I remember being very nervous and afraid my first day of school. Funny, I don’t remember having that same problem in early Sunday school classes or in kindergarten. But in first grade, I cried when my mother left me at the door of the classroom. Not a lot, but I remember tearing up. Thankfully, I didn’t make a scene.
I definitely remember one pudgy little red-headed boy whose name was James. James didn’t just cry when his mother left him. He struggled. He screamed. He held onto his mother’s skirts and sobbed for all he was worth. He carried this demonstration on for so long that he finally had to be physically restrained by the first grade teacher, Mrs. Langston, while his poor mother made good her escape. From that point on, James was a marked boy. He was the butt of all jokes, and this torment continued on for years.
Public school lesson Number One: don’t show your vulnerabilities to your classmates or they will persecute you unmercifully for the rest of your days.
I didn’t particularly like first grade. I didn’t particularly like Mrs. Langston. It was very hot in our room. Imagine going to school in Houston, Texas in 1963 with no air conditioning. It was hard to pay attention to anything the teacher was saying with the sultry humidity steaming in through the windows and the cicadas singing us to sleep in the trees outside. I seem to remember being thirsty all the time. I can remember raising my hand and asking permission to go to the water fountain again and again, but Mrs. Langston would always say no. I have a very clear mental picture of her standing over me one day with tiny drops of sweat beading on her hairy upper lip telling me to sit down and be quiet! Nope, not my favorite teacher.
I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I first learned how to read, but I’m fairly certain it was not in the first grade. Mrs. Langston used to sit us in a large circle and hold up flash cards printed with words like “cat” and “dog” and “coat”. She would hold up the card, say the word, and we would all repeat it—just like a group of parrots. It was rote memorization, and it was very ineffective. I do remember being able to read my Highlights magazine at an early age. I remember reading The Timbertoes, so perhaps my mother helped me to learn to read.
I don’t remember doing any math that year either, although I have a vague recollection of her holding up apples and oranges. So much for first grade academics.
I do remember painting. Not long after school started, she sat a large easel up in a corner of the classroom. One by one we each got a turn to spend an hour painting our very own picture, which was then displayed along one wall on a clothes line, each picture held in place with wooden clothes pins. I remember waiting and waiting and waiting for my turn to come. Finally I got my chance at the paints. I painted a landscape. There was green grass and a large tree and lots of blue sky and a big yellow sun in the upper corner. I remember standing at the easel and thinking to myself, “If the sun is shining down on everything, and the sun is yellow, then I should cover the entire sky and all the earth with yellow paint as well.”
Well, no one had ever told me that yellow and blue make green. As I began to spread that cheery yellow paint across my canvas, all my beautiful blue sky turned green and the colors all began to bleed and run into one another. I was very surprised, but kept on spreading yellow sunshine, thinking that artistically, I just had to be correct. Mrs. Langston came over and said, in a very disgusted voice, “Just look what you’ve done! You’ve ruined your painting. Go sit down.” And she hung my painting up at the very far end of the clothes line, in a position of great disgrace.
I never picked up a paintbrush again.
The one bright spot I do remember from first grade is that I met my best friend, Martha Ann, there. She and I were best friends from 1st through 6th grade. Our class used to travel in pairs, and she and I were always buddies. We used to hold hands as we walked in rows, two by two, down the long hall to the school lunch room. We played together on the playground, were in Brownies together after school, and we had sleepovers at each other’s house and told each other all our secrets, then “pinkie swore” to be best friends forever.
So, first grade passed by like a 9-month prison sentence for me. About all I remember is physical discomfort, a lack of mental stimulation, and a great fear of the teacher. After such a poor start, it's amazing to me that I ever liked school at all, but then second grade was just around the corner. . . .
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
School Days
Who doesn't look back at the beginning of their school days with a bit of nostalgia? A bit of bemusement for how innocently we begin that long and laborious journey of twelve years of public education. Of course, if we dig a little deeper, those halcyon days of our youth are never quite as perfect as we think; still, the joys of one's youth should never be discounted as trivial. A person of six is no less a human being than a person of sixty. And all the events of our lives--both the past and the present--continue to shape us even now into the persons we are today.
When I was in kindergarten, my mother took me back and forth to school every day in our old Pontiac. But beginning in first grade, I was considered old enough to walk to school with the other neighborhood children, unless it was raining. This was a great privilege. It was the beginning of my independence--a step away from my babyhood. We all walked or rode our bikes to school without parental supervision, and incredibly, we all made it to school and back home again every day. If you were tardy to class in those days, it was because you dawdled on your way to school and deserved to miss recess.
At the start of my first grade year, my mother, as so many others, walked with me, to show me the way and to teach me the safety rules. We would travel up Hirondel street and turn left at the edge of a big wooded lot. There was a mysterious “shortcut” path through that wooded lot that the older kids used, but I was strictly forbidden to go in there—and didn’t for years. I was afraid of the dark shadows cast by the huge old trees, and the rumors of a crazy man who lived in there.
We turned right at the end of the woods, walked another block, and then we arrived at the corner of the huge complex of Our Lady of Mt Carmel Church and parochial school. You cannot imagine the mass exodus of children on foot and on bicycle from our neighborhood every morning. We all walked to school together for years. But for most of the children in Overbrook, their destination was the Catholic school, and the rest of us Baptists, Methodists, and Lutherans had to walk on and leave them behind.
Another few blocks and we left Overbrook for the neighborhood of Garden Villas by means of a bridge over the lazy, muddy Sims Bayou. That bridge scared and fascinated me all at the same time. When I was very young, it felt so high. It was wide enough for two lanes of traffic, with a partitioned sidewalk for munchkin foot traffic on each side. Looking down through the metal safety bars at the brown sluggish water slipping by below made me dizzy with fear and excitement. Sometimes we would see a snake swimming in it. We used to scare each other with rumors of giant alligators that lived under that bridge. Sometimes it would rain, and then the bayou would rise up in a churning boiling mass of swift, hard current filled with swirling debris and unfathomable muck. The water would be louder then, and crossing the bridge felt like an excursion across the mighty and mysterious Amazon.
