Words of Joseph
I am nine years old as it starts, and to tell the truth my mother remembers more of the details. This is 1968, and mothers supposedly remember more details now than they did in older days. Mostly, I remember feelings.
I remember this: the air outside is clean and fresh and sharp and the sun is bright like summer but not as hot as when we went swimming and some of the trees on our street were starting to turn dark and waxy green with red berries, the color of the table cloth in our house when other people come over for dinner.
It is August and almost time to go back to school. I go to Catholic Church and I am in the Cub Scouts and I play first base for the Orioles of the Howell Township Little League. My name is Joseph Feeney and later on in this story, I will be famous and you will remember my name, my friends call me Joseph and for now that’s enough.
I borrowed a glove from my friend Ronnie and caught a line drive that saved the day and my whole team went wild, I won’t ever forget that, every time I think about it, the whole thing happens again in my mind, just like the first time, only the yells and screams seem louder and wilder. The Orioles won the series and I got a trophy that still sits beside my bed, so this was a good summer, in some ways. In some ways, it was the best summer of my life.
The Feeney family lived on Darien Road, out in the country near Lakewood, New Jersey, across the river from Staten Island where I used to live with my sister Justina, she’s eight, and I have a brother, Matthew, who is two and looks like a toy or a doll or something, and my mother and daddy. Our house in the country is nice, and I don’t really miss my old friends except sometimes, like when I took my mom’s biggest macaroni pot down to the ditch behind our house to catch frogs and brought them home.
I fight with my sister a lot because she’s dopey and I know it’s just a phase and when she grows out of it, it won’t bother me as much anymore and I know she knows, I don’t really mean it. I help my mother make ceramics in a studio in a house down the street. She helps teach ceramics to other ladies and I help her make things that she still keeps on a shelf in the living room. My Daddy use to be a garbage man.
Back before summer started when I was in fourth grade, daddy quit his job with the New York Sanitation Department. Then, he went to work for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in New Jersey. He went away on a trip for two whole weeks to learn how to be a salesman and mother was concerned, because he was never a salesman before. Then when he was gone on his trip, something really bad happened. As soon as daddy came home, he left again and didn’t come back all summer long except to visit. At first, it was really bad and mother worried the most of all, and we were all pretty sad a lot. She started making ceramics a lot more for home demonstrations.
I went to her ceramics class with her every week, and daddy started to visit. He told us he wanted to be a singer, but mother thought that was a bad idea, but he visited again anyway, and by the end of summer, he moved back in with us and everything was okay once more. That’s what I remember, and I think about it all the time, over and over again in my head like a dream, that summer of 1968 and the warm air, outside, and I can remember how slimy and cold the frogs felt in my hand and how my hand hurt when I caught the line drive and I didn’t even feel it, and how much I miss my sister Justina and my brother Matthew and my mother and daddy. I remember it was early evening and mother was putting ceramic pieces on the dinner table, laying them out on a bright red cloth to show to a lady she knows, and I wanted to go out and play, and I remember so clearly how she told me to stay close by. It was dusk, and I was going to start school soon and I was going to have to start going to bed early. I remember all of that and it just keeps playing over and over again in my mind that was one great summer.
A mother never forgets the words of her children and I remember Joseph’s words as if it was yesterday. Every so often I take out the pictures I have of him as a little boy and stare at his lovely smiling face, and the way he carried himself in mannerism.
I read the words of those who helped care for him and the numerous notes and letters I received that comforted my soul. Now I can share them with pride and joy in my heart.
