Editor’s note: 2020. While we have all experienced changes to our daily lives during the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are also hopeful about what is coming for all of us in 2021. On that note, the Westfield News once again asked members of the WhipCity Wordsmiths to share some impressions and reflections for a writers’ series which continues today with Heidi Parker Colonna of Westfield.
WESTFIELD-Heidi Parker Colonna came to Westfield at age 9 when her mother Pat married longtime Court Street accountant Bill Harmon.
After moving away at the end of high school, she was drawn back in 2011 by St. Mary’s Elementary where her oldest son Kevin enrolled, the bike trail, and memories of her childhood dog.
Heidi Parker Colonna is a middle school religion and social studies teacher at St. Mary’s Parish School in Westfield. (SARAH GIUSTI PHOTO)
She now works as a middle school religion and social studies teacher at St. Mary’s and lives with her husband, Al; Kevin and younger son AJ, and their dog CeeCee.
Colonna also serves as consulting writer and editor for the children’s magazine, Kind News, has written more than 100 articles for magazines like All Animals, and co-authored a chapter on animals in children’s literature in the book, The State of the Animals II. She’s written about family and faith for Pregnancy & Newborn Magazine’s blog and the Red Lion Inn’s Lion’s Tales: A Collection of Shorts. She is working on publication of a middle grade novel based on the dogs of her childhood helping her through grief.
Her submission is titled ‘Worst Year Ever’ brought us together.
“Dumpster fire.”
“Very Bad. Would not recommend. Would give zero stars if I could.”
In March, I wouldn’t have argued with the reviews of 2020 that would be printed on T-shirts and Christmas ornaments and swiped up social media feeds. It’s only in looking back that the silver linings glisten.
First, I watched my students walk away for who-knows-how-long before balancing my stack of books down the stairs and into the wilds of remote teaching. Then, my husband Al and I woke up to a call that his father, “Big Al,” was declining fast in lockdown in his assisted-living room. Here is a man who, just a few years earlier, drove his PT Cruiser from Springfield to Westfield every day to hold the littlest Al, his youngest grandbaby “AJ,” on his lap and let him play with the steering wheel before turning back. Here is a sports fanatic who played for the Chicago Cubs’ farm team as a young man before going off to Korea. For the first time in Big Al’s 90 years, sports stopped being broadcast on TV. It had to be like a best friend you always see just up and disappearing. He could no longer eat with his real friends or have us visit, either.
Adrenaline did its work last March. I figured out how to Zoom and Google with the kids. We brought Big Al from his solitude to our living room. Al set up doctor visits by phone. We had to get him to eat. With all this happening under our roof, we asked ourselves, “What pandemic?”
The Colonna family – affectionately known as the “Three Al’s” – grandfather “Big Al,” son Al, and grandson, Al or “AJ,” seen during the summer of 2018.” (HEIDI PARKER COLONNA PHOTO)
The rest of Big Al’s family camped out in front of his living room window to keep the ominous new bug away from the patriarch. I handed him his dinner before bringing my dad his in the family room down the hall while our dog dug up a sprinkler head out back. That was Easter. AJ’s T-ball was cancelled, so Al made his own practice on the lawn where Big Al could watch from the front door.
Two months after moving in, not even the sun on our front doorway could coax Big Al from his bed anymore. Father John and Father Furman arrived with their prayers. On a Wednesday night in late May, the littlest Al brought a cup of watermelon and the last smile to his “Nono’s” face before climbing the stairs to bed. The new virus from the East did not interrupt his grandfather’s old age; it was old age and not Covid that caused his passing. The crazy thing is that without the threat of the virus, this precious last moment wouldn’t have been.
In August, St. Mary’s reopened. We held religion outside on the first days, searching for clovers, symbols of the unity of the trinity of God and of our little community. Never have I appreciated more the living, breathing energy of a group of 11-, 12-, or 13-year-olds.
As the reason for “the worst year ever” looms, we can’t believe we’ve made it to the St. Mary’s top floor Advent tradition of singing “O Come O Come Emmanuel” together. I come home and sit with Al and look at our tree where Big Al’s recliner was. No tiny dumpster ornaments, just Big Al’s Red Sox bell and a miniature Entering Westfield sign that remind us of the homey goodbye we had here. We say how proud he’d be of the boys, growing like string beans and soaking up their favorite new things: car repair for the oldest, hockey for the littlest. “I love sports and watermelon, just like Nono!” AJ exclaims. It’s been a heck of a year, but it’s a beautiful day.