Once safely over the bridge, however, it was only another block until we arrived at Garden Villas Elementary school. Ancient-looking even then, it was constructed rather unimaginatively of square corners, sturdy red bricks, and old-fashioned hand-cranked windows. It was tall, foreboding, and made human only by the enormous pecan trees and live oaks dripping with Spanish moss that adorned the grounds. Huge old ligustrums were planted rather haphazardly around its foundation, and to this day, the smell of ligustrums blooming evokes a sense of nostalgia in me so strong, that I will all but stop in my tracks to breathe in their heady perfume and remember the smells of my childhood.
The inside walls of Garden Villas were pea green. Horrible, unrelenting, disgusting pea green. Every wall, every hallway, even every bathroom was green. There was no relief from it. I read one time that someone somewhere did a study (probably in the 1950’s) and determined that GREEN was the color of choice for school walls. I personally have no problem with most shades of green. But I have never ever been able to look at that particular shade of pea green without feeling slightly repulsed by it.
The floors were study, hard-wearing linoleum tiles, and so damn monotonous. No pattern to them, just a series of green and gray flecks, perpetually dull and scuffed, except at the start of each new year when they were buffed to a high glossy shine.
Each classroom came equipped with a blackboard, a globe, an American flag standing in the corner, and old-fashioned wooden desks. That was it. No colorful posters or bulletin boards, no reading corner with colorful rugs and bean bag chairs, no cubbies filled with enticing crayons and paints, no aquariums on the windowsill with pet frogs, no hint of anything beyond a strict academic atmosphere.
Perhaps that was the point. There was nothing for a child to do except look at the blackboard and the teacher, or stare daydreaming out the window.
In those days, children didn’t stay in school all day long as they do now. Most mothers didn’t work, and afterschool care wasn’t much of an issue then. Children were slowly and gently introduced to the disciplines of school and gradually built up to a full day. Kindergarteners went half a day. They either went to the morning session, from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Or they went to the afternoon session from noon until 3:00 p.m. First graders got out at 1:00 p.m. Second grade dismissed at 2:00 p.m. And finally, in third grade, students stayed until 3:00 p.m.
There was no air conditioning in Garden Villas Elementary School. Given Houston's heat and humidity, this almost seems inhumane, until you remember that the school was built early in the 1940's, perhaps even in the 1930's, long before the advent of air conditioning. So each classroom had a solid outer wall of tall, old-fashioned hand-crank windows. I can remember the teachers dutifully working their way down the bank of windows each morning, cranking each set of louvers open as wide as they could go. Classroom doors stayed open, in the hopes of drawing in a cross breeze or two. Large double doors flanked every hall way, and stood open to the world to draw in as much air as possible during the sultry September heat. Security wasn't an issue then. Comfort was.
And so, in September of 1962, I bravely entered the hallowed halls of Garden Villas Elementary School with a lump of nervous fear in my throat, butterflies in my tummy, and my mother's hand clutched rather desperately in my own to begin the First Grade.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Growing Up
There are so many stories to share from my elementary school years. Growing up in the early 1960’s in America was in many ways still so innocent and idyllic. The sexual revolution of the late 1960’s had yet to occur. No one had heard of Vietnam. John F. Kennedy was president and life in white middle class America was good. Segregation was the norm at that time. Incredibly, I never met a single black person until I was in the 7th grade. I never made a black friend until I was an adult. We were isolated from most social issues in Overbrook, and we never even knew it.
Gender roles were strictly defined, as well. Little girls stayed inside and played with our dolls or our Easy Bake ovens. If we were outside, we played hopscotch or jump rope. We took piano or ballet lessons as our after school activity. We wore dresses and saddle oxfords or penny loafers to school every day. Even on the coldest winter days, we never wore pants to school. Instead we wore knee socks with our dresses--like that would help us stay warm. Play clothes, such as pants and shorts, were strictly reserved for the back yard in the afternoons. And no little girl wore jeans or pants with a front zipper or fly. Those were for boys. Our pants had side zippers because that was more modest.
Gender roles were strictly defined, as well. Little girls stayed inside and played with our dolls or our Easy Bake ovens. If we were outside, we played hopscotch or jump rope. We took piano or ballet lessons as our after school activity. We wore dresses and saddle oxfords or penny loafers to school every day. Even on the coldest winter days, we never wore pants to school. Instead we wore knee socks with our dresses--like that would help us stay warm. Play clothes, such as pants and shorts, were strictly reserved for the back yard in the afternoons. And no little girl wore jeans or pants with a front zipper or fly. Those were for boys. Our pants had side zippers because that was more modest.
The boys had a lot more freedom and were always allowed to have more adventures than the girls. Boys could wear jeans to school. Boys got to ride bikes and build forts and climb trees. Boys got to play sports. Boys got to run around with their shirts off in the hot summer. I went to many Little League games as a child, but always as an observer, never as a participant. Even if a girl had the athletic ability and desire to compete (which many girls did), there were no approved outlets for her save the occasional back yard game of softball.
Of course, the reverse was also true. If a boy were more inclined to play the piano rather then baseball, he was often ridiculed by his friends. A boy either played sports or he was considered a "pansy". It was a rather rigid caste system, and it was a rare individual who could buck it. Rather than be an outcast, most of us just conformed.
This was true of the adults, as well as of the children. Dads worked and moms stay at home. I remember that my mother sewed all of my clothes and used to scorn the notion of ready made clothes. She made me beautiful new dresses every year for school and church. I use to wear a lot of shirtwaist dresses: a fitted bodice that often buttoned up the front or back, and a very full skirt. When I was a very small child, Mama took great pride in making me petticoats of the fullest, stiffest tulle netting. I think she starched them. They sure did itch! They were three layers deep and they made the skirts of my dresses stand out wider and fuller than any of the other girls. Thankfully, by the time I entered elementary school, the trend for starched petticoats was waning somewhat, and my school dresses were a little less frilly.
