Word: joan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...years have passed. It is a long time in which to keep memories alive through various stages of interest (and lack of interest, for that is the way of even the most loving children). Joan Abbott has done it well, pretty much alone. "Joe and I agreed when we got married that I'd be a real mother -so that's what I'm doing...
...Joan and Joe Abbott bought this seven-room house in August 1966, just before Matthew was born. Joe left behind an unfinished project-a willow tree to be planted in the backyard. After he was gone, Joan turned it into a family test of hope. They tried many times to get a willow to take root. The trees kept dying. Finally, two years ago a root took. The omen was, of course, good...
...Joan has encouraged the children to write poems, essays, diaries, anything to draw from their young minds the secret thoughts that a father might some day want to share. She tries to spend as many minutes as possible with her youngest child. "In my mind," she explains, "I'm making a mental movie called Matthew. When Joe gets home, I'm going to play...
Last spring, when Matthew entered kindergarten, Joan decided to return after 20 years to nursing school. Every day she makes the round trip of 120 miles from Alloway to Philadelphia General Hospital's School of Nursing, attends six to eight hours of classes and returns home to cook, shop, clean, study and mother her seven children...
Despite her busy days, Joan Abbott remembers the first 2/2 years after Joe's capture, when he was neither dead nor alive, just M.I.A. She remembers November 1969, when an antiwar group brought back a list of prisoners from Hanoi and Joe was recalled to life as a P.O.W. She saw Joe on television then, being paraded before microphones in Hanoi. Most of all, she remembers the whiplash of last fall, when peace was at hand and then suddenly the hand was gone. Before that promise faded again for a while, Joan decided Joe would be home before Christmas...