Caught in the Act

It’s difficult for me to recall a time when Kevin and I weren’t together. I always knew we were meant to be together, even if other people didn’t. We both grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and although I won’t say we were from “different sides of the track,” we were from completely different sides of the town. And a couple of years apart.

I was born Jean Hathaway Gilpatric on August 13, 1960, and my family’s modest stucco bungalow-style home was in the Meriam Hill section of town, surrounded by much larger and more beautiful Victorian homes. It was an idyllic setting in many respects. Lexington is an old and historic Colonial town, the site of the first battle of the American Revolution. As schoolchildren, we were taught about the battles of Lexington and Concord and Paul Revere’s famous “midnight ride” on April 18-19, 1775. Today, on the third Monday of each April, many faithfully observe Patriot’s Day to commemorate the events of that day, even though most people might identify this regional day of observance with the Boston Marathon or the Red Sox home opener at Fenway Park. Certainly, there is still a strong sense of community there, and I share fond memories with family and friends of gathering on Christmas Eve for our carol stroll. This activity may sound somewhat antiquated to some, but it was a rejuvenating and peaceful experience to walk through the streets of Meriam Hill, songbooks in hand. In my memories, it always seemed to be snowing. My fingers and toes would be numb from the cold, but it didn’t matter—there was such a powerful human connection that occurred. It’s hard to find such spirituality and goodwill at any other time of the year. Try going around in a small group ringing doorbells in July and singing on someone’s front porch, and see what kind of reception you get.

I was the youngest of four siblings, and there was such an age gap between me and them that not only was I the baby of the family, but sometimes I almost felt like an only child. My sister, Jill, was the closest to my age, and we were eight years apart. The difference in age just lent itself naturally to me being bothersome, especially to her. I would follow Jill around everywhere, so much so that she and her friends started calling me Flea.

My brothers, Bill and Peter, and I were divided by a gulf of fourteen and fifteen years, respectively. They were on the cusp of leaving the house and going off on their own when I was growing up. Since I was essentially the only one left at home, the bond I had with my parents, especially my dad, was very strong. By all accounts, I was a tomboy. Right up through my teenage years, all you had to do was look up and you would probably find me perched in a tree somewhere.

My dad, William Henry Gilpatric Jr., was a dentist, a quiet, gentle man whom people admired and respected. His patients had a fondness for him that still exists after all this time. I continue to run into people I haven’t seen in years who tell me that my father had been their dentist and how much they’d liked him. He was only five feet four, but standing across the tennis court at the receiving end of his serve, no one would believe it came from a man his size. The unassuming dignity in which he lived his life may have been due in part to his having fought in World War II and being among those fortunate enough to have returned unscathed, at least physically. He would never talk about his time overseas, but he kept a collection of journals while he was there that were later sent home to my mother, several years after the war had ended. I found them an utterly fascinating glimpse into history from the perspective of one soldier but with the echoing voices of hundreds of thousands. Thinking about it now, perhaps this was the ember fueling the fire in me to document my experiences in my own personal war of sorts.

When I was a little girl, I worshipped the ground my father walked on. But I was only eleven when he was diagnosed with cancer, and I did not fully comprehend how sick he was as he battled the disease for three years before succumbing. I remember the day he passed vividly. It was August 10, 1974, three days before my fourteenth birthday. I was at summer camp when I was suddenly called home with the tragic news. I was devastated, of course, but I was also very angry. As the baby of the family, I was sheltered and protected from the onslaught of life’s cruel realities. So although my mother had tried to protect me from the agonizing pain the rest of my family was experiencing, the cold hard fact that my father had been dying before my eyes had somehow eluded me. I was mad at my mother for lying to me, but I was upset with myself for not knowing. How could I not have seen his suffering while he sat quietly in the lawn chair watching as I did flips past him, practicing my gymnastics?

Adjusting to teenage life is difficult enough, but doing so while suffering the loss of the most significant person in one’s life seriously compounds the ever-constant struggles of these formative years. Of course, my father’s death affected everyone in the family. My mother’s days of bridge club and volunteer work were suddenly over; after being a stay-at-home mom and raising four children, she was suddenly thrust back into the working world. I became a latchkey kid, a somewhat new phenomenon at the time. I was left to supervise myself during the after-school hours until my mother got home at dinnertime.