She also curled my hair every night. I slept on pink sponge rollers for years. They were so uncomfortable! (Of course, she slept on “grown up” wire rollers—and they were ten times worse. So it was no good complaining to her about discomfort and rollers! It was a female rite of passage of sorts.) The only break I got from the curlers was on Friday nights because we didn’t have to worry about my hair (usually) on Saturdays.
Most mornings, she would fix my hair in “Shirley Temple curls.” It was a source of great pride to her that my hair was so curly and that she could form those big fat sausage curls around her index finger with nothing more than a brush and little spit. She would pull the top of my hair back off my forehead and tie the whole thing up with a big shiny bow. Let the other little girls who had straight hair wear pony tails or pig tails. My hair was curly and she wanted to show it off.
But for all of its seemingly archaic rules and restrictions, the early 1960's was a very comforting time to be a child. You knew who you were and where you fit in. Your mom and dad adhered to the rules, too, and you knew who they were. It often seemed as if everyone belonged to the same church, the same school, the same community, and there were no surprises to knock you out of your little bubble of contentment. Divorce was unheard of, political unrest was a thing of the future, and every family had about the same number of material things. We all had a black & white television set in our living rooms. Every family had a car, but very few had two cars. Sometimes the dads had a pick up truck. We all dressed alike, ate alike, and played alike. The world seemed to be one big homogeneous neighborhood of good will.
And so, with an incontrovertible background of middle class solidarity and prosperity, I was prepared to begin the next phase of my childhood--the elementary school years.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The Neighborhood
As I have already explained, almost all of the neighbors on Hirondel Street were Catholic. I grew up in the shadow of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church, and it made for some very interesting experiences. Of course, when I was a very young child, I didn’t understand the difference between Catholic or Baptist or Methodist or atheist, nor did I care. It seemed that every family went to some church on Sunday, and we were all united in faith simply because we all went to church every week.
As children in the early 1960's, we all understood the concept of "wardrobe", too. We all had three sets of clothes. There were church clothes, which were reserved strictly for Sundays, weddings, or whatever other function our mothers deemed "proper". There were school clothes, which were slightly less dressy than church clothes and, if you were a girl, always meant dresses. And then there were play clothes: jeans with button-front flys for the boys, shorts and pedal pushers with side zippers for the girls, and pullover tee shirts. We could run and play and ride bikes and just generally be kids in our play clothes without fear of scolding.
On our street there were scores of children to play with. Each yard came equipped with swing sets and sandboxes and water hoses for free drinks of water. We played wonderful games in the warm summer evenings like “hide and seek” and “freeze tag.” We caught lightning bugs in old mayonnaise jars and stayed out until the street lights blinked on at dark and our mothers called us in for the night. The ice cream truck made regular forays up and down the streets of Overbrook every afternoon. We could hear the calliope music tinkling merrily from two blocks over, which gave us plenty of time to race home and barrel through the house, shouting, "Can I have a nickel?!?"
No, theology made very little difference to the children on Hirondel street. But I always felt a clear separation from my neighborhood playmates anyway, because from the very beginning, I understood that in all those other homes on our street there were many, many children, and in our home there was just one: me.
My first real memory of a friend who was not a cousin (we’ll cover the whole family issue later) was a little girl named Eileen who lived down the street from me. Eileen and I went to kindergarten together at the public elementary school in Garden Villas. What I didn’t know at the time was that while Our Lady of Mt. Carmel had its own school for grades 1 through 12, it did not have a kindergarten, and so the Catholic families often availed themselves of the "free" public kindergarten in the next neighborhood before subjecting their children to the iron will of the nuns at Mt. Carmel for the following 12 years. Of course, the Catholic families all had to pay property taxes which supported the public schools, so the "free" public kindergarten wasn't really free for them at all. In addition, they then had to pay tuition for their children to attend the private Catholic school at Mt. Carmel. I do have some vague memories of adult grumblings along these lines, but as a child, I never paid them any attention.
All I knew was that Eileen and I laid down side by side on our little red and green plastic mats to take a nap each day at kindergarten (we only went for half a day-—did we really need a nap?), and we drank our juice and ate our cookies together, and we eventually discovered that we lived just 4 houses apart on Hirondel street.
I’ll never forget the terror and fear I felt each time I stepped foot in Eileen’s house. Eileen was the youngest of thirteen brothers and sisters. Her house was as foreign to me as Mars or Venus. The first thing I saw when I walked through the door was a horrifying, very real-looking crucifix of Jesus, bloody, torn, and naked, hanging on the living room wall. I was shocked. In the Baptist church we didn't have images of bloody Jesus. We had pastoral Jesus tending his "flock" of sweet, smiling children leaning against his knee. Bloody Jesus scared me.
But even worse than Jesus dying on the cross right over our heads while we sat on the floor and played jacks, were Eileen's five terrifying older brothers. Like birds of prey, they could swoop down on you at any given minute and pull your hair or steal your toy or say something mean and unintelligible (but even a five-year old could understand that they were making a joke at her expense). She also had hordes of older sisters, some of whom were nice, but they were all so loud and rambunctious and independent of one another. It was quite overwhelming for an only child who lived in a quiet house with only her parents for company.
I rarely remember seeing Eileen’s mother. I have a vague memory of a thin, weary-looking woman standing at the sink washing dishes. Her hands were very red and cracked-looking to me, as if they spent too much time immersed in hot soapy water. However, I never saw her dressed in anything other than heels and hose. Shades of Donna Reed and June Cleaver! If you thought those women were just Hollywood make-believe, think again. They really existed in Houston, Texas in 1962.
