I’ve been thinking a lot about Christmas lately. Not the tidy, Hallmark version, but the noisy, imperfect, chaotic kind I grew up with. This is one of those stories.

Every December, I find myself thinking less about the Christmases I want and more about the ones I actually had. Not the polished versions — the loud, improvised, slightly dangerous ones. The kind that happened in a crowded little house on the corner of Liberty and South Loring, where money was tight, time moved slowly, and somehow everything worked out anyway. This is one of those stories.

Step into a Friday night in 1978, when boxing was on free TV, bars came with gallon jars of pickled mystery snacks, and my dad found a creative way to manage his lunch tab—by putting it on mine.

This story, pulled from my latest book‍ ‍A River Still Runs, is part comedy, part memory, and all Lowell.

Big day — I’ve just launched my new author website and published my first blog post!

My memoir, A River Still Runs, looks back on growing up in a big Irish Catholic family in Lowell, Massachusetts during the 1960s and ’70s.

To kick things off, I’ve shared a favorite chapter from the soon-to-be-published book, A River Still Runs called “That Christmas Look.”

If you’ve ever had a Christmas that went a little sideways (or a rug that never quite recovered), I think you’ll enjoy this one.