Chapter 25 Our Last Years in Texas: The Prep School; Birth and Death in the Family       In the fall of 1959, when I went back to my teaching job at the school, I talked Bill into letting me enroll all four children - the three boys in secondary school and Ellen as a kindergartner.   ........   It was Billy's first year of high school, and he was able to study more foreign languages - a second year of French and German. Peter and Tommy took Latin - using as text Ritchie's First Steps, of course, the standard prep school text used pretty universally in England. The three kids enjoyed the Prep School more than they had the public school. Robert Cairns took kids on camping trips, and, generally speaking, the atmosphere was more relaxed and friendly, Billy and Jim Pettit continued to be friends, even though they no longer met in school and neither Peter norTom seem to have made good enough friends to have missed them very much.   Ellen had a wonderful Kindergarten teacher, Joyce Baker, and the class was small, only four kids, with two of whom especially whom Ellen developed real friendships, and her first school year passed very enjoyably.     It was a very good year for us all - but the loss of the baby the previous May must have been working in me physiologically, because during the following March I became pregnant again. The pregnancy was unexpected, but we were pretty used to coping by now, so it wasn't all bad. But we did realize that our house, even with its recent renovations, was not going to be big enough to accommodate another child!   We began looking at real estate again, and found a house we could manage which would give us quite a bit more space because it had a garage apartment behind the space where we parked the car and trailer. The apartment had two rooms and a bathroom, but would do pretty well for the three boys, the rooms being fairly large. And so we moved across town to the house, which was on Bell Avenue, a north-south street on the west side of town which bordered the campus of what was now renamed Texas Woman's University, with several fine new buildings to match! It was also close to an intersection with the main east-west highway that ran toward McKinney on the west. We had a considerably bigger side- and backyard with lush plantings, since the house was quite bit older than the one on Panhandle. We sold the old house to a new faculty family who had also joined the Fellowship.   We celebrated the move by a splendid outdoor party that ended around two in the morning with most of us jumping fully-clothed into our "domestic ocean" (as Bill called it) &endash; the circular, eight-foot cattle-watering-tank that was our totally satisfying private swimming hole! We had even bought a new refrigerator, the old one being small and second-hand, and kept the latter on the porch as a beer overflow resource. It was a lovely party!   That September the Denton Record-Chronicle announced proudly that the missile base the army had been building north of town was finally finished and there was going to be a big dedication ceremony, to which all the top brass were invited. That was too much for me, and I realized that there had to be a protesting presence at the gate to let the army know that not all Texans think we should be conducting the Cold War by a buildup of weapons of terrifying power - thereby enriching all the contractors that supply them! After asking around among my friends and fellow liberals for company, I realized it would have to be a solo operation, so I made myself a sign on a stick, drove my car up to just beyond the gate, parked well off the shoulder and walked me back to the gate itself, where I began walking back and forth, careful not to block the passage of huge limousines that were slowly driving up the ramp to the entrance.   I had been there about five minutes when I got a response from within. A young lieutenant came walking down the ramp and came up to me, looking friendly but concerned. ""What are you doin' here, Ma'am?" he asked me. "This is not where you are supposed to be. This is an army base. I'd like you to go on home, now, Ma'am." I thanked him politely for his concern but told him it was the right place for me to be, and that I needed to stay. He walked alongside me as I continued to walk up and down.   "Now, Ma'am," he said, "You know good an' well you don't b'long here. I'm sure you got kids and a home to keep. You go 'long, now. This is not your bidness." I told him I meant no offence, but that I couldn't do that. He tried one more time. "Ma'am, think about your husband's job! How you goin'a feel if he loses it because of what you're doin'?" I thanked him for his concern but kept on walking. "Well, I tried, Ma'am. I'm goin'a have to call the sheeriff." "OK, Lieutenant. Thanks anyway," I answered. He walked back up the ramp. I continued to walk with my sign.   