The Cavity

The Cavity

It was there at the base of my father’s right thumb. It seemed normal to me, as if this was how a father’s hand looked, a contrast to the mound on his left hand. I never questioned it. Why should I? His hands worked equally well at building a swing set for me or tapping his Chesterfield on the steering wheel while driving me to piano lessons or Sunday school.

I’m not sure when I learned that he had contracted polio as a young man. Maybe it was after we were asked to put our dimes into the tiny iron lung for the annual March of Dimes appeal. Maybe after hearing the stories of children who could breathe only when sealed into what looked a giant tin can I began to ask questions.

Whenever it was, I learned not only my father’s history, but how just the word “polio” produced fear and even panic. This was before Salk and Sabin and their miracle vaccines. The disease was something that could catch you if you were in the wrong place, like a swimming pool on a warm summer afternoon. It was something that could kill.

Yet, I knew my father had survived. The story of how he survived, with this cavity the only evidence, was one I would learn later from my mother. My father never talked about it.

An only child, he followed his cousin Harry’s path, attended the High School of Commerce, and went to work in the business world, eventually working for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. It occurs to me as I write this that I never asked exactly what he did there—just another one of those questions I wish I had asked, but now cannot.

At 25 he was tall, handsome, friendly, and hard working. He had a girlfriend whom everyone assumed he was going to marry. Life was good. Then came the weakness in his arm and stomach and the eventual diagnosis of polio.

His world began to change. He no longer drove his tiny Austin to work. After a few visits, his girlfriend stopped coming. His world became confined to the small house on Allen Street—the house and the yard. For it was in the “summer house”—an open wooden structure in the yard beyond the garden—that his father would take him every day and work his muscles hour after hour, day after day, week after week.

And on the day he was finally able to move his arm one inch away from the side of his body, they knew he could and would recover.

All this happened, of course, before I was born. Indeed, it was before my parents met. All this history was held in the cavity of his right hand.

March 14, 2017

Spring’s a week away

yet today--a blizzard

Schools are closed

Buses have stopped

Governors have issued warnings

Worriers have stocked up

on milk and bread

gasoline for the snow blower

deicer for the sidewalk.

Comfortable and warm

I watch clouds of flakes

swirl and pile up

on fence posts and

last year’s weeds.

All is still and quiet.

Then a flash of red—

a faithful cardinal

here to sing his matins.

Children Will Listen

“Careful the tale you tell

That is the spell

Children will listen”

     Stephen Sondheim 

1952 marked the beginning of my interest in presidential elections.  I was seven years old, and I was supporting the Republican candidate--General Dwight D. Eisenhower.  My support had nothing to do with his party. The only parties I understood then were the ones at which I served tea to my dolls in tiny willowware cups. VE Day had happened a month before I was born, so I did not understand his role as a victorious military leader. Certainly I was affected by the fact that my parents—both loyal Republicans—supported Ike. My mother even volunteered for him.

Eisenhower in Korea Two Weeks
Before His Inauguration

But in my young mind and growing consciousness I supported him for a very specific reason. I heard him say he would go to Korea to find an end to the conflict there, and that solidified my support.

Even at that young age I was very aware of war. At night John Cameron Swayze told me about the war in Korea on the Camel News Caravan. During the day at Frederick Harris School we practiced what to do when the Russian bombs came. When the big planes from Westover AFB flew over the house, I worried. I believed Ike would make peace.

I was not much older when I learned about immigration quotas, and I remember being puzzled and angry at a law that would judge persons by their race or country of origin. The fact that some people who wanted to move to my country could be stopped just because of where they came from seemed very wrong to me.

Of course, my sense of injustice only grew as I heard the news coming from the South about legal racial discrimination.I was ten the year of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Emmett Till's murder, twelve when Little Rock Central High School was desegregated. Again there were those images on television every night. This time I watched as angry adults screamed menacingly at students just wanting to go to school. 

Elizabeth Eckford Arrives at Little Rock Central HS

Several years ago when I was in Little Rock for a conference, I stopped by the visitors’ center across from Central High School. Old news footage of that day in 1957 ran on old black and white televisions. I was brought back to the horror and fear I experienced as a child.

Sometimes I think we adults forget that children--even very young children--see and hear what is going on in the world, feel the injustice, and are frightened by the actions those in power make. It is not just we who can put together images of the devastation in Syria, families seeking refuge, and a president who would return them to that horror. 

In the past week I have talked to two different teachers who have told me about the debilitating terror some of their students have experienced since the election. They have listened and seen, and they are very afraid. 

Once

Swift River Dam-Enfield, Massachusetts

There was a river named Swift

powering mills and factories

producing wool and hats

boxes and buttons.

William Gilpin Home

There were four towns

with churches and inns

cemeteries and farms

orchards and fields.

Enfield, Massachusetts Railroad Station

There was a railroad

connecting Athol and Springfield

bringing in news and mail

visitors and family.

Mary Ann Bannister and William Gilpin
behind their home in Enfield, MA

There were school children and farmers

bankers, and preachers

loggers and artists

merchants and blacksmiths.

Enfield Congregational Church

There were Catholics and Protestants

Jews, and atheists

Democrats and Republicans

independents and non-voters.

Enfield, Massachusetts Baseball Team

Winsor Dam, Quabbin Reservoir

There were scholars and the unschooled

There were story tellers and pie makers

pipe smokers and knife sharpeners

baseball players and motorcyclists.

There was a thirsty city named Boston.

Then there was a dam.

Janus

As I step cautiously into 2017, this unknown landscape laid out before me, and I as I read the predictions of what many "in the know" see out there in the wilds of the next twelve months, I am of two minds. I could attribute that to my Gemini nature or that two-faced god for whom this month is named, but I suspect it has more to do with the basic fight or flight response.

