My wife, Terry, and I have been overseas teaching and traveling since 1983--twenty three years. And in that time there were the inevitable changes: family members grow up and grow old. Just got word that my mother is ill and so I'll be traveling half-way around the world to help care for her. Here's a great old photo of her with my sister, Patty, and I. It's my first birthday, so she would have been twenty-four. She has been the classic family matriarch--a powerful, determined personality and a quick mind. A registered nurse since 1941, she once ran two wards in a mental hospital and then, in her 50's, convinced my father to go in the Peace Corps. They spent nearly two years in Nicaragua doing good things. And always, family came first. Above all else, it was family and now we are happy to give back.
So, I'll leave Christmas Day and set off on the twenty-three hour journey from Guam to Massachusetts. It will be nice, of course, to be home during the Christmas season and to help out, and to be in the New England cold where I grew up.
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