Born on the Fifth of March

Bill

It was a little milder than usual in Boston that Monday in March.  The war-torn world I entered was on the brink of precipitous change. It was 1945. For a brief moment I was a contemporary of Roosevelt and Hitler. The economic and social systems espoused by Roosevelt would affect me in very specific ways; the chaos dispersed by Hitler would also affect me in ways that would at times test my belief in both myself and humanity.  The rural was becoming the urban, the small towns would become smaller as the suburbs came to dominate, television was just around the corner, computers just down the road. I had begun my life in a discordant, conflicted world, a world which, through the years, would surprise me, delight me and confuse me.    

I was born at the New England Hospital for Women and Children. Thousands upon thousands of babies took their first lungfuls of air there including my sister and two brothers. The building, constructed in 1872, is still in use serving the people of Roxbury as the Dimock Community Health Center. 

On that fifth day of March, the Hague in the Netherlands was bombed by the allies.  A few days later Americans reached the Rhine; on the other bank, a wounded but still defiant Germany.  A hospital stay after having a baby was at least a week in 1945.  While I am acclimating in the maternity ward, the battle of Iwo Jima rages, V2 rockets are causing death and destruction in England and Belgium, Russian troops are moving through Hungary. I sleep and eat and gurgle. The light at the end of the tunnel is growing more vivid as the Second World War approaches its cataclysmic finish. I continue to sleep through all of it. 

I think of that first spring of my life as a twilight spring. The life of an infant isn't like the life of any one else. I was barely aware of the people around me, not aware at all of this new life out in the world. I slept at odd hours, daytime, nighttime. Specific parts of the day had no relevance to me.  It was a twilight spring for the world as well.  VE Day was declared in early May while the war in Japan raged on.  Men fought and died at odd hours, late morning, the middle of the night. Civilians too, bombed while they slept in their beds. It made no difference in the outcome. Dawns to dusks.  Dusks to dawns.  Then again, and again. During those ambiguous days and nights I settled into my life on Adams Circle unaware of the awful things going on in the world of which I was now officially a part.

Then and now, it's the children, always the children. Anne Frank was struggling to survive in a concentration camp just as I was born.  Sometime in those weeks she died of typhus.  She was 15.  Children are not spared  the catastrophe of war.  Now or then. In bombing raids.  On rescue ships targeted by submarines.  By fire storms.  By atomic blasts. On roads trying to escape.  Of neglect. Of starvation.  Of casual cruelty.  It's all the same.  I wouldn't know of these things until my early teens.  Even at that young age I knew I was one of the lucky ones.  At a time when people were dodging real bullets I too dodged a bullet, born when I was and where I was.

A tragic occurrence that spring.  On May 5 a minister, his pregnant wife and 5 local children were on a picnic in a wilderness area at Lakeview in eastern Oregon.  The wife and kids found an odd looking balloon in the woods.  The balloon was one of thousands of bomb-laden balloons launched by the Japanese designed to float across the Pacific and explode somewhere in America.  Not knowing what it was, the group may have attempted to drag it out of the woods.  It exploded. They became the first and only civilian casualties in the continental US during World War Two.  It was my two-month birthday.  

In July those A-bombs my friends and I would later casually use as props in our games of war became a reality. The first one exploded in New Mexico, a few thousand miles to the west of Boston. It was July 16. A few weeks later, on August 6, the second bomb was detonated, and on August 9, the third bomb exploded. Not in New Mexico but in Japan. Welcome to the future. A week later the war against Japan officially ended. I didn't notice. I hadn't woken from my nap yet.

It's difficult to grasp all that happened during those early months of my life. I think of the joy, the relief, people must have felt when the war ended that fall.  My mother was part of the crowds that gathered in Egleston Square to celebrate the end of the war. The conflict had been a long time coming.  During the war the deprivations were serious even in America. Many sons and daughters never returned. By September it was over.  There were plenty of pieces to pick and try to put back in place, and there was that pesky atom bomb lurking in the corner of everyone's mind.  It was a new world I was born into.  But for now there was peace.

While I led the life of an infant, sleeping, eating, gurgling, my parents were also living every day, making meals, working, keeping house, conversing, relaxing, taking care of me, my brother and my sister. Everything they did was somehow coordinated with everything I did.

The first steps I took, the first words I spoke, the dreams I had, the people I encountered, the food I ate, the lessons I learned, the traumas I did or did not deal with, the knowledge I gained, how I interpreted the world around me, all of these things affected me on a daily basis.  It troubles me I don't recall more than I do.

