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When we were young, my mother perpetuated the myth that, along with all the toys, Santa Claus brought the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. If you have celebrated Christmas as a parent, you undoubtedly agree that this is a sure-fire way to ruin Christmas for parents. Nevertheless, Mom persisted. She had no doubt in theContinue reading “9. Christmas Eve”

Although I am no endocrinologist, I am certain there is a direct link between pubescent girls’ estrogen-producing ovaries and the area in the frontal lobe where laughter is stimulated. Often this laughter has nothing to do with anything humorous. Just as often this connection can lead to a critical lack of judgment. Once Carol andContinue reading “8. BFFs, Pt. 2”

I met Carol Prentice in the sixth grade through our mutual friend Lulu. She had a wicked laugh and a tiny toenail on each of her little toes. She had read all the Nancy Drew books. She also had a window air conditioner in her room, which was pure luxury in my book. Carol wentContinue reading “7. BFFs, Pt. 1”

When my brother Dennis married Geraldine O’Mahony, I was eight. Dennis, like many other Georgetown alums, had found his way into the bar business, in his case, after teaching English at St. John’s High School. He met his beautiful bride at Matt Kane’s on 13th Street. She and her family had left Waterford, Ireland whenContinue reading “6. An Irish Wedding”

When you’re seven and following your older brothers, there’s a shortcut for everything: through a neighbor’s yard, over a fence or, in this case, behind an apartment building and down an alleyway. It was in this alleyway that we found a trove of discarded building materials from the construction of an apartment building on ConnecticutContinue reading “5. Sergeants & Ghosts”

When there were only five children in the Reilly family, my parents took the four older kids to Canada on vacation and left Kevin, the baby, at home with our grandmother. They visited Quebec and Niagara Falls, but the stories they came back with didn’t involve any of the sights. Apparently, Dad never wanted toContinue reading “4. Moe”

To explain how young my grandmother was when she married my grandfather, Mom said, She put a piece of paper with a 1 written on it in her left shoe and one with an 8 in her right shoe, so she could say yes when they asked her at the courthouse if she was overContinue reading “3. Heights”