Our house was close to the center of town, which was bisected by a run of old buildings. We lived directly adjacent to a dilapidated printing press, which made up part of what had been dubbed “Blood Alley.” If anything, the gruesome name seemed to accurately represent the path of life-altering recklessness that many Lexington teenagers would wind up taking, myself included, and as a result, I was constantly involved in the sort of mischief that ran a little too close to the illicit side. It was probably my first glimpse into the reality of how close the dividing line is between the cozy world of suburbia, where I grew up, and the things that exist on the fringe, the things that our parents wanted to keep us away from when they told us to be home at night before the streetlights came on. Somehow, though, I managed to navigate through those difficult years unscathed. Kevin McDonough had everything to do with that.

Our paths first crossed in the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. I had noticed him around town before then, driving his 1968 Chevy pickup truck. It was baby blue and was always sparkling clean and shiny. But he was the one who had caught my eye, with his incredible head of blond curls and the cutest baby face I had ever seen. I was hooked instantly. I asked around about him and found out that he lived on the other side of Mass Avenue in a house filled with kids—a big Irish family.

It was during this time that my mother met my soon-to-be stepdad, and we sold our house on Oakland Street, packed up everything and moved about a mile away. Shortly afterward, I met Kevin for the first time. It is actually a rather embarrassing story, but something we both still chuckle about. I was hanging out one evening with a group of kids, including Kevin; I knew that Kevin was very shy around girls and that I’d need to break the ice if anything was ever going to happen between us, so I approached him and asked if he’d buy me a beer. I wasn’t really a big drinker, but I figured all guys like beer. Or maybe it was just the reckless teen—the Christmas caroler gone bad—coming out in me. Anyway, it worked. He bought me a beer, or three, and we got to know each other. He was a perfect gentleman, so it certainly wasn’t a wildly romantic first encounter. It initiated a lifelong bond, however, and I can’t help but smile when I think back on those days. Kevin still shows traces of that boy I fell in love with when I first laid eyes on him. The Mac Davis curls are gone, replaced by a sharp buzz that flatters his chiseled features. No more baby face, but I can still detect some of that innocence peeking out from behind those beautiful eyes. Sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse of that shy young man, now long since replaced with a razor-sharp wit and offbeat sense of humor, and I wouldn’t trade what we have for anything in the world. But it’s safe to say that back then even I never would have dreamed that we would be together for life. We weren’t the only ones, however, who didn’t think we had a future together.

As I got to know Kevin, I realized how different the two of our families really were. He was the fourth of nine children, seven boys and two girls, and his parents were at least fifteen years younger than my mother and father. His Irish Catholic family was considered blue collar, while my Protestant one was white collar. At that time, there was an underlying socioeconomic division in the different parts of town that each of us came from—only his two sisters had gone to college, whereas my father and brothers had all attended prep school, and we’d all gone to college.

The McDonough house was a small cape near the reservoir. His father was the owner of an electrical construction company, and his mother was truly an incredible woman who spent every waking moment raising her children. With enough McDonoughs to make up a baseball team, it’s no wonder. But it was a job she took very seriously, instilling in the children the paramount importance of both God and family. The entire McDonough brood would take up a whole pew at St. Bridget’s Church on Sunday, with both their parents looking on as their children sat obediently listening to the words of the priest. I can’t help but laugh when hearing them recalling their memories of what a project it was getting all nine of them dressed in their Sunday best, hair combed, and behaving appropriately while at church under their parents’ close supervision.

Looking back, Kevin and I were both strong-willed individuals from very different upbringings, so what people saw when we argued were two people prone to volatile outbursts because of our personalities. But there was a constant undercurrent of mutual respect and affection, and what few others saw was that we always reached neutral ground and made up.

To this day, I am convinced that if I hadn’t met Kevin, my life would have headed in a vastly different direction. I was blessed when I met him, and have continued to be blessed ever since. However, our future almost dissolved before it ever began. No sooner had Kevin and I met than we were suddenly forced apart when my stepfather quickly grew tired of having a teenage girl around all the time and decided to send me off to boarding school. I didn’t want to go, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, and I resented my stepfather for that more than anything. But in a way, I was glad to get away. I didn’t want to stay at home the way things were; it was a difficult living arrangement for everyone. This man could never replace my father, whom I so cherished. So off I went to Cushing Academy prior to my senior year, excited about the prospect of a better educational experience but sad to be leaving behind my friends and my new boyfriend.

When it was time to decide on a college, I chose Ithaca, in upstate New York, following the same path as my brother Peter. Kevin and I continued to date, though the relationship gradually began to become less serious because of the distance between us. As things became more and more rocky, we broke up for a period of time. Then I had an epiphany of sorts: realizing that I wasn’t very happy being so far from home, and so far away from Kevin, I decided to transfer to Simmons College in Boston. Kevin was happy that not only was I closer to home, but I was attending an all-women’s institution.