A war ends.  Sometimes you don't want to remember the things that happen to you. Some of us want to put the past far behind us; others live in the present, some of us can't wait until tomorrow. Time moves at its own pace, indifferent, unknowing.  It drags some of us along reluctantly while for others it moves so fast we seem to be hanging on for dear life. 

I am the third of four children. The facts of my siblings' birth order are straightforward.  My sister came first, in 1935. The conditions that would led to WW2 were well established, Japan taking over China, Italy invading Ethiopia, the Nazis well entrenched in Germany.  My older brother came next, in the spring of 1942. The attack on Pearl Harbor, a few months previous, precipitated America's entry into the world war.  Things were not going well.  France was occupied by Germany, England was under attack, the Japanese controlled huge areas of the East.  Meanwhile U boats were sinking shipping just off our coast.  People were frightened.  My sister, who lived through the rationing and other privations of war much of her childhood, was 10 years old when I came along in 1945. My older brother was not as aware of my arrival as my sister was since he was only 3. Similarly, I wasn't aware of my younger brother's birth in 1947 as I was just two and a half. The war's effects continued even for him.  Our former ally, Russia, was now our enemy. Our former adversary, Germany, was now our friend.

  

The war had a long-term impact on my life but this other circumstance, birth order, complicated it more.  It seems simple.  You arrive when you arrive.  Even though my sister was first born, there's still that span of seven years between her and my older brother.  Because of that gap my brother could be considered a first born as well; also being the first boy has significance.  Coming three years after my older brother and two years before my younger brother puts me in the middle of the three boys. If you agree with the research into birth order that specificity has ramifications.

Some researchers believe birth order is as important as genetics and the environment in the development of a child's personality.  Some newer research asserts that birth order has no effect on personality development and intelligence. My beliefs are somewhat in the middle.  (After all I am a middle child.)  Earlier studies speculated there were a number of traits associated with that middle position, one of which is mild rebelliousness. It's true I don't like being told what to do.  I like a certain separation from authority figures.  Middle children were also presumed to have a large social circle.  This is an attribute I don't have.   Even though I have decent social skills I have the tendency to be wary of people I don't know, aloof, even a bit detached. It takes me a while to warm up to someone I may later call a friend. 

Less attention is paid to middle children according to some of the  research.  I prefer not to be the center of attention so this may be a good thing.  On the other hand, by rejecting that attention when it was paid to me by well-meaning adults was a mistake.  Having a mentor, someone to teach me things, to guide me, to give me the benefit of their experiences, is always beneficial, especially when you're young.  You can be too independent

Birth order as such may not have an effect on future development biologically but it may be instrumental in how kids relate to their brothers and sisters. I was too young in Jamaica Plain to have specific relationships with my siblings. As I got older I had a better relationship with my younger brother, we played together a lot, whereas I never played with my older brother except maybe to throw a ball back and forth a few times.  My sister was ten years older than I was, a definite factor in my not getting to know her as well as I could have had she been closer to my own age.  These are not biological certainties but the matter of birth order did have an impact somewhere along the line.

I've often wondered about that seven year interval between my sister and older brother.  But imagine asking your parents about such details.  "By the way why the long wait between Mildred and Ralph?" I never did. I never could.  Back then it was inconceivable to ask anything so personal especially in such an emotionally restrictive family as mine.  But is it such an invasion of privacy when all I wanted was to understand not only how I came into the world but also how I came to be related to my brothers and sister. I have always been willing to answer any such questions from my own kids.  Life is mystifying enough without adding to the burden represented by unasked, unanswered questions.

A final thought,  as a middle child I was not the oldest, not the youngest.  The middle is just that, between two superlatives.  Perhaps this makes you question your place not only in your family but also in the world.

One specific consequence of my birth was how it affected both my mother and me as during those first few months.  Just after I was born my mother became seriously depressed. That it was some form of postpartum depression is likely.  Along with her newborn, my mother was also caring for a three year-old and keeping an eye on my ten year-old sister.  Years later my mother told me she felt overwhelmed by sadness, by despair.  As she put it, "I was down in the dumps."

My mother was nursing me that summer.  I wonder how my mother's physical condition, hormonal changes, fatigue, mood swings, and sadness those months influenced my future growth, my emotional construct.  If she had not suffered with depression that summer would I be a different person?  I do know she struggled to take care of me during that difficult period. She did her best.