In about fifteen minutes, here came Wiley Barnes and his deputy, Bud Gentle, in their sheriff's car. Wiley had his six guns on his hips, of course. They walked up to me. Bud took my sign and each took hold of an arm. "Come on, now," Wiley said sternly. I went limp, and they had to drag me to the car, which they did gently enough. They put me in the back. Wiley drove his car and Bud drove my car. We headed back to the courthouse. Their office was in the basement, in a room they shared with the justice of the peace and a few other functions I've forgotten. They booked me and then let me go. I went home and called the newspaper and the Dallas TV stations. No point in doing it unless you get enough publicity. Then I called ACLU headquarters and got the name of an ACLU lawyer in Dallas.   The man I got, Otto Mullinax, was a real Southern gentleman, charming, friendly and very savvy. The charge against me was for obstructing traffic. I guess they couldn't think of anything else. The newspapers and TV stations excitedly reported the incident, and I got a few heckling phone calls and even a couple of threatening ones, but it all died down in a few days. Otto got the charges dismissed, and it was finished by the end of the week. I wasn't sorry I had done it, because it very much needed to be done! I guess my only regret was that there hadn't been a lot more people joining me. I found a copy of the DRC article recently (all except the accompanyine photogrtaph of me) deploring my intervention. Click here to see it in all its patriotic glory.   On the other hand, I guess it wasn't a totally wasted gesture. I recently (February, '03) received an e-mail from a Denton woman which I reproduce below:   Dear Mary, I'm writing you to thank you for your courage and spirit. Recently, a couple of newspapers in Denton,TX mentioned you in articles regarding the old missile base here. One was actually marking the day you protested as a day to remember in the town's history. These articles have fascinated several of us here in Denton to see who this remarkable woman was that decided to make such an important protest..... even if it was solo. When we looked you up on the internet we saw much more than we could have hoped for! You have done some wonderful things and it looks like you continue to share and teach with the spirit you have. As a 29-year-old female who is learning my way in life, I just want you to know that reading your writings and seeing what you've done in your life has certainly been inspirational to my spirit. Your energy is remarkable ...... even to someone who doesn't know you personally! We're fortunate to have you in the world! Thanks for sharing yourself!   Oh, and by the way, the person who now owns the old nike missile base is a very kind and peaceful person. How ironic, right?   Take Care, Jennifer ......................................   Life resumed its usual rhythms. As my due date approached, I had weekly appointments with Virginia Moreland. At one of the last, she reminded me that I would have to have a Cesarean section. At that time "V-bac"s were unheard of, so if you had had one section, all subsequent births had to be by section as well. She tapped my chart, remarking, "And now that you're a grand multipara, don't you think it's also time you had your tubes tied?" I shamefacedly agreed. She then told me that the surgeon wanted to use spinal anesthesia.   The very idea scared me a lot, because my youngest brother Peter, who was a doctor, had told me that his wife Marjorie had nearly died when he had allowed her obstetrician to give her spinal anesthesia for a delivery. They had lowered her too far, as I remember it, allowing the anesthesia to run upward along the spinal column and paralyze her chest muscles, making it impossible for her to breathe. Peter, who was there with her, had had to give her artificial respiration. So I would have liked to tell her no, but didn't feel I had permission to go against her recommendation, so said nothing. I should have! It was a disaster! My ability to insist on only allowing a medical procedure to take place with my full approval was still virtually non-existent, as a result of my childhood training with my father! So I said nothing and hoped for the best.   The surgeon administered the anesthesia and then told me to turn over. I did, and proceeded to go into a major anxiety attack! The two of them stood there staring at me silently and impersonally as I lay there hyperventilating, in an absolute panic. I finally realized that I was going to live, and quieted down, and they were able to go on with the operation, after screening me from the sight of my belly being cut into.   