When I think of our new president and those that support him coming into power, I am truly frightened for our country and its people, not to mention myself (someone insured by Medicare). Part of me wants to march, write a diatribe, or just scream. The other part wants to turn off the news, watch the birds, and open up a pint of Ben and Jerry's.

I am trying to find a balance between these conflicting parts of my brain. I have always been committed to securing basic human rights for everyone, but at times, like today, the challenges can seem so huge, I become immobilized. To maintain my sanity, I need to withdraw from the battle, if only for a time.

My mother modeled the latter approach. Optimism was her response to the many challenges she faced, starting with losing her mother at five years old, followed by her sister and she being moved from one relative's home to another, sometimes with their father, sometimes not, until she was married. As a young wife she carried a baby to term only to lose it upon delivery. In spite of it all, or maybe because of it, she faced most of life's situations with a positive (some might say naive) outlook. For her, it was a survival skill, and considering she lived to be 96, I would say it worked.

Not infrequently, I found her Pollyanna outlook exasperating. That is not to say she was not sympathetic when I was upset. It was just that she was much quicker to sweep all the negativity away. When I was depressed after the end of a long-term relationship, she listened and supported me. Then a week later she wanted to know if I was all better.

I can't sweep away my fears about the year ahead, but I can't linger on them either. This morning as I was writing this, I read Steve Garnaas-Holmes’ daily reflection "Unfolding Light," in which he talks about angels--the ones in the Christmas story, yes, but more importantly those that we can become by encouraging others, by shining a light on individuals making a difference. It seems a good response to all the negativity that surrounds us.

So as I take my next step into the unknown year before me, I will try to encourage what is good and not get too discouraged by the rest of it, all the while hoping I meet a few angels along the way.

My Old House

I bought this house in 1982. From the moment I opened the front door, I knew it was mine. The modest size, the Cape Cod style, the East Forest Park neighborhood--all reminded me of the home where I grew up on Lancaster Street just a couple of miles away. Add to that, the fact that the house at the end of the street had once been my father’s boyhood home, and his grandfather’s farm had been just a ways up Allen Street. It seemed I was destined to call this place mine.

That’s not to say I loved everything about the house when I moved in. The garage was a problem. It was settling, and the door was rotted. Still I was happy to have a garage at all, never before having been able to shelter my car from New England winters. The kitchen was the worst problem. There were only four cabinets and very little counter space. The dropped ceiling hid water damage and dangerous wiring. Then there was the mural—a turquoise scene of peasants dancing around a pagoda. I’m sure previous owners thought it was beautiful, but it annoyed me every time I looked at it.

Little by little over the years, I fixed, repaired, revamped, and expanded.  Early on I had a new floor poured in the garage. That was after my father laid a new cinder block foundation, jacking up each wall of the garage as he did. My nephew Thomas re-tiled the bathroom and closed in the side porch. New wall-to-wall was installed, as well as new flooring in the kitchen.

In 2005, after living with this kitchen I really hated for 23 years and the inconvenience of one bathroom on the second floor, I took on a major renovation of the kitchen, as well as the addition of a family room and a downstairs bathroom. This meant the mural was finally gone!

With each new coat of paint, each redecoration, each new room, the house became more and more me. (Full of my stuff too!) Then one day as I was taking a break from cleaning, (I tend to break a lot when I clean) I started to think about the people who had lived here before. The house was built in 1938, and I knew at least three families had lived here. I had bought it from Mr. Christensen who had bought it from the Greenbaums who had bought it from the Jolys. Maybe there had been more.

Each owner likely thought of my house as their house, and someday, I suddenly realized, other people would come into my house and make it theirs. At first, this thought made me angry--as if some anonymous person would steal what was mine. But, of course, that was silly. When the next owner arrives, he/she will do so either because I have relinquished ownership of the house or my life.

Barring fire or other tragedy, this house will remain when I have moved on. Other people will paint the walls a different color, move in new furniture, and find aspects they dislike (But not the mural!). They will create their home in this space where I have created mine. I wish them and my house well.

But I’m not planning on leaving quite yet. I still have to fix the doorknob to the porch, and repair the threshold at the front door, and the find out what’s causing the water spot on the ceiling of the family room and maybe paint the family room a different color, and...

Thanksgiving 1950 Photograph

George Emil and Carrie Julia Rose Schneeloch

I was five years old that Thanksgiving, but I remember Alvin taking this picture as well as one of my parents at the same spot in front of the living room window on Lancaster Street. This is how I remember my grandmother--the tightly curled hair, the rimless glasses, the half smile. I have more memories of my grandfather who came to live with us just a year later when my grandmother died. She was 68 years old in this photo. I am taken a bit aback when I realize she is three years younger here than I am now.

I remember her too at their home on Allen Street where on overnight visits she read to me on the porch, made vanilla pudding with orange slices, tucked me into my father's childhood bed at night.  I remember Mr. and Mrs. Prouty and their friends who came to play bridge. There were lots of card games on the heavy brown metal card table that now is folded next to the computer in my office.

I have many other pictures of her too. There is the one of the young mother in the white dress holding the baby that was my father. 

Even earlier there are pictures of her and her brother Frank dressed in their Sunday clothes posing for a photographer in West Springfield whose name remains on the photograph but whose address no longer exists.

I look into those young eyes and try to see what she saw all those years ago at the end of the 19^th century. Could she see what amazing things would happen in her lifetime?

I try to see what she expected of her future. Did she imagine marrying on New Year’s Eve of the new century? I’m sure she never imagined that she would be a widow by the following spring.

Did she imagine meeting the gentle man that was my grandfather? The man who sits beside her in the Thanksgiving picture?

She had so much future that to me is invisible past, yet I keep looking in her eyes in hopes of finding it.