Boxborough Story

by Tricia Marcella Cimera


In 1974 my family moved to
Boxborough, Massachusetts and we 
lived in a nice new house, a 
Colonial.  I was ten. We lived on 
Guggins Lane surrounded by fir
 trees that rose up darkly all around
 us. There was a brook with smooth 
stones nearby. My father planted 
sunflowers out front.  In my school 
there was a boy who caught 
bullfrogs and jabbed pencils into
their stomachs and the captured 
frog’s eyes were like my mother’s
eyes when we went to visit her
every day in the hospital psychiatric
ward and she would look at us 
helplessly and cry. The frog’s soft, 
punctured belly was like my heart.
And the boy?  The boy was like the 
neighbor who found out my family’s 
sad story - the story that I knew was 
called Your Mother is Crazy, the one 
I desperately wanted to hide - and 
told everyone on our block. 
Everyone.