...
...I have more than reached the age of maturity, and I should be full of wisdom; but does anyone ever reach that unique state of mind? Eric Erickson describes this period of life as one of integrity pulled down by despair. One IS. Or, putting it another way, by HAVING BEEN, one has reached TO BE. Soon one must face NOT BEING. There is despair; why deny it, an existential despair that haunts our whole western civilization. T.S. Eliot tells us we shall die with a whimper. The days of Robert Browning sound oddly unreal today;
- Grow old along with me
- The best is yet to be,
- The last of life, for which the first was made:
- Our times are in His hand.
- Who saith, "A whole I planned,
- Youth shows but half; trust God:
- See all, not be afraid."
This period of maturity, filled though it is with despair, has integrity to keep a person in balance. One of the definitions of integrity is UPRIGHTNESS, the very sound of which makes one straighten one's back and one's shoulders, hold up one's head. Integrity is full of honesty, sincerity, probity. It is a daytime word that connotes a state of being awake, being alive, being aware of life around one.
I cannot accept either Browning or the whimper. Despair, yes. Enveloping despair. Despair to drown in. Then integrity comes along like a life-raft; one bobs along, cheerfully, and it is hard to even imagine what death is like. With age one accepts death more casually, inevitably it is nearer, but with integrity one can look at it as merely the other side of life.
Dylan Thomas, with all his madness, his drinking, his own despair, knew of death in the most lyrical and heart-warming style:
- Death shall have no dominion
- Dead men naked they shall be one
- With the man in the wind and the west moon;
- When their bones are picked clean and the clean
- bone gone
- They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
- Though they go mad they shall be sane,
- Though they sink through the sea they shall rise
- again;
- Though lovers be lost love shall not;
- And death shall have no dominion. ....
- ..............Chapter 2
- Parents and Grandparents
I never knew my grandmothers. Both had died before I was born, and as I am now ninety, that goes back a long time. The one had ten children, the other six, and in those days women often died in childbirth, leaving the grandfathers widowers. In each case my grandfathers married again, almost a necessity when there were so many children to take care of.
As my parents were so much older than most, my father had stories of the Civil War when he was a boy, soldiers camping in the park near where he lived in Newtonville. Once he stood in line and, holding a bowl from home he was given a dollop of stew at mess time like a real soldier. Again my mother recalled the sorrow of the nation when President Lincoln was shot, and her mother hung on their balcony in Boston a home-made American flag, and a long strip of unbleached muslin on which was printed, "In God we Trust." As a little girl, she was taken to the railroad station to watch the train carrying Lincoln's body as it moved slowly past on its tour of the country. I still have the strip of unbleached muslin, but the flag eventually powdered , and I burned what was left.
My parents were both of New England stock, my father's ancestors dating back to one William Macomber, a 'maker of vessels' - in other words, a cooper, who left England on the boat after the Mayflower, which fact seemed to bother some of my aunts, who claimed a daughter later married to a real "Mayflower," permitting them to join the Mayflower Society. The original William was offered the woods on Clark's Island, in the harbor of Duxbury to cut wood to make his barrels; he must have known Miles Standish and Priscilla and John Alden. Succeeding generations moved to Marshfield, then to Boston.
Many generations later my father was born, a blonde blonde with eyes as blue as the sky, a wiry build, and when I knew him, he had a blonde beard. His personality was such that all his brothers and sisters - there were ten children - seemed to love and admire him more than the others. They nicknamed him Caesar, for what reason I wish I knew. He worshipped his mother, who died when he was fifteen.
One grandfather, my father's father, was a choleric man, in the pickle business, and at one period he went through bankruptcy. He complained about the rich food his wife was cooking, saying "that he would be satisfied with salt fish tails." At the next meal, with all his favorite dishes, he was served a large covered dish which of course was full of salt fish tails, to the delight of all the children. There was one story that when the ten children got out of hand at dinner he would snatch the pepper pot and shake it in all their faces. The night of the salt fish tails must have been one of the times!
As a baby my father was delicate, the only one in the family who got smallpox. He was kept in a room hung with sheets dripping with disinfectant and his mother, with raincoat and boots, fed him and nursed him, but amazingly neither his parents nor any of the other children caught it. His mother had him wear gloves to keep from scratching. As a result he had only two small scars or "pocks" on his face. Generally survivors of the disease had faces disfigured with these pock marks.