I only remember seeing her father once. Fathers disappeared from our neighborhood early in the mornings and reappeared at suppertime every evening. On the weekends they mowed the grass on Saturday mornings and hung out in their garages on Saturday afternoons drinking cold, sweaty dark brown bottles of beer. Occasionally, they barbecued and once in a great while, they played a game of ball with us. So all fathers, except for my own, were pretty much an unknown quantity to me, and Eileen's father absolutely terrified me. I don’t remember what the joke was, but I distinctly remember him saying (in a jovial manner, I am sure), that he would “string me up by my thumbs”. I took him quite literally and hid from him every time I saw him after that.
At Eileen’s house they didn’t have a regular kitchen table and chairs, as we did. They had a picnic table with long benches on either side. Imagine trying to feed 15 people at a time, 7 days a week, three times a day. You have to remember that in the early sixties, there were no McDonalds. No wonder Eileen’s mom had dish pan hands. I only remember having dinner with them once, but I’m sure I didn’t eat a bite. I was too shy around all of them.
One last memory, before I leave Eileen. It was common for the mothers in our neighborhood to feed “snack” to whatever youngsters happened to be around each afternoon. Most of the mothers during that time period stayed home, and so we were treated to homemade cookies and cupcakes, hand-squeezed lemonade, and even homemade ice cream wasn’t uncommon. But at Eileen’s house, when it was time for snack, we always got a big bowl of ice cubes. Just plain ice cubes. I remember asking my mother about why we didn’t get popsicles or cookies at Eileen’s house. She told me that not everyone had enough money to go around, and that we should always be grateful for the things that we had. It was my first glimpse into “working class” poverty, and I never forgot it.
Well, all my friendships always seem to come to an end, and so it was with Eileen. Kindergarten ended and we turned six years old. The next fall Eileen disappeared into the rabbit warren of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, and I went off to first grade at Garden Villas Elementary school. And although we lived on the same street together for the next several years, our friendship never renewed. Our lives became too different and we were too young.
As children in the early 1960's, we all understood the concept of "wardrobe", too. We all had three sets of clothes. There were church clothes, which were reserved strictly for Sundays, weddings, or whatever other function our mothers deemed "proper". There were school clothes, which were slightly less dressy than church clothes and, if you were a girl, always meant dresses. And then there were play clothes: jeans with button-front flys for the boys, shorts and pedal pushers with side zippers for the girls, and pullover tee shirts. We could run and play and ride bikes and just generally be kids in our play clothes without fear of scolding.
On our street there were scores of children to play with. Each yard came equipped with swing sets and sandboxes and water hoses for free drinks of water. We played wonderful games in the warm summer evenings like “hide and seek” and “freeze tag.” We caught lightning bugs in old mayonnaise jars and stayed out until the street lights blinked on at dark and our mothers called us in for the night. The ice cream truck made regular forays up and down the streets of Overbrook every afternoon. We could hear the calliope music tinkling merrily from two blocks over, which gave us plenty of time to race home and barrel through the house, shouting, "Can I have a nickel?!?"
No, theology made very little difference to the children on Hirondel street. But I always felt a clear separation from my neighborhood playmates anyway, because from the very beginning, I understood that in all those other homes on our street there were many, many children, and in our home there was just one: me.
My first real memory of a friend who was not a cousin (we’ll cover the whole family issue later) was a little girl named Eileen who lived down the street from me. Eileen and I went to kindergarten together at the public elementary school in Garden Villas. What I didn’t know at the time was that while Our Lady of Mt. Carmel had its own school for grades 1 through 12, it did not have a kindergarten, and so the Catholic families often availed themselves of the "free" public kindergarten in the next neighborhood before subjecting their children to the iron will of the nuns at Mt. Carmel for the following 12 years. Of course, the Catholic families all had to pay property taxes which supported the public schools, so the "free" public kindergarten wasn't really free for them at all. In addition, they then had to pay tuition for their children to attend the private Catholic school at Mt. Carmel. I do have some vague memories of adult grumblings along these lines, but as a child, I never paid them any attention.
All I knew was that Eileen and I laid down side by side on our little red and green plastic mats to take a nap each day at kindergarten (we only went for half a day-—did we really need a nap?), and we drank our juice and ate our cookies together, and we eventually discovered that we lived just 4 houses apart on Hirondel street.
I’ll never forget the terror and fear I felt each time I stepped foot in Eileen’s house. Eileen was the youngest of thirteen brothers and sisters. Her house was as foreign to me as Mars or Venus. The first thing I saw when I walked through the door was a horrifying, very real-looking crucifix of Jesus, bloody, torn, and naked, hanging on the living room wall. I was shocked. In the Baptist church we didn't have images of bloody Jesus. We had pastoral Jesus tending his "flock" of sweet, smiling children leaning against his knee. Bloody Jesus scared me.
But even worse than Jesus dying on the cross right over our heads while we sat on the floor and played jacks, were Eileen's five terrifying older brothers. Like birds of prey, they could swoop down on you at any given minute and pull your hair or steal your toy or say something mean and unintelligible (but even a five-year old could understand that they were making a joke at her expense). She also had hordes of older sisters, some of whom were nice, but they were all so loud and rambunctious and independent of one another. It was quite overwhelming for an only child who lived in a quiet house with only her parents for company.
I rarely remember seeing Eileen’s mother. I have a vague memory of a thin, weary-looking woman standing at the sink washing dishes. Her hands were very red and cracked-looking to me, as if they spent too much time immersed in hot soapy water. However, I never saw her dressed in anything other than heels and hose. Shades of Donna Reed and June Cleaver! If you thought those women were just Hollywood make-believe, think again. They really existed in Houston, Texas in 1962.