I think they must also have given me some sort of sedative, because I don't remember much more. They wheeled me back to my room, and I slept until they brought in the baby. He was a cute little bugger, and healthy! &endash; which was a great relief! We named him Mark Stedman Leue. My pleasure in his presence turned out to be short-lived, however, because I developed an amazingly painful spinal headache &endash; which actually lasted for several weeks after the birth! &endash; and as time went by, I developed very painful gas pains from the Cesarean section, with which my doctor Virginia made it very evident she had no sympathy whatsoever! I still remember vividly the sharp sound of her stilletto heels as she stalked disgustedly away from my bed of post-operative discomfort! She did let me sign myself out quite soon, however, and I was very glad to go home in spite of the misery. Mark and I soon began learning how to enjoy each other's company in a more relaxed atmosphere, with the help of the entire family.   The winter and spring of 1960 passed with the usual amount of pulling and hauling involved in being a large family, but nothing greatly out of the way - but during the following summer, quite unexectedly, tragedy struck. Bill's father had always had asthma, and had had to have medication and an inhaler on hand when it flared up. This time, the attack proved to be intractable. His mother didn't call us right away, and by the time she did and we dashed over, his face was dusky and he was having a very hard time breathing. I called the ambulance right away, and they came promptly. I remember vividly the profundity of the relief he very evidently felt when they gave him a shot and an oxygen mask! We rode with him to the hospital, but by the time he got there, the relaxation had progressed to unconsciousness. He never did become conscious again, but died quietly some time during the night!   Bill's mother was devastated. Bill and I talked it over and agreed that it would be a good thing for him to move in with her to help her with the funeral, the financial details and for the comfort of his company and support. He could get to his classes on his bicycle just as easily as he had from our house. His mother had had cataracts in both eyes for many years &endash; ten, I believe &endash; and was nearly blind, so it was appropriate that he help her, since his father had been handling all the details that involved any degree of visual acuity.   But when a couple of weeks had gone by, and Bill was still living with his mother, I began to feel outclassed. We talked on the phone every evening, and I could tell he was feeling torn, wanting to be at home, but feeling obligated to stay with his mother. I, in turn, was beginning to feel as though she was feeling comfortable having him at home again, and was making very little effort to begin establishing a sense of independence, such as she had had before his father had died. She had been cooking and helping with house-cleaning, and his help had been either writing and reading or moving furniture for the vacuum-cleaning. It seemed unreasonable for him to continue to stay with her fulltime now that several weeks had gone by since his father died.   I guess I started getting angry &endash; even felt a twinge of jealousy and abandonment - and I think it shocked him to think that I would be so heartless, from his point of view! I'm not sure why it didn't occur to him to start dividing his time between the two households in order to help her make the adaptation, but it didn't. I finally began insisting that he come home! He did, but must have realized that she wouldn't be able to stay in the house alone, and so began talking with me about moving her to our house and selling hers. I saw his point, and said yes, but that she would first have to have the long-postponed cataract operation.   Her explanation for not having had it years before was that her doctor had warned her that her coloboma (she had a less drastic degree of the same defect that Bill did) would make it more complicated than an ordinary cataract operation. Actually, we discovered when she saw the doctor that the degree of risk was very little greater than it was for any cataract surgery. Her own fear had magnified the danger. So she had the surgery and came to live with us. I don't think she actually wanted to come, having much preferred, as I had surmised, having Bill come to stay with her &endash; but I guess she realized she had no choice. Neither did I, with so many family responsibilities!   ..  The first year of Mark's life - a serious child with much on his young mind   The last year we spent in Texas - 1961 - was a very difficult one. My immunity seems to have been pulled down by all of the events of the previous year, and I developed repeated cases of "walking" - i.e., a-febrile - pneumonia which gradually settled into my chest and failed to resolve. Virginia Moreland began talking bronchoscopy, which is a procedure whereby they insert a tube into your tracheal tube and take a look at your lungs.   The very mention of this word brought up for me a horrifyingly vivid picture of a bronchoscopy I had seen performed at the Leahy Clinic at the Deaconess Hospital during my nurse's training in Boston, a procedure carried out without anesthesia on a poor man by strapping him down, including his wrists, and then forcing a huge tube down his trachea, which was only possible when he bent back his head and arched his back, clutching at the pad of the operating table with his hands, obviously terrified, making strangling noises throughout the procedure!   