Feb. 18: If you get me away from the school long enough, I begin to dream differently. The dreams about lesson plans, handouts, difficult students and multiple observers are soon replaced with dreams about winning the lottery, traveling, hanging out with friends, and other happy ideas. A few weeks ago,(I'm wondering if this was on the long MLK weekend), I dreamed someone handed me a basket full of sealed envelopes. I opened the first, and it contained a check for over $2,000. It was health insurance refund. Each envelope in the basket contained a check from a different sources, made out to us, for amounts ranging from pocket change to huge pay-offs. And you wonder why I look forward to summertime, when my dreams break out like butterflies from a cocoon of school-related anxieties.
Last night I dreamed that a big gift box arrived from my grandmother. Inside, I found three or four beautiful leather purses, and other assorted gifts. I was so pleased, I wanted to call her right away to thank her. I could see the black rotary phone right in front of me, but suddenly couldn't remember her phone number. And then, as I began to wake up, I remembered with a wave of sorrow that she has been gone for over thirty years. I can still see her now sitting in the corner of the velvety couch watching her afternoon soap operas, plump, happy, smelling of lilac soap. She always dressed up in flowered dresses, with heels and earrings. In the early 1900's, she was one of the few women of her day who went to college to earn a teaching degree. She was also bold, for her time. Her husband was drafted into World War I and was stationed at an Army Training Base somewhere in the states, I forgot where. Missing him immensely, she and a friend took the train to this camp. She walked right in and insisted to the man in charge that she see her husband. When I read this aloud to L. from the unpublished book Grandma wrote, he laughed and said it took a lot of guts for a woman of that era to go the head Army honcho and demand to see her husband.
Grandma was also the first woman to undergo a C-section at the local hospital in Plattsburgh. Although the procedure was probably spreading across the country by this time, none had been performed at C.V. Hospital. She also describes this in her book, the hours and days of pain, the ether, the weeks of recovery after Uncle J's birth. When she got pregnant with my father three years later, the doctor advised her not to go through with another birth and offered to arrange for an abortion, but she wouldn't hear of it. Her second C-section was in 1923, and my father was born.
When Uncle J. was eight and my father was five, the school burned down one day. I remember my father telling that story many times. He and Uncle J. were taking their Saturday music lessons at the school, in different rooms, when the teacher asked my father to go to the classroom door to see what the noise was in the hallway. He did, and saw the hallway engulfed with flames. My dad remembers the teacher lowering all the children, one at a time, out the window, saying, "Okay, are you ready? I'm going to let go now." Uncle J., in another classroom, was also lowered out of the second story window, along with the other children, but landed the wrong way and fractured his skull. My father remembers finding him unconscious on the school lawn and running home to Grandma's house, which was probably no more than 100 yards from the school, bursting in the door, and yelling, "Mother! The school's on fire and J.'s lying on the ground and I can't wake him up!" He was only five years old, after all. Grandma wrote about this event in her book. As a mother myself, I can't even imagine what this was like for her. Uncle J. was taken to the hospital and was in a coma, followed by recovery, for weeks. How did she bear it? Recently, my sister told me she had found some legal paperwork in a box of her sentimental junk. This was the lawsuit between my grandparents and the state of New York, which they filed after the fire to help with medical expenses.
Later, when my father and Uncle J. were young adults, how in the world did she bear it when the two of them were drafted into World War II, my father sent to Italy, and J. sent to the Eastern front? Of course, many mothers had to endure this same heartbreak and uncertainty. At least Uncle J. and Dad both returned from the war, uninjured. In fact, the G.I. bill funded my dad's medical school.
As a child, I remember how warm and welcoming Grandma's big Victorian house was, with the creaky wood floors, the "parlor," the Oriental rugs, the smells of cooking. She always had books around. I thought I was the only person in the universe who had read Baby Ray as a child, but last summer when I read Runs with the Horseman,I discovered that the boy in the story, which is set in the 1930's, also read Baby Ray. As an adolescent, I found L.M. Montgomery's little known book The Blue Castle in her house. To this day, I love that story, about a frowsy old maid who changes her life when she discovers she has about one year to live---a common theme, of course, but so deliciously approached in this book.
Grandma and I were very close and had long talks about everything. She was very deep, so I learned a lot from her. I learned about the setting of her childhood in the late 1800's, how her twin brother had died at the age of 18 months, after one night of illness, and another brother died the same night, or ailments that are now considered minor. She remembered meeting President McKinley at the age of three when he came through town on a campaign stop. She told me of the strict ways the schoolhouses were run. She helped instill in me a curiosity about things beyond my own little world.
She loved to sit on the front porch and knit. That was always the first sight as the family car approached her house: Grandma sitting on one of the white wicker chairs on the porch, rocking and knitting, waiting for us to arrive. Her husband died in the early '50's, but she lived for another twenty-five years as a widow. I always got the impression that she and my grandfather had had a happy marriage. After his death, though, she had lots of women friends and acquaintances around town to keep her company, and there was also "S" the young economically disadvantaged girl that Grandma had taken in when S. was 17, who lived with her for twenty-some years. She belonged to lots of local clubs and was always going out for lunches or cards. I never thought of her as lonely.
A teacher, a mother, a writer...her real gift to me was as a role model.
I wish I had all the volumes of her unpublished book. I once had all five, but somehow, after dad's death, my sister and brother and I split them up, then my brother's copies ended up with my sister. I have one volume. My sister says she doesn't know where her copies are, which means they are stuffed into one of the mountains of boxes of family momentoes stacked in her garage in Denver. But fortunately, I still carry the stories in my mind.
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