I only remember seeing her father once. Fathers disappeared from our neighborhood early in the mornings and reappeared at suppertime every evening. On the weekends they mowed the grass on Saturday mornings and hung out in their garages on Saturday afternoons drinking cold, sweaty dark brown bottles of beer. Occasionally, they barbecued and once in a great while, they played a game of ball with us. So all fathers, except for my own, were pretty much an unknown quantity to me, and Eileen's father absolutely terrified me. I don’t remember what the joke was, but I distinctly remember him saying (in a jovial manner, I am sure), that he would “string me up by my thumbs”. I took him quite literally and hid from him every time I saw him after that.
At Eileen’s house they didn’t have a regular kitchen table and chairs, as we did. They had a picnic table with long benches on either side. Imagine trying to feed 15 people at a time, 7 days a week, three times a day. You have to remember that in the early sixties, there were no McDonalds. No wonder Eileen’s mom had dish pan hands. I only remember having dinner with them once, but I’m sure I didn’t eat a bite. I was too shy around all of them.
One last memory, before I leave Eileen. It was common for the mothers in our neighborhood to feed “snack” to whatever youngsters happened to be around each afternoon. Most of the mothers during that time period stayed home, and so we were treated to homemade cookies and cupcakes, hand-squeezed lemonade, and even homemade ice cream wasn’t uncommon. But at Eileen’s house, when it was time for snack, we always got a big bowl of ice cubes. Just plain ice cubes. I remember asking my mother about why we didn’t get popsicles or cookies at Eileen’s house. She told me that not everyone had enough money to go around, and that we should always be grateful for the things that we had. It was my first glimpse into “working class” poverty, and I never forgot it.
Well, all my friendships always seem to come to an end, and so it was with Eileen. Kindergarten ended and we turned six years old. The next fall Eileen disappeared into the rabbit warren of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, and I went off to first grade at Garden Villas Elementary school. And although we lived on the same street together for the next several years, our friendship never renewed. Our lives became too different and we were too young.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Coming Home
Bringing a new baby home from the hospital is always joyous occasion, but bringing home a baby who was not expected to make it is quite a landmark, in any book. My parents were overjoyed when, after three long weeks, they were finally allowed to bring their new baby daughter home.
Home was a small 3-bedroom brick home in a brand new neighborhood in suburban Houston called Overbrook. The appellation “Overbrook” was a bit misleading. There was no brook, only a muddy, sluggish bayou called Sims Bayou, but I supposed the developers thought Overbrook sounded more inviting to potential home buyers. In fact, in that rather desperate, all-of-our-streets-have-to-have-a-theme mode that developers get into, most of the surrounding streets were named for birds: Heron or Thrush or (god-forbid) Flamingo. Our street was named Hirondel. I looked it up once; it means “swallow” in Latin. What were they thinking? I promise you, dear reader, most of the residents who lived on Hirondel Street in the 1960’s hadn't the slightest clue their street name meant swallow in Latin.
Besides having some rather odd ornithopic delusions of grandeur, Overbrook was also very Catholic. As a child, I once asked my mother why we, as good Southern Baptists, lived in an all-Catholic neighborhood. She just shrugged and said something vague about how our little house was just perfect for us, but I later got the whole story out of her.
During the Korean War, my dad joined the naval reserves, but he was never stationed overseas. After a couple of years of leading a rather nomadic life (they lived in shabby little apartments everywhere from sunny Key West to freezing Boston), my parents wanted a permanent home. They rushed back to Houston and bought the first little tract house they found. I think they paid $7000 for it. Turns out our home was one of the first spec houses built in modest Overbrook. It was the first house built on Hirondel Street. Only after my parents had bought the house did they learn that the Catholic Church was planning to build a huge complex called “Our Lady of Mt. Carmel” just a few blocks over. The entire neighborhood turned Catholic overnight, but my parents--childless at the time--shrugged and stayed put.
When I was older, my mother confessed to me that they had bought in “too big a hurry” and many times wished they had instead bought a home in the nearby neighborhood of Garden Villas, where later I went to elementary school and to church and to Brownies and everything else. But my experiences growing up in Overbook in the wild and woolly 1960’s were quite priceless and I wouldn’t trade them for any other history.
But to return to our story, I was finally ensconced safely in the little white bassinet in the little brick house on Hirondel street. My mother, well-rested after three weeks of enforced bed rest, was ready to take on the challenges of new motherhood. But something was wrong. The baby wouldn't quit crying--or spitting up--or projectile vomiting. What could it be? Was she just a bad mother? Did she not know what to do? Everyone told her it was just the colic. Not surprisingly, my mother couldn't quit crying either.
In that peculiar way that doctors had back then, each doctor had his own office and his own staff, and there weren't any large pediatric practices with multiple doctors taking turns being "on call". My doctor was taking his annual summer vacation and there was no one else available until he returned. For two long weeks my mother was at her wits' end as she struggled to cope with a screaming, colickly baby. When the doctor finally returned he pronounced I was allergic to baby formula and that my mother must feed me soy milk instead. Soy milk?
You must remember that my mother had had no opportunity to breast feed me, even if she had wanted to, which was highly unlikely. I was nearly a month old by the time I came home, and her milk had long since dried up. Breast feeding was strongly discouraged by the modern medical community of the 1950's and was looked down upon as being extremely old-fashioned and slightly unclean. New mothers, forced to stay in bed in the hospital for up to two weeks' recovery time after giving birth, readily submitted to having their tender, swollen breasts bound after childbirth to stop their milk from coming in, while down in the nursery, the staff took care of feeding the babies. Breast milk was considered a poor substitute for modern, clean, sanitized baby formula. But soy milk was a hard-to-find commodity and expensive to boot.
However, on the doctor's advice the switch in formulas was made and the baby, thankfully, finally quit crying and began to thrive. There was peace and joy in the little brick house at last.