When I was an adult she'd sometimes tell me how embarrassed she was late in the summer when her despondency became too much to deal with forcing her to ask her own mother for help.  "I hated to ask my mother for help.  I felt so bad about that." My grandmother, only a few blocks away, seemed fine with taking some of the burden away from my mother.  By fall the depression faded. Today it's more acceptable to ask for help but back then my mother felt a sense of failure at her inability to do what women are supposed to do, attend to their children. In those times, depression wasn't an illness, it was considered a character flaw something one could "snap out of."  

My mother never worked outside the house after she was married.  She was a mother, a housewife. Even today those roles are undervalued. They're considered routine, ordinary and perhaps those descriptors become attached to the people who do them. I'm not sure I ever considered my mother a 'domestic engineer' but the work she did at home required an enormous effort, an ability to make important decisions and a willingness not to let missteps get you down.  You can say those who nurture the children and maintain the home also preserve and protect the world.  Perhaps there's some truth to the idea that some of my mother's later dissatisfaction with life, her antagonistic demeanor, her thoughtlessness, her lack of flexibility, her periods of depression and anxiety were the result of her husband's disregard for her intellect and society in general's lack of interest in a woman's inner life, those aspects of life away from the traditional work of caring for children and being a housewife.  It's more complicated than that, of course, but feelings of self worth, or lack thereof, are the basis for many individuals lake of spirit and direction as they proceed in life.

When my mother just had the one child, life was, as you might expect, easier. There were times when she would have lunch at her mother’s and then dinner with my father’s parents.  My grandmother on my father’s side rarely did day to day errends so my mother would do the food shopping, pick up a shirt at the laundry, go to the bakery for the eclairs my grandmother loved, whatever had to be done.  When my sister Mildred was old enough she took over doing some of these errends.  

Things became more difficult as more kids came along. My mother was expected to do the work of the household and the work of the child rearing on her own. There were times when she understood the value of it and perhaps even enjoyed some of it. Years later she told Gin she was proud of the way she kept house.  The house was her domain.  A clean house, a well-prepared meal, a happy child, these were their own rewards. 

There were also days when she felt adrift with no one to help.  My father worked all day and often would visit with his parents after supper. Even though my older sister would do the dishes while my mother put us kids to bed, she spent much of her time at school with school-related responsibilities. As she got older my mother would also rely upon her to babysit. Of course, as my sister got older she'd prefer to be out with her friends.  

In later years, referring to those early times, my mother would use the collective noun "you kids" when referring to moments of aggravation.  "You kids were always fighting." or "You kids never helped around the house."  There were also the times when she would say, "You kids were so good as babies."  Well, unfortunately we began to grow up the moment we were born.

Raising children goes on twenty-four hours a day for weeks and months and years.  Even now in these presumably more-enlightened times, it is assumed the woman will still put in most of the time, do most of the work, deal with the physical and psychological challenges.  Before her kids went off to school, my mother had little free time to herself.  In 1947 when my younger brother arrived, my mother contended with that new baby, me, a two and half year-old, and my brother, then five.  To contend with it all, she needed a system.

Years later my mother confided to Gin the plan she followed.  What to clean on a daily basis, what to clean weekly, what required attention on a monthly basis and even those things that only needed cleaning several times a year.  "Curtains were something you did every four months," she said.  "I'd take them down, wash them, dry them on stretchers and then rehang them.  Fall and spring cleaning I'd do windows." Cooking, dishes, dusting were daily events.  She certainly made a lot of beds over the years.  It seemed she was always flipping mattresses, something I helped her with when I got older. Vacuuming was likely twice a week as was laundry.  Grocery shopping was every day. In Jamaica Plain she could easily walk back and forth to stores. Chores became a routine. Housework was what she expected to do and what was expected of her.

There may have been times when she enjoyed the routine, times when it less onerous. Often after supper my father would go out to walk with his father at Franklin Park.  Mildred would do the dishes while my mother put us kids to bed.  

My father’s mother had a washing machine but often when my mother would bring clothes there to be cleaned she’d find the motor missing.  It turned out my uncle John, my father’s younger brother, had removed the motor to use it for one of his projects.  He was very mechanical as is obvious from an early age.  When no washing machine was available my mother would use a scrub board often joined in this labor by her mother who lived close by.  I imagine as they worked, they talked or gossiped. They weren’t down by a river but the tradition of women cleaning clothes together remained a vivid one.  Once the clothes were scrubbed my mother would hang them on a line. In the winter they would partially dry outside but would also freeze.  It wasn’t uncomon to thaw them out by draping them on the radiators found in every room. 

