A Pink Wool Skirt

This photo of my sister and me was taken when I was six and she was four. She's the one with the braids. I think maybe it was taken before our parents were divorced, in January 1947. 

Mother made those pleated skirts for us in soft wool. They were identical, except for color. Mine was pink and my sister's was blue. I wore mine to school, where I was in first grade. We were learning to read from a "Dick and Jane" reader. Sometimes I got so confused. One of the stories was about how a group of playmates made a train out of cardboard boxes. They called it "our train." In our family, we pronounced "our" like the letter "R". For all I know, so did everyone in northwestern Pennsylvania. However, Miss Barrelle, our teacher, insisted on pronouncing "our" like "hour." So I would sit there all befuddled. The kids in the book would have called the train "R train", wouldn't they?  Whoever heard of an "hour train"?

Unable to make sense of the difference between "our" and "R", I zoned out. I soon made a thrilling discovery.  By pushing a pencil through the soft pink wool of my skirt, I could make a satisfying black dot.  In fact, I could make 25 or more black-dot stars in a pink sky. 

Mother was not pleased. 

 

A Poem: Sled Ride

I wrote this poem about a childhood memory nearly10 years ago. Mother's second husband-to-be lived on a street parallel to our own, separated by Shady Brook Park. On snowy days Mother would often pull my sister and me through the park on a sled. One day we just happened to meet up with a man we didn't know.

Two tiny girls

capped and mittened,

snug on a baby's sled,

Mother's boots squeaking

in the crisp, new snow 

as she pulled us along, 

down the hill

and through the park, 

across the creaky wooden bridge.

The stream trickled slowly

as water stood freezing in the pond.

Bare branches rattled in the ice-blue sky,

clutching at winter as if to hold it close.

Spring was stirring in our mother's frozen heart.

Who was this man we didn't know?

Her smile was warm as April,

her laughter, dazzling as crystals.

Who was this man out walking in the snow?

 

SLED RIDE

Two tiny girls,
capped and mittened,
snug in a baby's sled,
Mother's boots squeaking
in the crisp, new snow
as she pulled us along,
down the hill
and through the park,
across the creaky wooden bridge.

The stream trickled slowly
as water stood freezing in the pond.
Bare branches rattled in the ice-blue sky,
clutching at winter as if to hold it close.

Spring was stirring in our mother's frozen heart.
Who was this man we didn't know?
Her smile was warm as April,
her laughter, dazzling as crystals.
Who was this man out walking in the snow?

Off to Peek 'n Peak Tomorrow

Tomorrow I'm driving to Peek 'n Peak, a family resort in southwestern New York state, to attend my niece's wedding. I'm looking forward to a reunion with my four sisters. Three are actually half sisters, but they are all sisters to me.

First stop along the way will be Valencia, PA, to visit BF. She is the sweet woman who boarded a Greyhound near Pittsburgh three times during the past 18 months to come down to stay with Mom while the Tree Hugger and I went away for long weekends. I'm giving her Mom's service-for-six sterling silver.

We won't discuss politics. The last time the TH picked BF up at the bus station (October 2008), he said, "Might as well tell you. We have an Obama sign in our front yard."
"Oh, said she, "he's a Muslim."
"No, he's not."
"Yes,he is."
"So I suppose you're voting for McCain."
"Yes, but I'm not that crazy about him. I really like Sarah Palin though. If Hillary had won the nomination, I would have voted for her."

Since we won't be discussing politics, we won't be discussing health care reform either. BF has private insurance, but she's not happy with it. "They don't pay jackshit," she says.

Then on to Meadville, where I'll visit my 90-year-old Aunt Virginia, who's in the Assisted Living Center at Wesbury United Methodist Community. Aunt Virginia, who's about 90, lived alone until this June, when my cousin, Harry, realized that she was getting forgetful. Pots boiled dry on the stove, bills unpaid, etc. Mom and I used to stay with Aunt Virginia when we came up to Meadville so Mom could visit her friends. I wonder if Aunt Virginia will still recognize me.

Finally Peek 'n Peak. The wedding is Saturday evening. On Sunday, we'll regroup in Erie, PA, at the home of one of the sisters.

On Monday, my sister Barbara and I will visit our mothers' graves at Greendale Cemetery in Meadville. Both our birth mother and my stepmother are buried there. It will be the first time I've seen Mom's grave since her death in December. She's buried beside our dad. Our birth mother, who died ten years ago, is buried beside her second husband.