Home was a small 3-bedroom brick home in a brand new neighborhood in suburban Houston called Overbrook. The appellation “Overbrook” was a bit misleading. There was no brook, only a muddy, sluggish bayou called Sims Bayou, but I supposed the developers thought Overbrook sounded more inviting to potential home buyers. In fact, in that rather desperate, all-of-our-streets-have-to-have-a-theme mode that developers get into, most of the surrounding streets were named for birds: Heron or Thrush or (god-forbid) Flamingo. Our street was named Hirondel. I looked it up once; it means “swallow” in Latin. What were they thinking? I promise you, dear reader, most of the residents who lived on Hirondel Street in the 1960’s hadn't the slightest clue their street name meant swallow in Latin.
Besides having some rather odd ornithopic delusions of grandeur, Overbrook was also very Catholic. As a child, I once asked my mother why we, as good Southern Baptists, lived in an all-Catholic neighborhood. She just shrugged and said something vague about how our little house was just perfect for us, but I later got the whole story out of her.
During the Korean War, my dad joined the naval reserves, but he was never stationed overseas. After a couple of years of leading a rather nomadic life (they lived in shabby little apartments everywhere from sunny Key West to freezing Boston), my parents wanted a permanent home. They rushed back to Houston and bought the first little tract house they found. I think they paid $7000 for it. Turns out our home was one of the first spec houses built in modest Overbrook. It was the first house built on Hirondel Street. Only after my parents had bought the house did they learn that the Catholic Church was planning to build a huge complex called “Our Lady of Mt. Carmel” just a few blocks over. The entire neighborhood turned Catholic overnight, but my parents--childless at the time--shrugged and stayed put.
When I was older, my mother confessed to me that they had bought in “too big a hurry” and many times wished they had instead bought a home in the nearby neighborhood of Garden Villas, where later I went to elementary school and to church and to Brownies and everything else. But my experiences growing up in Overbook in the wild and woolly 1960’s were quite priceless and I wouldn’t trade them for any other history.
But to return to our story, I was finally ensconced safely in the little white bassinet in the little brick house on Hirondel street. My mother, well-rested after three weeks of enforced bed rest, was ready to take on the challenges of new motherhood. But something was wrong. The baby wouldn't quit crying--or spitting up--or projectile vomiting. What could it be? Was she just a bad mother? Did she not know what to do? Everyone told her it was just the colic. Not surprisingly, my mother couldn't quit crying either.
In that peculiar way that doctors had back then, each doctor had his own office and his own staff, and there weren't any large pediatric practices with multiple doctors taking turns being "on call". My doctor was taking his annual summer vacation and there was no one else available until he returned. For two long weeks my mother was at her wits' end as she struggled to cope with a screaming, colickly baby. When the doctor finally returned he pronounced I was allergic to baby formula and that my mother must feed me soy milk instead. Soy milk?
You must remember that my mother had had no opportunity to breast feed me, even if she had wanted to, which was highly unlikely. I was nearly a month old by the time I came home, and her milk had long since dried up. Breast feeding was strongly discouraged by the modern medical community of the 1950's and was looked down upon as being extremely old-fashioned and slightly unclean. New mothers, forced to stay in bed in the hospital for up to two weeks' recovery time after giving birth, readily submitted to having their tender, swollen breasts bound after childbirth to stop their milk from coming in, while down in the nursery, the staff took care of feeding the babies. Breast milk was considered a poor substitute for modern, clean, sanitized baby formula. But soy milk was a hard-to-find commodity and expensive to boot.
However, on the doctor's advice the switch in formulas was made and the baby, thankfully, finally quit crying and began to thrive. There was peace and joy in the little brick house at last.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Where to Begin?
I was born in the muggy summer heat in the bayou city of Houston, in the great state of Texas, in June of 1957. It was not a very auspicious beginning. My parents were healthy 27-year olds, but there was a problem. My mother was RH- and my father was RH+. What that means is virtually from the moment of my conception, my mother’s body was fighting to rid itself of the parasitic being lodged in her womb.
Nowadays, modern medicine can fix the problem of RH incompatibility between a fetus and a mother with a simple injection. But in 1957 there were no injections, and so I was born in a very poor state of health. I don’t recall the number of blood transfusions I received in the first three days of my life, but Daddy always said I looked just like a little pincushion.
There were no neonatal care units in the hospitals in 1957. There were only doctors in white lab coats and nurses in starched white uniforms. Medical care was determined by people, not by machines. Hermann Hospital came equipped only with a standard maternity ward and nursery, but the nurses there took very good care of me. My liver was not functioning at first, and I was quite jaundiced and sickly-looking. The doctors told my parents that they might could “go in there” and clean out my bile ducts, but there was nothing they could do for my liver. For three long days my parents waited in terrified suspense while I clung to life like a tiny mewling kitten.
Luckily for me, however, my liver did finally begin to function, and I slowly began to thrive. Mama was sent home from the hospital after the requisite 10 days, but I spent three weeks in the hospital before I was allowed to come home. Daddy came to see me every evening when he got off work, but my poor mother was "confined" to home as was the practice of the day. I can only imagine her anxiety and distress while she waited. On the day of my release, as a word of warning, the doctor also told my parents that I would always be a rather weak and sickly child, prone to illnesses and infections. He must have scared my poor parents to death.
Something I probably should have told you at the beginning was that I was not my parents’ first child. (That’s the problem with these life stories. Life is rarely linear; it has all kinds of twists and turns, and until you have the whole background, nothing makes sense as it should.) My parents had already lived through the terror and grief of losing a child once before.
My parents were married in February 1950. They were both 20 years old. They had a one weekend honeymoon in New Orleans and then came back to Houston to resume their lives. But to their great surprise, my mother had become pregnant on her wedding night and almost exactly 9 months to the day, in November 1957, they had a baby boy.
My brother was not as fortunate as me. Again, there were complications because of my parents' RH incompatibility. He only lived a few hours and then he died. My parents were grieving and shell-shocked. They had not even been married one full year, and already they had had to bury a child. It took them seven years to work up the courage to try again. My mother once told me that if I had died also, she would have never tried to have another child. It was just too hard for her.
