“Again the lilac blossoms sway
Above the windowsills,
And every white and purple spray’
Exotic perfume spills.”
“Memories” by Mildred North

Our flowers are magnificent. All down the sunny side of the house, we have an amazing assortment of flowers: daffodils, yellow, red, and orange tulips, and even grape hyacinths. Our rose bushes are beginning to leaf-out. One of the weathermen mentioned that our area’s growing season is two weeks later than usual because of all the snow and cold temps. The forsythia bushes near Penneys’ fence are a little spotty. We took clippers to the bushes last fall because they were too thick and too tall. I think we were over zealous. Hopefully they will leaf-out. On the way home from shopping the other day, we stopped and bought eight geraniums, four hot pink and four white ones. We want to put some fertilizer in the two whiskey barrel planters before we put the geraniums in the middle of them. Our clean-up crew came last Sat. and cleaned the yard beautifully. Spring is definitely here.

Here is more about my friend of 62 years, Agnes (Farquharson) Smith, who died on Apr. 24. We met on our first day at State Teachers College at Boston. We taught across the street from each other in the Weymouth Schools. We were in St. Kevin’s Choir together—and we’ve been close friends ever since.

We used to kid each other: “If I didn’t ruin the kids in my first grade, she would, in her second grade.” Thank goodness, we were just joking; our students were bright, so they did quite well. We also had a favorite joke: “Barbara, your stockings are baggy!” “But Agnes, I’m not wearing stockings!”

One time, near Christmas, when there were very few students around our college, Agnes and I were in the large lobby of the main building. We enjoyed the Everly Brothers and began to sing one of their songs. The brothers harmonized beautifully on this song. Agnes had such a good voice that she could harmonize while I sang the lead part. While we were singing, a student came in and said, “I didn’t know that we had music in the lobby.” Agnes and I looked at each other and smiled. We didn’t let on that we were the singers. It was our finest hour!

Another time, Ag had a goldfish in her little school. Her children loved watching him. Over the weekend, the old furnace went off. (Her school was the oldest in Weymouth.) When Agnes came back to school on Monday, the fish was in icy water. He was not moving. Ag put the fish bowl on her hot plate and heated the water slightly. The fish came back to life and began moving around the bowl. I don’t remember how long he lived after that, but I remember it was for a while. She had brought him back to life.

I left Weymouth just before my son Paul was born, after teaching almost five years. Agnes had taught for nine years when she became pregnant. Her husband Joe was a sweetheart. He was also very handy. He could do almost anything. Ag and Joe first lived in an apartment in Dorchester. Then Joe was assigned to work on Cape Cod by his employer, the phone company. After they were there for a few months, Joe asked Ag if she would like to live on the Cape. “No way, I’m a city gal.” When his work on the Cape was finished, they moved to Paisley Park where Joe’s Mom lived on the second floor with his brother William. Their daughters Patty and Maura went to school, Patty to the Woodward School, and Maura, to MRM, while they lived on Paisley Park.

After Joe’s Mom passed and William married, Ag and Joe decided to look for a home, much smaller than their huge one in Dorchester. They found the perfect home in Quincy, near Wollaston Beach. Joe loved working on their new home. As I mentioned before, he could do anything.

When Joe retired from the phone company, Ag decided that she would volunteer a few days at the Adams Mansion in Quincy, the home of John and Abigail Adams, not too far from their home. During her interview, the woman in charge of the mansion asked her background. Ag told her that she had graduated from State Teachers College at Boston; she received her Master’s Degree in Education from Northeastern; and she had taught in Weymouth for nine years. (Ag and Joe even postponed their wedding until she received her Master’s Degree.) The woman at the Adams Mansion was so impressed with Ag’s credentials that she asked her to become an employee of the National Park Service, not just a volunteer. Ag told Joe what the woman had said. Joe told her that if she returned to work, he would have the dinner ready for her when she came home from work each day. He was a pretty good cook because he had cooked for his Mom.

Ag loved her job. She was so personable and knew so much history when leading her tour groups through the mansion, that visitors loved her. She worked in the mansion only from April to November, because there was no heat in the mansion during cold weather. (The mansion was closed during the coldest weather.) She was then asked to become a staff member at the Visitors’ Center in Quincy, for the rest of the year.

When she finally retired, we kept track of her and the family via phone. In recent years, Ag loved to watch movies. After being friends for so many years, I knew the type of movie that she liked. Hubby and I had more movie channels than she had so we taped the movies on those channels for her. When we got a few filled tapes, Hubby would call Agnes to make sure she was home and bring them down to her. She would give him back the tapes she had already watched and we taped over those for her. Agnes also loved to garden. She joined the Wollaston Garden Club. One year, we found a good-sized statue of her favorite saint, Francis, and we bought it for her. She put it out in her garden, where it still stands.

Agnes was one of our senior class officers at “Boston State” so she met with our other class officers, OFD’s Elaine DeCosta, her friend Therese, and our class president Bob Casey and his wife Kathy, also a classmate. The last two of our reunions, the 50th and 55th, which were planned by these five, were magnificent. I have photos, that Hubby took, of our mutual pals Elaine and Agnes at the Registration Desk at both reunions.

Just before our 55th reunion, Agnes learned that she had breast cancer. She did not want the news to spoil our reunion so we did not say anything. She did her radiation, with both of her terrific daughters, Patti and Maura, alternating days to take her for her treatments. The girls have been exceptionally wonderful to their Mom.

Recently, she discovered that her cancer had returned, this time in her spine and back. She began radiation, with her daughters again alternating taking her back and forth for treatments. The doctors then discovered that her cancer had spread to her brain. The girls made a TV room upstairs when they discovered that she did not have the strength to walk back up the stairs to her bedroom after breakfast.

Agnes had entered the Maryknoll Order after high school. She had hoped to be a missionary. After two years, she came out of the convent. I believe that her two years in the convent helped her withstand the suffering that she must have experienced during her illness. The girls told me that she never complained of the pain. I am sure that Agnes lasted this long because of their care and concern. Hubby, our children, our mutual pal and classmate, Elaine, and I join in sending our sympathy to her daughters Patty and Maura, to Ag’s sister Mary, her sister Dolly, and her brother Donny. We will miss her.

It was so good to see our Neponset friends Ann, Ginny, and Gemma at Agnes’s wake. They were there because they are good friends of Ag’s sister Dolly. Also, while Hubby and I were in the parking lot of the funeral home, we saw the president of our senior class at STCB, Bob Casey, walking to his car. We had a chance to chat with him for a few minutes. We hadn’t seen Bob since our 55th college reunion in 2011. We asked him to remember us to his wife Kathy, also our classmate.

I was sorry to read of the death of Diane (Coughlin) Weir, unexpectedly, on Apr. 24. Diane was the wife of Gordon “Tom” and the mother of William. She was the sister of Edward Coughlin, Eileen Howe, Bobby Coughlin, and the late Billy Coughlin. She was a graduate of Northeastern U. and Boston College. Diane was active in St. Ann’s Parish. I send my sympathy to Tom, William, and the rest of the family.
Thanks to the St. Ambrose Bulletin, I learned that the Sophomore Class of Cardinal Spellman High School from Brockton worked hard to clean the property around St. Ambrose Church. Bravo to those students!

This is a lovely thought, by Gail Newcomb, from her poem “No One Like Mother”: “There’s no other person so sweet and so kind. There’s no other person at least in my mind.” May all Mothers and Grandmothers have a wonderful Sunday!