Barbara Dube Costa

I've always lived in Rhode Island. I spent my early childhood in Newport and my teen years in Portsmouth. My husband grew up in Portsmouth. When we were first married, we lived in Middletown briefly, and then over the bridge in Bristol. When our three sons started school, we moved into our new home in Tiverton - still in Rhode Island's East Bay communities. What can I say; we love the water. We sailed on Narragansett Bay for thirty years then traded our sailboat for kayaks from which we explore the lakes, ponds, rivers and coastline all around the state and nearby Massachusetts.

My husband and I still live in Tiverton, in the same house in which we raised our children. Now that we're retired, we have been fortunate enough to be able to travel around this beautiful country and a few others. What I've come to realize is that people are the same wherever you go. We all have the same mix of personalities, ambitions, vices, and virtues - and we all have stories to tell.

My parents lived in Florida for over twenty years after they retired from their jobs in Newport. When my mother was eighty-two and a widow of seven years, she returned to Rhode Island. After a brief stay with my husband and me, she went to live a few miles away in Fall River, Massachusetts, her childhood home. She left Fall River shortly after marriage and had not lived there since. Because we were living so close, I was lucky enough to be able to spend time with her in a way that I never had before. Living in Fall River brought back many childhood memories and I encouraged her to share them with me. They were not always happy memories; the Great Depression caused many hardships. I was fascinated by her stories and wanted to know more about what her life had been like. Her reminiscing inspired me to write my first book. I wanted to share her story because, although we learn so many lessons from the generation before us, we don't always know how those lessons came to be learned. This can be as inspiring as the lessons themselves.