His name was Joe….

His name was Joe.

Joe was born in a cappuccino beige colored hospital located across the street from a fire station. This hospital provided a good sum of the taxable jobs that were deemed available in the small farm town of central Texas. Texas was the starting point but Joe’s family relocated before he was able to read, write or articulate the labeled, officially incorporated surrounding towns and cities.

His family began their domestic migration before he could clearly enunciate the phonetic sounds of any discernible English words. He was often curious where in Texas he and his family had once resided, but much of the documented paperwork that had been offered to provide information about his young life was lost. It had been blown about in the everyday mix of life, moving, making room for family. This made it either unretrievable or difficult to read. Much of the paperwork he came across through diligent efforts to scour the files of his household was disappointingly crumpled. These papers had been stained by coffee, butter, and they wore age on each corner as an obvious badge of lived-time.

Joe could recall a point in his life where his family was able to proclaim a small, comfortable two bedroom residence as their abode, it was a home that he proudly identified as his own when he recounted his early days. He enjoyed sharing the details and features of this home where his family once experienced life- together.

There was one bathroom just behind the mustard yellow dwelling that his family shared during that time period. That grainy mustard colored home was not far from the southern coastal Florida regions his mom had imagined herself one day living near. Joe knew the residence was sufficient enough in size & he reminisced about the days when his family was living together under the same enamel plaster-ceilinged home.

That structure was significant for different reasons. Despite the variety of reasons, Joe knew that it once housed his mother, three siblings and young Joe before they all ventured north toward Boston.

Massachusetts was the next state that his mother envisioned a new focus upon.

Now that she’d re-considered her dream of living in Florida, she placed a new concentration on bringing her children to the Northeast.

She had heard about the prominent brick veneer of Harvard University, the clean streets of Boston and she knew that Universities were splayed about all through the ‘smart state’, as Massachusetts was referred to by her friend Joy. She hoped her children would benefit immensely from this relocation as a culture of aspiring young people had the capacity to inspire her offspring to “reach & pursue college degrees,” she once explained to young Joe. Massachusetts would bring a better life, one full of aspiring academics; she daydreamed, hoped and thought to herself. She even prayed at night as the lights went dim around the house. She prayed that this move would work out to open new doors for her children.

Joe wasn’t sure how life might have turned out had his family stayed put in Texas or what might have been, had they settled in Florida. This curiosity crossed his palate of thoughts, he wasn’t sure if this move to Massachusetts was something his family benefitted from or if it was the specific reason his oldest brother Jason began to spiral downward.

Joe was certain of one thing about the Boston area, he loved the trains, ride the buses and he appreciated how accessible the city was with this elaborate transportation system.