Of course this is the same clinic where I had witnessed a newborn baby being circumsized by being held down by two nurses, who lay over the opposite ends of the operating table holding his arms and legs under the sterile towels, while the doctor took at least half an hour to do the operation. The baby had been given a throat stick wrapped at one end with gauze soaked in sugared wine to suck on &endash; no other anesthesia &endash; and of course screamed ear-piercingly throughout the operation!   So I was very scared at the mere suggestion! And I had no wish for any more anesthesia after that fatal spinal tap! Virginia was clearly annoyed with me for balking, but I did it anyway. Nevertheless, the threat had frightened me a lot, and my morale was very low. I'm not sure how Bob Lockwood heard about it, but one day while I was in bed he bopped in in his usual cheerful fashion with an armload of books. I only remember the name of one of them, Beyond the Wide Missouri, by Bernard DeVoto, but they were all about the west. It was a like miracle cure for what ailed me - reading about the mountain men! I recovered quite soon, and didn't need to have the bronchoscopy after all! *   * Years later, after we had fully settled in in the new setting, the new job, and had received an invitation to fly back to Denton for a weekend celebration of the Unitarian Fellowship's first anniversary, we came back for a brief reliving of the dream we had created together. By this time Ann had died, and Robert had left the Felklowship. We went for a visit, and learned that his mother had also died. Our meeting was poignant, and elicited from me a poem which wrote itself as we flew home again. Robert's palpable pain at the telling of his mother's death had awakened a depth of pain in me which I could apparently only feel fully as Robert - but it gave the poem a kind of transcendent luminousness which even now evokes that response I was undergoing as we flew high in the atmosphere. I still wonder whether it conveys my experience in a manner which a reader can share - because I truly do not know whether others than myself live their feelings as I do! All I really know of the poem is that for me it evokes Robert's unique manner and style to perfection! Here it is.   ROBERT   Clown, clown: Your luminous potato-face Has pressed itself against my heart. Must the City of Brotherly Love become your grave Because your love-pain wills it so? Must the mother-ache tumble you uncaring into the mass-grave opened by the father-ache, Till surcease becomes a heap of sprawling Belsen kindling wood And the bulldozer a loving mother covering her sleeping child?   Let me hold you, clown, Funny, bibulous, cherry-nosed, Let me hold you suspended in a teardrop, Dancing miniscule, sweetly lapped in plastic hyper-liquidity. Shall I wear you on a golden chain about my neck? Swinging and dangling between my breast-mounds? Or bouncing fruitlessly against my belly, A longer chain, a wilder swinging, Dizzying; a tiny, forever-impotized Antaeus?   Or shall I implant you deep in the rich, warm blood-loam of my hidden heart? To swell and burgeon in the dark, White like the cave worm, A blindly twisting fetus writhing toward the ever-absent sun?   Shall I then turn surgeon of the heart? And wrap your infarcted muscle In a thick, moist blanket of rich omentum, Reroute your thrombosed blood-way into a better course Where the fluids may flow unhindered And nourish the heart-plant into sturdier root-ball growth?   No: for you are neither bauble, fetus, nor coronary victim, Even though your pain has a kind of pearly luminescence Which would grace any fetus, blind and questing after its inner light, Calling forth a mother's warm, encircling nurturance all unbidden... And what angina goes unheeded; what wound unsutured? Pain wears many faces, calls up its own physician.   But my chthonic pain-response Would imprison you deep in its forever depths of answering mother pain, Would quench your golden torch, And all because I could not bear the pain its wavering brings me.   Mother pain must turn to mother courage, Laying a cool and marble cheek Against the burning fever of your clown's anguish, Propping to steadiness the wobbling torch with calm, unbending marble fingers, Encircling, not grasping; Mother Courage bids you be a man Because she knows the depths all unbeknownst to you Of your endurance... Knows too that her cool hand and calm knowing can slip inside your tortured heart And dwell there like a marble bridge-span Across the seething chasm of your pain Until its prosthesis slips out by its own lifeless weight; Unheeded, unneeded, Once the fever cools and the heart's thudding quiets to a steady throb.   