¶ … Souls by Michael Patrick MacDonald To Whom it May Concern,

My name is Michael Patrick Macdonald and before I begin attending therapy sessions with you, I thought it best to introduce myself in hopes of explaining where I come from. My story begins in a housing project known as Old Colony, in the Lower End, which was an especially crime-ridden and impoverished area of the South Boston neighborhood affectionately known by residents as "Southie." Despite the regular occurrence of murder, robbery and other violent crime, and no matter how badly my family and our neighbors struggled to make ends meet, Southie was always supposed to be "the best place in the world, as Ma used to say before the kids died." But my four brothers did die and they are still dead, just like the hundreds of other young people for whom the crowds still gather at the old Gate of Heaven Church, where candles are lit and the neighborhood holds vigil for generations of fallen children. When I recently returned to Southie, encountered once again by the landmarks and monuments of my own broken childhood, "I didn't know now if I loved or hated this place. All those beautiful dreams and nightmares of my life were competing...

After all, I can still remember my experience at the vigil, when "I looked up at all the faces of my friends and neighbors who had broken their silence, in a way, by getting up there and saying their loved ones' names through a loudspeaker -- in Southie, of all places, the best place in the world."
When my Ma said that about Southie, that it was the best place in the world, maybe she meant it… After all, she never saw any place else up close. She gave birth to 11 children in this neighborhood, raised 10 children, and even buried four of them throughout the years, all right here in Southie. So perhaps her fierce affection for this forsaken place, like that shown by nearly all of those who call Southie home, can be explained somehow, who knows? I still remember how Ma used to head out for the local homeless shelter to give haircuts, not caring in the slightest about the lice that came back home with her, because "Ma loved being around the homeless. She said it kept her going, listening to all their stories and sending them off 'looking like a million bucks." She was something else I tell you, an original if there ever was one, never showing any sign of backing down despite the hardships life consistently saw fit to thrust upon her shoulders. After Dave MacDonald -- the man who others may call my father, but who never deserved that honor in my eyes -- had the gall to skip out on his own child's funeral, Ma wouldn't let him live it down, but…