Early years to recent times:

This page depicts the first years of my life, and a time of transition for the Habib family in general as the family dealt with double divorces, family leaving and traveling to the West Coast and Hawaii. Ricki, my mother's brother is in Hawaii at the Coast Guard Academy. His rebellion from the family sparked my mother's own initiation into the world as well, and later influenced Glenn and myself.

My Parents: Wedding Day.

Here is an image of my mother and father from Asbury Park New Jersey. They went to high school together, he lived in Asbury Park in an English/German/Native-American/Albanian family, the more run-down area of town, and she from a Turkish Sephardic Jewish father and a English with some Cherokee mother.

My Grandmother:

Here is a picture of my grandmother from when we moved North to Peapack after my mother and I returned from California.

I think this picture shows the fierce determinism of my grandmother, and her regal beauty in a lovely light.

This picture marks my Mother and I's return from Cali. For the Habib's it is a difficult time, as they will move up North to Peapack leaving behind my cousin Richard Wayne and his mother, my aunt Judy.

Judy had also just gone through a painful divorce, and Richard was lost in the custody battle between her and her husband. As she only had weekend custody, this marked his seperation from the Habib family.

Just as Glenn and I were as brother and sister, so were Richie and Glenn, in fact even more so, as I had been taken away to Santa Rosa for so long there was a strong seperation for Glenn.

Now to get me back and Richie taken was too much. The other little girl in the picture is my friend from birth Leanne Stein. It was definately a Jewish neighborhood.

I am born

I was a shock to the family. I take after my grandmother. The first to do so, so boldly.

Richard Wayne was light haired with carmel hair and hazel eyes, but not this blond.

I look drastically different from my mother. But her dark olive complexion turns ghost white with the strain of working and caring for a baby.

Also an adjustment for the boys. No girls had been born in a while. As a result, I became a tomboy with hot wheels and race cars.

The Young Richie Rich...

Here is a tribute to a young and happy Richard Wayne, before all the difficulties in his life.

Later he will go from being a construction worker to a stock broker in the style of his father Ski.

As a child I often thought of him as the character Richie Rich and read the series vorociously in a way to bring him back into my life.

We all felt his loss from our lives most dearly, but perhaps none as much as Grandma and Glenn.

I wonder often who he might have been. Explorer, coast guard, ice hockey star, mountain climber....

I was an avid swimmer,

      And happiest in the water as a water baby of Neptune, New Jersey.

      We had already made our Westward voyage to Cali across the Grand Canyon, and this was during a visit of Glenn and my Grandparents. I was ecstatic.

Further proof that not only little boys have idea of spatial interaction and play with cars.

  I was never without my hot wheels, or racing cars.

No doubt taken at Rickie's entry into the Coast during a ceremony in Hawaii.

One can see the exhilaration of these two as they enter their 40's and their children begin leaving the nest leaving them with just Glenn to care for.

Unfortunately, that happiness will be short lived as my grandmother is forced to care for me and Ricki, a task she willingly does with great love and esteem.

Ricki went from out of the frying pan and into the fire, looking for some independence from the tyranny of Grandmother, he joined the coast guard only to be under the direction of a Vietnemese sargent not to happy with Houleys who beat him up pretty bad in training him in the martial arts.

Still his instruction would be indispensible for Ricki throughout his life, but give him a hard edge in inter-relations with others.

Here we see a sense of Judy that will never leave her. Before she wore complicated beehive hairdo's and the like, now as the 70's dawn on she finds her sense of style and becomes the truly beautiful aunt that we all know and love.

Her youth and independence change little over the years from then on.

This is one of the only pictures I have of her in her favorite color, yellow. Her red hair has lightened also towards blond. With several children out of the house Martha, or Micki as she is called begins to let her hair down and show her playful personality.

A difference, even in parenting style, not lost on my mother, who would complain that I did not receive the same style of parenting from Grandmother that she did, which was more restrictive.

THis is my mother as I remembered her throughout my childhood, when she changed her style to suit Larry and a corporate lifestyle (AT&T) I was confused when she cut her hair, and did not recognize her at all immediately.

Not only had she cut her hair, she changed her personality completely and became cynical rather than idealistic, she also became immediately distant to me, a distance we never have been able to surmount since the day she cut her hair.

What I did not understand as a child was my mother was returning to her past self, the cynical teenager with a proper sense and rather conservative.

It was someone I had never met.

My mother wore this suit almost exactly when I took Larry to court, siding with him against the state.

Grandma does have a mouth on her and here you can see how that affected Ricki in this picture, he looks slightly afraid here not wanting to offend.

Although, truthfully I think he over reacted, there is truth that understanding her humor comes with age.

Boy if a picture could say a thousand words, Grandma in the back looks ready to kill him! As she would say, "I could kill 'em" a favorite family joke, to which Glenn would call her the goat and pinch her cheeks lovingly so she would relax. No you can't blame Ricki for being a little afraid of this powerful Tulsan woman.

But here her wrath is appropriate, he's flaking out and not being the father and provider he should be. He's doing some construction but smoking pot and hanging out, using abandoned wire cable cylinders for tables to roll his joints on while he is supposed to be taking care of me, while my mother works all day at the telephone company, Bell Pacific.

I can remember that brown jacket of hers and that purse like it was yesterday. This is the woman I grew up with. Her kind countence was like the Goddess Tara, however this benevolence allowed him to take advantage of her. A fact which caused her to become a much more cynical person in the future.

This is my grandmother as I knew her all my years, platinum blond hair, slight belly, casual slacks in trendy colors. Beautiful colored clothes. A curvaeous aging Marilyn Monroe.

This is right in front of the house in Neptune, I can still smell the chrsythum's. They say they are good for eyesight, no one in my family needs glasses till their 50's.

THey are yellow and orange, and smell like a fresh spring morning.