So you, wearing a different hat, Perhaps even a different nose; who knows? whose nose? - So you have done for her When pain kept healing sleep away. "Come, dance with me!" you cried (Your clown's face alight with radiance and impish joy); And when she could not dance, She lay and smiled, watching you dance, Cocking up your impudent toes, Thumbing up your Hackenabush nose, Fingers waggling, eyebrows wiggling, Your Groucho leer a twinkling thing of transmuted beauty.   She knew, as did you, That cut flowers bloom but briefly And that to mourn their end while yet they blossom, Or only droop a little, Is to slight their essence By casting the shadow of their end Upon the moment of their perfection.   And so, for me, While open to the pain of your heart's agony, So poignantly coloring my soul's heart With its blood-red curtain, There must also be a sense of the perfection Of this moment too, A transmuting of my yearning after completion - Nay, a begging for it to be done! - To a letting of the timelessness of that pain: Pain not to be cut short, denied, refused, stopped; soothed, even, For fear of my mirroring pain, But welcomed into the realm, the great chamber Of the universal Heart. ...................... December, 1965. ....................................................................   I had persuaded Bill to ask the administration that his salary be given him on a year-round basis, rather than for ten months only, so the dire need for him to teach summer school was finally laid to rest and we were able to drive all together to Maine for a vacation. Bill had also asked the American Philosophical Association to notify him of any job offers in the northeast, and had actually received one during the school year from the chairman of the philosophy department of the future State University of New York at Albany, a former teachers' college that had been newly upgraded by Governor Nelson Rockefeller via a grandiose scheme to create a state university system to equal California's, This university barely existed, its future campus being still in the works. It was just emerging like a butterfly from its pupa, still hanging, all folded up, waiting for the sun to dry its wings, Bill wrote him that he was interested in the position &endash; which was for an assistant professorship &endash; and told him that we would drop in on our way to Maine.   By this time we had sold the old Gilkie canvas folding camper to the Robinsons and bought a spiffy new white and turquoise camper with a pop top that made making and breaking camp a lot easier. We now also bought a big square butter-yellow tent (secondhand) - which we promptly dubbed The Yellow Rose of Texas! - to enhance our camping facilities even more, and headed out for one last trek to the northeast &endash; all seven of us, baby Mark and all.   The chairman's name was Robert Creegan, and he was an individualist - crusty, eccentric and cantankerous - entirely himself. I suppose Bob was enticed into making the job offer by Bill's Harvard Ph.D., which was greatly to our advantage, as it enabled him to surmount his awareness of Bill's severe visual handicap - but it was probably also Bob's own idiosyncratic view of life that persuaded him to offer Bill the job. Or it may have been the unfinished upgrade to a new university which actually made it possible for its chairman to consider Bill as a candidate. Whatever it was, it was a morale-booster for both Bill and me.   So in the early summer of 1961, as soon as the school year had ended, we began the lengthy preparations for moving to the northeast. This meant for me putting the house on the market, doing a lot of repainting and repairing, planning a yard sale of household items we could live without - in view of the cost of moving our entire household thousands of miles - tidying up our affairs generally in Denton, saying our goodbyes, cutting the ties that we had bound ourselves with during the past nine years. Among other things, this meant another visit to the little room in the County Courthouse to which I had been brought after the arrest for picketing the missile base - probably to pay a parking ticket fine, since by now meters had been installed around the courthouse square. And who should come out of the sheriff's office but deputy Bud Gentle. "Why, howdy, ma'am, good to see you again. How you been? You keepin' out of trouble lately?" "Hi, Mr. Gentle. I've been fine; can't afford any trouble these days. We're leaving for a new job in New York State, taking off next week." "Why, I'm real sorry to hear that, ma'am. We gonna miss you around here!" And he meant it! That's Texas. I still miss that personal flavor to interactions. Or maybe it's more small town than regionalism, because it's how a lot of people still are in many small New England villages. And for me, much of the incentive for the move was to be closer to the farm, Journey's End, in Ashfield, Massachusetts!    Write me at   maryskole.aol.com Move to Chapter 26