Moving to New England gave me and my family the chance to witness history. One day living in Concord Massachusetts, I was talking with my mother (always a history buff) on the phone upstairs our apartment which was right next to the large cemetery off route 62. 

On this day Massachusetts celebrates Patriots’ Day. As we were talking while looking out the window I exclaimed, “Mom, the Redcoats are coming! “She chuckled. I chuckled. What I saw was a group of men marching down the road coming from Bedford into Concord. They were costumed in their redcoats carrying their muskets and other gear. They were on their way to the bridge where the “shot was heard around the world,” to perform the reenactment.

Through the years when I was so many miles away from home, I would write my mother letters of my experiences in places we lived. My mother used to say that she traveled through my letters. That meant the world to me, the idea that she, not only enjoyed my letters but, gained experience through them - experience that she would not otherwise have enjoyed.

(To be continued)