others experience? We can only know our own world. Perhaps all is illusion, distorted by our own neuroses. Given that caveat, what are mine?

In this 2nd pic, my mother is holding me while my aunt Laura is holding her only child (my cousin, Walter). My mother’s brother married an Italian girl and lived on the other side of town. I suspect that was considered a mixed marriage (Polish & Italian) but my mother loved this brother. He was the good son. Her only other male sibling was a con man who spent a great deal of time in the slammer. But he was colorful.

My own parent’s marriage also was suspect. Polish and Irish 😞. That was bad enough in my maternal grandmother’s eyes but she undoubtedly had concerns about my dad as a marital prospect. He ran around with the fast crowd, living on the edge. That must have made him appear attractive to my mother but not suitable husband or father material.

Alas, he settled down after I was born and after he suffered a huge financial setback in an illegal football betting racket he was running. To the extent he went straight because of me, I doubt he ever fully forgave me. Another chunk of guilt I carried forward.

Wally (shown being carried by Laura in the 2nd pic) was my cousin and very close in age to me. I recall visiting him a lot in the Italian section of Worcester … they lived in an old 3-decker owned by Laura’s parents (the Gorretti family). I loved the exuberance of family life in that community, the warmth and affection displayed among the adults. And I loved the bocce court they had in their yard, a traditional Italian game. Best of all, the railroad tracks ran next to their house so I could watch trains go by on occasion. I’m not sure the adults appreciated that as much as I did. Despite all, there was a sense of warmth there.

Young Wally got seriously sick about a week after one of my visits when we were both about 12 years old. All I recall is that he was taken to Boston for care by specialists but soon passed. That devastated me. We were close to being brothers in a way. It was my first experience with the vulnerability of life. One never knows, does one. At the cemetery, I do recall my Aunt Laura almost whispering that she would soon join her only child. I thought that an idle expression of grief in the moment. But she died of cancer within six months. I doubt she had any will to fight the disease.

The pic above captures some of my dad’s family. I am the doofus kid on the left with the wide grin. I can’t believe they didn’t return me to the hospital as damaged goods. Right in front of me is my dad’s sister, Agnes. At my back is her husband, Bill Connor. They were my surrogate parents growing up. As a child, they lived right up the street and I would spend hours at their house which, unlike mine, was filled with love and affection. Besides, Bill had actually graduated from college, something no one else in that generation had even tried.

Ag and Bill never had children so they always welcomed me, or so it seemed. I still recall coming home one day after spending hours at their house. There was a small suitcase outside waiting for me. My folks told me that I should move in with Ag and Bill since I obviously preferred them so much more than my real home. I cried but, the truth be told, they were right.

The man next to Bill is my uncle Tim, my dad’s brother. His son, Timmy, is seated in front of him. There was not a great deal of experimentation in the naming of children back then. My dad and Tim were about a year apart in age. In fact, my dad once told me that they were in the same grade until the nuns running the Catholic school they attended kept my dad back a grade since the brothers were always causing mischief and no one could tell them apart. Sounded more like a convenient excuse to me.

To the right, we have my ‘nana,’ my dad’s mother and her other daughter… Winnie. Nana (Mary Boland), was from Ireland. She must have had a rough life. Her husband (Jeremiah Corbett) had some form of mental affliction and was in and out of institutions for years. I never met him as far as I can recall.

Still, I recall spending lots of time with Nana and her spinster daughter (Winnie). I would spend hours up in her 3rd floor flat (we lived on the 1st floor). She would feed me and make the best eggnogs I ever tasted. Many a night, we would play the card game (Old Maid). The irony never struck me that Winnie was, in fact, an old maid. I can still recall, as a toddler, sitting in Nana’s lap and have her comfort me. I suspect those were the moments of love and warmth and love that I desperately needed.

Of course. there was the streets. There were plenty of kids to play with. In the above pic. I show a small sample of the urchins that roamed the neighborhood. Next to me is Dave Bolio, the athlete among us. In front of me are the brood known as the Clancy clan. I can’t recall how many of them their were but their mother (Gert) managed to raise them without much help from her drunken husband Joe … who nominally worked as a bellhop at the downtown hotel. For a while, Gert would feed me at lunchtime during the school year when both my parents worked.

I think that’s what I remember most about my earliest years, being elsewhere with other people. Sometimes, it was with my aunts and uncles. Sometimes, it was with my grandmother. Often, it was with neighborhood friends. Did this vagabond lifestyle and lack of familial attachment, early on at least, bother me. I can not tell for sure. I did grow up distancing myself from emotional attachments. On the other hand, I did enjoy a long marriage. However, I never could decide whether that was because I expected so little from adult attachments.

Would the investigators in the Harvard’s men study assign me to the damaged group? Would they conclude that I could have done more in life than I did with just a little more parental love and attachment? We just don’t know. In the end, a life is what it is.