The following Life Report was submitted in response to my column of Oct. I was born March 24, in Paterson New Jersey โthe second of what would become four sons of an Irish American mother and a Spanish immigrant father. My mother was the second oldest of eight children in an Irish family whose ancestors arrived in the United States in the mid s. My maternal grandmother, a force to be reckoned with, was a full-time homemaker. My father had immigrated to this country with his parents and older sister shortly after his birth in Spain, where my grandparents had been born and raised.
My paternal grandmother was a gentle, competent, and devoted presence also took care of the family and home full-time. My brothers and I grew up in the midst of two large families โ 4 grandparents, 25 aunts and uncles and 29 first cousins, most of whom lived within 5 miles of us in the Paterson area. Thus, despite the eventual dispersion of our family to Florida, Arizona,. Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Maryland and Pennsylvania, I have always had a sense of belonging โ even though I was decidedly on my own to make a life.
In addition, having grown up knowing all 4 of my grandparents, and experiencing them as people with a sense of dignity and purpose, and also noting the respect they were given by their children and grandchildren โ given all of that, I have never been the least bit uncomfortable with aging.
Although aging has never posed a problem for me, growing up and becoming myself has definitely not been easy. Oddly, to the point, this past February, just one month shy of my 71st birthday, I attended a production of Billy Elliot.
As I look back over the years, it is clear to me that I had something of an epiphany โ a vision of what I was meant to be โwhen I was 12 or 13 years old. I have no idea what may have inspired me or stimulated my thought, but I do recall thinking that if everyone really knew that God loved them they would be happy. And I simultaneously decided that I would become a Catholic priest. Given the fact that everyone in my large family was a practicing Catholic and that my brothers and I attended a Catholic parochial school, such an ambition may seem expectable.