After I graduated, in 1982, we dated for a couple more years before moving into an apartment together on the Belmont /Cambridge line. After a couple of years we thought we had saved enough money to get married and start a family. We tied the knot on September 29, 1985, and we soon bought a condo in Merrimack, New Hampshire, not far from the Massachusetts state line. I began working at Interactive Training Systems in Bedford, Massachusetts, and Kevin settled full-time into the family business, which was also located in Bedford. The fifty mile each-way drive six days a week—we also went back to Lexington every Sunday for dinner with Kevin’s family—occupied far too much time, and I wasn’t sure how we would ever be able to start a family of our own. It didn’t seem as if we had any time for ourselves. Then our son, Ryan, was born on October 12, 1988, and although there were complications with the delivery, making the early part of our son’s life a precarious time, the six months that the three of us spent in New Hampshire were a joyous time.

Early in the spring of 1989, we found a house we liked back in Lexington, and we moved in, despite not having sold our condo in New Hampshire. The house in Lexington was a fixer-upper, and Kevin put our entire life savings into doing just that, handling a lot of the work himself. When he was done, it was absolutely beautiful, by all accounts our dream home. It was in a great location, just a few houses down from the town’s recreational facilities. It was also perfect because it was centrally situated between both of our parents’ homes. It was the happiest time of our lives, despite the fact that by the time our daughter, Shea, was born, on September 11, 1991, we still hadn’t found a buyer for the New Hampshire property, and we were carrying two mortgages. The monthly payments were slowly draining us financially. To make matters worse, Kevin and I weren’t the only ones in the family feeling this economic pinch—the family’s electrical business was also struggling in a down housing market. There just wasn’t enough work to keep everyone busy and employed with a steady paycheck. But we had to do something, because we were on the verge of losing everything.

In 1993, after much difficult discussion, as well as tears and heartache, Kevin and I decided to move to northern Virginia, where our best friends had moved several years earlier. There seemed to be some promising prospects in the construction field, and we hoped that the cost of living would be lower. And indeed, Kevin was immediately able to secure a job, so we sold our house in Massachusetts, signed a Deed in Lieu on the condo in New Hampshire, jammed all of our belongings into an enormous U-Haul and off we went. I was emotionally torn by the unknown elements we faced but also filled with hope and the potential for a new life with our closest and dearest friends by our side. It took some time to get used to everything, but we eventually did. We were particularly lucky in that we moved to a wonderful neighborhood where the homes were close together and the people closer, a place where religion and community were central parts of daily life. Our children thrived in an environment that reinforced all the foundational moral elements that Kevin and I valued. We met some wonderful people, some of whom we’ve remained friends with to this day.

The only drawback to this new living arrangement was Kevin’s absence. Working as a superintendent in the construction field required him to travel for weeks at a time. This was not something that the kids and I were used to. It eventually became too much for us to endure, and fortunately it was around the same time that the economy began an upswing, and Kevin’s father called asking him to return home so he could help run the business. It was just what we were waiting for; despite the wonderful people and enriching lifestyle in Virginia, I was thrilled and excited to be headed home again. Once a New Englander, always a New Englander, they say—and it’s true.

We found a nice home in Chelmsford to settle into, close to Bedford and affordable. Although it needed quite a bit of work and considerable TLC, we figured we had plenty of time to transform it into our dream home, because this was where we were going to be spending the rest of our lives. One of the first things we did was get a dog, Bosco, a beautiful black retriever mix who seemed to complete our family. We all fell in love with the area immediately. There was nothing not to love. It was a great place to raise a family. For Kevin and me, it was close to where we’d grown up, just twenty miles from where it all began for us. We had come full circle. It was the best of all worlds for us and where we wanted to be.

By 2007, we had been living in the cozy four-bedroom New England-style cape for eleven years. That June, Money magazine listed our town as the twenty-first best place to live in the country that year. It was a proud distinction, but to anyone living there, not surprising—it’s a quiet, affluent suburb that boasted a very low crime rate. The type of community where you didn’t have to worry too much if you happened to go to bed without locking the door. Downtown Chelmsford is in many ways a picture-perfect postcard of New England life, a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.

Chelmsford, however, is not exactly rural. About a hundred yards beyond our back door, I-495 cuts a path to points south to Rhode Island and north to Boston, just thirty miles away. We never thought much about the possible ramifications of a major highway running directly through our backyard. At the time we bought the house, the only conceivable drawback was noise, which is something that you really do get used to. Little did we know that it was not the vehicles that were moving past us on the interstate that were our biggest problem—it was the ones that were stopped in the rest area a quarter mile away.