My father went to English High, part of Boston Latin, then quit to get a job in a paint and varnish company. The manager urged him to go back to school, which he did, and he continued in Tufts Dental School where he graduated valedictorian of his class. The research interested him more than being a straight dentist. Family problems interrupted and he went into the paper business with an older brother, my father commenting, "It has been business ever since." It is nice to think that a grandson, my son, is carrying on the research.
My grandfather, my mother's father, grew up a country boy from the hills of Vermont, and then went to the big city of Boston to study dentistry. My mother was one of six girls, her father by then a practicing dentist. Her mother, whom she also adored, died in child-birth when my mother was twelve. This seemed a common occurrence of those days, with the surviving father marrying again, as did each of my grandfathers, marrying the housekeeper, to the annoyance of the children; but who can blame the widower with so many children to bring up?
In my early years we lived in a big house somewhat separate, and I knew few other children, therefore this grandfather became my playmate, my "nursemaid," my close companion and teacher. When I knew him he had retired and was living with us. In my early years before school he would take me for walks, and on rainy days in his big room he would tell me stories of his boyhood on a Vermont backwoods farm where they used oxen for ploughing; his father was in the war of 1812, and as a boy he could remember using a flint to start a fire in the open fireplace, and was impressed when later one needed only a match. He was six foot two, with drooping white moustaches, and wore his white curling hair long, priding himself on his resemblance to Mark Twain.
My mother had an unusual life before she married my father. Her oldest sister, Eusebia, married an old man who ran the main department store in Windsor, Vermont, and had children the age of his young bride. My mother visited her sister in Windsor and became engaged to the oldest step-son, Ned. He gave her a ring with a pearl set in the gold, but also he developed tuberculosis. As he was dying he begged her to live with him. This she did (so she told me many, many years later). Then the next brother, William, fell in love with her, so he said, although instead of proposing to her he went west, following the old saying, "Go west, young man, go west, and make your fortune." He did, but it took him ten years or more, and he never even wrote her a letter.
In the meantime my mother taught school and on a vacation she stayed at a boarding house run by one of my father's sisters who had become a widow and who needed to earn her living. Another of my father's sisters was a school teacher, which is how my mother knew about it, and of course my father was staying there too. He proposed to her in a canoe on the Charles River, gave her a fiery opal and diamond ring, engraved on the inside, "F.E.M. to U.W., Charles River." For their honeymoon they went to Atlantic City, and for some unfathomable reason they ate oysters and prunes for their first meal. Periodically we were served this strange combination on March 2lst, but it was usually a joking conversation piece. My brother Donald was born the required nine months later, and one day before my mother's birthday. A year and a half later my sister, Dorothea,was born, and she always felt it was too soon for a second child, and that she was not wanted, a sad feeling. However, when I was born twelve and a half years later I always felt I was longed for, particularly by my father, and I am sure I was consequently a spoiled child.
It was at this period William returned, wanted to know why my mother hadn't waited for him, and he fussed around upsetting my mother, humiliating my father, scandalizing both families. Years later when I was grown up my mother swore to me she had never lived with him, flattered as she was by his attention. Apparently some people in Windsor, Vermont, thought otherwise, because at his funeral, to which my sister Dorothea and I went (my parents were spending the winter in California to escape New England cold), during the service a woman behind me whispered to her friend, "That's the girl." I became so angry I was ready to turn around and shout, "I am my father's daughter, and I look just like him with my blonde hair and Macomber nose."
It made me adore my father more than ever, although my mother and I were always close. As I mention earlier, she was a liberal and one could confide in and talk to her about anything. In spite of this intrusion of a distant cousin my parents got on very well together with no thought of a divorce. My mother was more emotional and she would shout, "You run your life with your head, while I run mine with my heart." My father would laugh good naturedly. When he was away on business he would write letters signed, "your lover," and I found this touchingly romantic.
Once many years later I was telling a story about my mother, and one of my nephews-by-marriage exclaimed, "That is the first time I have ever heard anything kind about the woman." I was shocked. My mother was a delightful person whether as an old lady or younger as I like to recall her. She had a quick tongue but she was generous, handsome, witty, intelligent, with odd quirks of the mind that made one laugh with her. You could tell her anything, and I often did about my life in New York, but she was never shocked, always understanding of the younger generation.