Threads

I had thought I would write a reflective blog post last week… weekend.  It was the passing of a year since the earth moved and reality changed forever.  But I let the whirligig of life’s seeming importance distract me… and I just couldn’t find the words to sum up the collective emotion of a year.

A lot of life just went on as it should… or seemed it should.  But waking up to a morning when there wasn’t a promise of seeing my grandmother was like pulling that loose thread of a sweater.  You can knot it up and keep it in place… or if you keep pulling, you unravel the whole piece.  And some things definitely have been knotted up quite safely.  Some things slowly started to pull itself out of shape.  

The funny thing is that unraveling wasn’t destruction.  It merely changed the shape of things.  Or rather, it let me see the patterns and colors that helped to form the tapestry.

I saw those looser threads today as I took a drive through the neighborhood of Main South.  Now any reader familiar with Worcester knows that is not exactly prime real estate in the city.  There are some great things about that part of the city… but certainly quite a bit of poverty, violence… and people who aren’t white.  Indeed, I know several people who avoid it if they can – and would probably give me a weird look if I said I did this for fun.

But I did.

Part of my mission was to look for Agawam Street.  I drove up the dead end street over a year ago when I started asking about the cellar parties.  That was where my great grandfather lived – where my grandmother lived with him and her brother.  A short walk from the church where she married my grandfather.  Where her father lived until he died of brain cancer.  Gram told me how he had a wisteria bush that crept up the front porch.  It might even be the parent to the bush I have creeping up the side of my garage.

I found Agawam Street again.  I opted not to take the turn off Main Street lest it look too obvious I was trolling the street… especially as I couldn’t remember the number of the house.  I suppose I could have looked for front porches… but I’m not going to deny there was also that inner voice that inspires fear of poor neighborhoods.

I continued down Main Street, thinking about the prejudices of people who grow up and live in that neighborhood.  I know and love quite a few people who live or have lived there.  I have many happy memories of going to holiday gatherings as a child and adult there.  I also know the ingrained fear of ‘bad’ neighborhoods that trickled into my mind when I would park my car and walk quickly to my destination.

And yet, more powerful than that prejudice, the neighborhood fascinates me.  More than the distant Irish heritage we celebrate with touristy trips across the pond and a buffet of corned beef every March 17^th (the poor French Canadians only get representation with meat dressing at Thanksgiving).  Those streets are part of those threads I saw unraveled in the last year.

As I drove away towards the greener suburbia, I thought about that.  Am I waxing nostalgic for a place that disappeared as did my family over fifty years ago?  How much of a difference is the fabric of this new generation of immigrant children and grandchildren?  Is their working class lifestyle justification for the white girl paranoia when I lock my door?  How different are they from my family who lived with 6 kids and four adults in the first floor of a three family house?  

I found myself contemplating all the wealth of love for which we give thanks every time our family gathers.  That appreciation is ingrained in us, by my grandmother who grew up on Agawam Street.  Walking or taking the bus to her job downtown.  Taking care of seven children while her husband worked two jobs.   Wealth that was discovered in that seemingly poor part of town.  A wealth so valuable, it endures now… when we all gather to remember on a gray Sunday and squeeze around my mother’s dining room table.

That thread is the brightest of all.  It isn’t the things.  It isn’t a big house with nice furniture.  It isn’t what you wear.  It isn’t the zip code.  Wealth is truly invisible.  And I believe that part of Worcester still has springs of it.  

I want to find those springs.  I want to live there.  I whispered an inner plea to Frank Moreau that he help me find a house similar to his… or maybe one that he helped build before the crash of 1929.  I’m still uncertain how I will weave this thread, but I’m glad to see its potential.