But, obviously, this time the story had a happier ending. And at the tender age of three weeks, my parents were finally able to bring me home.
Nowadays, modern medicine can fix the problem of RH incompatibility between a fetus and a mother with a simple injection. But in 1957 there were no injections, and so I was born in a very poor state of health. I don’t recall the number of blood transfusions I received in the first three days of my life, but Daddy always said I looked just like a little pincushion.
There were no neonatal care units in the hospitals in 1957. There were only doctors in white lab coats and nurses in starched white uniforms. Medical care was determined by people, not by machines. Hermann Hospital came equipped only with a standard maternity ward and nursery, but the nurses there took very good care of me. My liver was not functioning at first, and I was quite jaundiced and sickly-looking. The doctors told my parents that they might could “go in there” and clean out my bile ducts, but there was nothing they could do for my liver. For three long days my parents waited in terrified suspense while I clung to life like a tiny mewling kitten.
Luckily for me, however, my liver did finally begin to function, and I slowly began to thrive. Mama was sent home from the hospital after the requisite 10 days, but I spent three weeks in the hospital before I was allowed to come home. Daddy came to see me every evening when he got off work, but my poor mother was "confined" to home as was the practice of the day. I can only imagine her anxiety and distress while she waited. On the day of my release, as a word of warning, the doctor also told my parents that I would always be a rather weak and sickly child, prone to illnesses and infections. He must have scared my poor parents to death.
Something I probably should have told you at the beginning was that I was not my parents’ first child. (That’s the problem with these life stories. Life is rarely linear; it has all kinds of twists and turns, and until you have the whole background, nothing makes sense as it should.) My parents had already lived through the terror and grief of losing a child once before.
My parents were married in February 1950. They were both 20 years old. They had a one weekend honeymoon in New Orleans and then came back to Houston to resume their lives. But to their great surprise, my mother had become pregnant on her wedding night and almost exactly 9 months to the day, in November 1957, they had a baby boy.
My brother was not as fortunate as me. Again, there were complications because of my parents' RH incompatibility. He only lived a few hours and then he died. My parents were grieving and shell-shocked. They had not even been married one full year, and already they had had to bury a child. It took them seven years to work up the courage to try again. My mother once told me that if I had died also, she would have never tried to have another child. It was just too hard for her.
But, obviously, this time the story had a happier ending. And at the tender age of three weeks, my parents were finally able to bring me home.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Reflections of an Ordinary Life
I am new to blogging. I've been considering dipping my big toe in its unknown waters for some time now, but I always have to wonder: who will read this? who will care? And yet, the lure of blogging--the fascination of it--just won't go away, so here I am. My first blog. You lucky reader, you!
Let me tell you the purpose of this blog. For about 15 years I have been researching my family's history. Now quickly--before your eye glaze over in tedious boredom--let me assure you that this is NOT a blog to publish my genealogical research. Far from it. Instead, it is going to deal with a far more mundane and probably boring subject: my life. So if you're not one of those who like to "peak in" on your neighbors, just to see what they're up to, feel free to check out now. (Myself, I can never resist doing a bit of spying on co-workers or neighbors.) But, the point I am belaboring to make is this: if it were not for my genealogical research, I probably would never have been motivated to set down my own life's story. So genealogy is the root of this blog, if not its actual subject.
As I sit down to write these memoirs (such a pretentious word), I wonder who my audience might be and who might even care. I’ve worked long and hard on researching my family's history. I even started a website in order to record the “roots” of my family. I’ve traced back my ancestors through the last two centuries, marked the places of their births on maps, and gleaned what little facts I could about their lives from old pictures and history books. I believe there is great value in preserving my family’s past, and I hope my efforts will endure and be well received by future generations.
But to include my own reflections--a letter, of sorts, from me to you--isn't that a bit narcissistic? Suppose I do set down my recollections of growing up in Houston, Texas in the 1960’s—who besides my immediate family would be interested in that? My life has been pretty ordinary, and I’ve not made any great accomplishments. No, my life has not been all that exciting usually, and really, who would want to read about it anyway?
But I’ll tell you something I have learned. During my research, I have read the letters and journals of pioneer women who, at the end of a fourteen-hour day of grueling labor, somehow found the strength to set down a few lines each evening by flickering firelight about their day. And the value of those antiquated records lies not in the dazzling or exciting tales of an adventurous life on the western frontier. No, the value lies in the very ordinary details of a life lived honestly, often times tragically, but with human strength and dignity.
These women with their work-worn hands and oft-mended calico gowns wrote tenderly of their children—their first smiles, their beauty and grace. They railed against diseases they could not fight and grieved when the battle was lost. Sometimes their writings were comic: daily struggles with mud puddles on dirt floors, exploding stovepipes, and piglets multiplying under the porch. They recorded their recipes for laundry soap and beeswax candles and dried raisin pies. They wrote because they were isolated in their little sod huts and had no girlfriends to have coffee with every morning at work. They wrote because somehow they knew that as short and as hard and as futile as their lives must have seemed at times, one day their children, and their children’s children, would come to know them through their words. They left us a love letter from the past.
What would we give if we could catch a glimpse into our great-grandmothers' lives? How fascinating it would be if we could know more about them than just their date of birth or the number of children they had? When I look at some of the women in my family who were married at thirteen, bore twelve children, moved five times, and still lived to be eighty, I yearn to be able to talk to them. What must their lives have been like?
Were they happy? Did they find joy in their lives? Did they long for something different? Did they have dreams and aspirations beyond marriage and family? Did they secretly shudder with fear every other year when, just as they weaned one child, they found themselves nauseous, exhausted and tied down by yet another pregnancy again? Did they resent their husbands for the inevitable result of their conjungal relations? Or did they--having no choice other than abstinence--just accept the perils and dangers of multiple pregnancies as part of their lives and go on? Were they so worn down by endless work and worry that they had no energy for love or laughter? Or did they love life passionately and look forward to the start of each new day with a bright smile and hope in their hearts?