I'll be home by Monday night. Summer day camp will have ended for our grandson and school won't have started, so he'll be with me all week. Maybe we'll go see the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History.

Domestic Terrorism

As soon as I heard about the killing of Dr. Tiller, I thought, "Domestic terrorism."

Although I am a card-carrying member of NARAL Pro-Choice America, I always had qualms about late-term abortion. The murder of this man has brought some facts to light about this procedure. Now that I have read stories about what drove women to seek out late-term abortion, I firmly believe that the state has no grounds for interfering in a woman's decision, even in this case. This procedure must remain safe and legal.

I'm ambivalent about abortion. I wish it were never necessary. Like President Clinton, I want it to be "rare and safe," but we live in the real world. It's a necessary safety valve.

I can tell you three stories from my own experience. Both grandmothers and my mother had abortions. My maternal grandmother started married life in Cambridge Springs, PA, which was then a resort town. She and her husband lived with his mother. When grandmother got pregnant, her mother-in-law said, "You'll not have that baby in this house!" I was in my mid-30's when Grandmother told me this story. I pictured Great-Grandmother standing at her front door, sternly pointing out into the stormy night, as the young couple slunk away.

"No, not at all," said Grandmother, "I just went to see this doctor in Cambridge Springs, who performed D&C's all the time." Such things were possible in pre-World War I Cambridge Springs.

My paternal grandmother, Grammy, made no bones about it: "I never wanted children, " she'd say, when she'd had one drink too many. Nevertheless, she bore two sons in her early twenties, 16 months apart. These unplanned pregnancies nearly broke up the marriage. She loved her boys, but she never had any more children. Mother told me disapprovingly that Grammy "got rid of" the others. I'm sure contraceptive devices, such as the diaphragm, were available, if you could somehow get one. The laws of that time made it nearly impossible. The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, spent time in jail for providing women with contraceptives.

During the Depression and leading up the World War II, abortion went underground. My dad, like his mother, did not want children. Mother wanted a large family. Eventually, they had two daughters, and eventually, they divorced. Early in their marriage, my dad convinced my mother to abort her first pregnancy. She said it was a humiliating and horrifying experience, performed in a back-alley room without pain relief of any kind.

I'm still ambivalent about abortion, but not about a woman's right to choose. I grieve for Dr. Tiller and his family and shudder to think of the terror that haunts others who provide this service.

Caught Between Two Mothers

I was 22 years old when Mom adopted me. After my dad was killed in the plane crash, Mom and I talked about adoption, for reasons both practical and sentimental. As Mom's adopted daughter, I would be exempt from inheritance taxes on her estate. But there were reasons of the heart as well. We loved each other; we were family.

Six months after my dad's death, I got married and moved to California. No more was said about adoption until a year later, the autumn of 1963, when Mom suddenly needed surgery. She petitioned the Orphans' Court of Crawford County to adopt me.

Did this sit well with my birth mother? It did not.

My birth mother, who had moved to Florida with my sister when I was six, had returned years before to northwestern Pennsylvania with her husband, my sister and two half-sisters. Her work as a court reporter often took her to the court house in Meadville, where a helpful clerk told her about the petition. Why didn't I tell her myself? I don't know. Perhaps I was afraid to tell her. Perhaps I thought there was plenty of time, because the adoption would not be final until September 1964. Perhaps it was because I was preoccupied with other things. We were expecting our first child in November.

A scathing letter arrived from Mother shortly after she learned about the petition. She was furious. She said that some people would do anything for money. She said that the adoption would make it as if she had never borne me and that my stepmother's name would replace hers on my birth certificate. Furthermore, she would not be the grandmother of our baby and my sister and half-sisters would not be the baby's aunts. It was a "Good-bye, forever" letter. She signed it "Mary."

I was furious in turn. I was ready to reply with a scorching letter of my own. My husband said, "Oh, no, you don't. Don't write while you're this mad. Send a baby announcement. Send a card at Christmas. Keep writing letters the way you always have."

That's what I did. I sent cards and then letters. I addressed them "Dear Mother." I didn't bother to make excuses or explain, because I thought nothing I could say would have made any difference. Besides, she'd already figured out that money was one of the reasons, and she probably didn't want to be reminded of the other.

Eventually Mother let it go. She answered my letters, but at first she signed them "Mary." After awhile, she took to signing them "M." Finally, she reverted to "Mother." No matter what a piece of paper said, we both knew that she was and always would be my mother.