And where did they find the sheer courage it must have taken for them to pack up and move their children and household belongings and livestock hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles, over unknown lands and seas in search of a better life?
Don’t you wish they had written us a letter?
So I have come to realize that’s what I want to do: I want to write a letter. I want to write about the good and the bad, the happy and the tragic, the ordinary and the sublime. I want to open a window and let you all have a glimpse into the life of an ordinary woman who lived and worked and loved and died, and whose memory will fade into obscurity just as surely as the tides will continue to turn. I will be mourned by my family, but then forgotten by all, just one more statistic in a time line that marches down through the ages, unless I allow you to know me through the words on these few pages.
Most of us will never earn a place in the history books, and yet all of us contribute in our own way to the legacy of man. Is my life worth a moment or two of reflection by some future generation? Only time will tell. But I write this love letter for my children, and my children’s children, and if by some happenstance, these words should survive beyond that time, then I write it for all of those who might one day yearn for glimpse, just a glimmer really, of what ordinary life was like "back then" in America. And maybe, just maybe, some of those future readers will be inspired to write their own love letters to their own children. And in this way, the reflections of ordinary people upon their ordinary lives will continue to be woven, in and out, among the threads of the too seldom recorded history of the common man.
Let me tell you the purpose of this blog. For about 15 years I have been researching my family's history. Now quickly--before your eye glaze over in tedious boredom--let me assure you that this is NOT a blog to publish my genealogical research. Far from it. Instead, it is going to deal with a far more mundane and probably boring subject: my life. So if you're not one of those who like to "peak in" on your neighbors, just to see what they're up to, feel free to check out now. (Myself, I can never resist doing a bit of spying on co-workers or neighbors.) But, the point I am belaboring to make is this: if it were not for my genealogical research, I probably would never have been motivated to set down my own life's story. So genealogy is the root of this blog, if not its actual subject.
As I sit down to write these memoirs (such a pretentious word), I wonder who my audience might be and who might even care. I’ve worked long and hard on researching my family's history. I even started a website in order to record the “roots” of my family. I’ve traced back my ancestors through the last two centuries, marked the places of their births on maps, and gleaned what little facts I could about their lives from old pictures and history books. I believe there is great value in preserving my family’s past, and I hope my efforts will endure and be well received by future generations.
But to include my own reflections--a letter, of sorts, from me to you--isn't that a bit narcissistic? Suppose I do set down my recollections of growing up in Houston, Texas in the 1960’s—who besides my immediate family would be interested in that? My life has been pretty ordinary, and I’ve not made any great accomplishments. No, my life has not been all that exciting usually, and really, who would want to read about it anyway?
But I’ll tell you something I have learned. During my research, I have read the letters and journals of pioneer women who, at the end of a fourteen-hour day of grueling labor, somehow found the strength to set down a few lines each evening by flickering firelight about their day. And the value of those antiquated records lies not in the dazzling or exciting tales of an adventurous life on the western frontier. No, the value lies in the very ordinary details of a life lived honestly, often times tragically, but with human strength and dignity.
These women with their work-worn hands and oft-mended calico gowns wrote tenderly of their children—their first smiles, their beauty and grace. They railed against diseases they could not fight and grieved when the battle was lost. Sometimes their writings were comic: daily struggles with mud puddles on dirt floors, exploding stovepipes, and piglets multiplying under the porch. They recorded their recipes for laundry soap and beeswax candles and dried raisin pies. They wrote because they were isolated in their little sod huts and had no girlfriends to have coffee with every morning at work. They wrote because somehow they knew that as short and as hard and as futile as their lives must have seemed at times, one day their children, and their children’s children, would come to know them through their words. They left us a love letter from the past.
What would we give if we could catch a glimpse into our great-grandmothers' lives? How fascinating it would be if we could know more about them than just their date of birth or the number of children they had? When I look at some of the women in my family who were married at thirteen, bore twelve children, moved five times, and still lived to be eighty, I yearn to be able to talk to them. What must their lives have been like?
Were they happy? Did they find joy in their lives? Did they long for something different? Did they have dreams and aspirations beyond marriage and family? Did they secretly shudder with fear every other year when, just as they weaned one child, they found themselves nauseous, exhausted and tied down by yet another pregnancy again? Did they resent their husbands for the inevitable result of their conjungal relations? Or did they--having no choice other than abstinence--just accept the perils and dangers of multiple pregnancies as part of their lives and go on? Were they so worn down by endless work and worry that they had no energy for love or laughter? Or did they love life passionately and look forward to the start of each new day with a bright smile and hope in their hearts?
And where did they find the sheer courage it must have taken for them to pack up and move their children and household belongings and livestock hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles, over unknown lands and seas in search of a better life?
Don’t you wish they had written us a letter?
So I have come to realize that’s what I want to do: I want to write a letter. I want to write about the good and the bad, the happy and the tragic, the ordinary and the sublime. I want to open a window and let you all have a glimpse into the life of an ordinary woman who lived and worked and loved and died, and whose memory will fade into obscurity just as surely as the tides will continue to turn. I will be mourned by my family, but then forgotten by all, just one more statistic in a time line that marches down through the ages, unless I allow you to know me through the words on these few pages.
Most of us will never earn a place in the history books, and yet all of us contribute in our own way to the legacy of man. Is my life worth a moment or two of reflection by some future generation? Only time will tell. But I write this love letter for my children, and my children’s children, and if by some happenstance, these words should survive beyond that time, then I write it for all of those who might one day yearn for glimpse, just a glimmer really, of what ordinary life was like "back then" in America. And maybe, just maybe, some of those future readers will be inspired to write their own love letters to their own children. And in this way, the reflections of ordinary people upon their ordinary lives will continue to be woven, in and out, among the threads of the too seldom recorded history of the common man.
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