My father was not expected to help.  He had his own responsibilities with his job as an electrician at the Navy Yard in South Boston. In 1945 my father's total wage were $3753.54 with $297.00 withdrawn for federal taxes. That's a take home pay of $66.47.  That was good pay. Less than half a week of it went for rent leaving enough for food, clothes, the usual expenses along with movies, cigarettes, and a car.    

Like most men of the time he believed there was work men did and work that women did, with neither taken on the other's responsibilities in any serious way.  During the just ended war that philosophy was put to the test with thousands of women making planes, tanks and munitions while men in the services cooked, took care of barracks, even comforted children in war-torn countries.  But now that the world was back to "normal", men labored away from the home while women kept the house and reared the children

At the same time, years later and again in talking to Gin, my father felt some regret.  Watching me push my own son in his stroller, my father told Gin, "In my day no man would push a baby carriage.  It just wasn't done."  I wonder if he would have liked to have been a bigger part in the day to day upbringing of his children but didn't because it wasn't socially acceptable.  

My sister, twelve in 1947, became my mother's helper.  My earliest memory, I must have been two, maybe even younger, was of her changing me.  I am in the large room, next to the porch, overlooking the street.  I am cooing or gurgling or whatever babies do.  The smell of some kind of powder is particularly strong.  I feel happy, content.  It's an odd memory to have of a time so long ago.  Usually memories from early childhood are associated with some sort of trauma.  No, this was a routine moment, one that should have faded quickly from my mind.  I'm glad it didn't as it's one of the few genuine recollections I have from that time of my early life.  

While my father spent many evenings at his family's house on School Street, my mother also spent time with her mother and father on Haverford Street, a five-minute walk from Adams Circle.  Many of her cousins, aunts and uncles lived nearby, some within walking distance of her parents' house. Both my mother and father were very close to their families, not just geographically. Cousins were not just the kids of your aunts and uncles; in some cases they were your best friends.  My mother's unmarried cousin Catherine, known as Catch, was a case in point.  Needing a break from her family life, my mother and Catch would often go places together

A hint of what in later years would become the norm came just before the beginning of the war when it was announced some stores in downtown Boston would remain open late on Monday nights.  For many people this was a sea change. My mother loved it. My mother would either take the train in with Catch or meet her in town to shop at Jordan Marsh or Filenes.   After the war this trend accelerated.  In 1947 Jordan Marsh announced a brand new building to replace their several building complex in the Washington Street area. More late hours were added.  Sometimes my younger brother and I would go with my mother. I can see why she preferred to go with Catch. I was bored. My brother and I seemed to spend most our time hiding in the clothing displays.  The elevators were great though.

During the war my parents would go into Boston to eat out.  It’s likely my father drove there in his car.  I never knew him to take the train or a bus even when I was a kid.  Sometimes my mother would go in with my father’s mother.  They’d have lobster for lunch at the top floor restaurant in Filene’s.  Then on the way home they’d stop for a banana split at Rakey’s in Egleston Square. 

Another way my mother got some time away from her duties as mother and housekeeper was going to the movies.  The Egleston Theatre was just up the street, easily walked to.  Attend an early bird matinee and you could be home by 9 o'clock. "You could see two pictures for a quarter," she would say.

The B picture ruled. These were films cranked out quickly, for low budgets, to screen at the thousands of local movie houses across the country, like the Egleston, where people like my mother and her friends would attend every week.  Prestige pictures would open in the big cities at more elegant, well-appointed theaters, usually in the downtown areas.  Boston had a number of these large movie palaces as did cities across the country from New York to Los Angeles.  Eventually these film would continue their runs at smaller local theaters such as the Egleston.

Every town and square would have its movie house, some had two or three.  They all required new movies every week. The B picture became the staple of the neighborhood movie house.  Beginning Sunday, continuing through Tuesday, there would be two films along with some previews, maybe a newsreel, a short documentary, the show often beginning with a cartoon.  New films appeared Wednesday through Saturday when more people attended. The first film shown was often a B but the second could have been a film of more prominence coming off its first run.  In the 30's through the 40's this was the pattern movie goers came to expect, the two pictures for a quarter my mother spoke of.  It was only after we had moved, the mid 50's, things began to change.  Thank you, I Love Lucy!

My mother looked forward to her movie night.  It was a night out for her.  It probably didn't make much difference what was showing any particular night.  She'd meet her cousin Catch there, sometimes stopping at Rakey's Spa on Washington Street after the show for ice cream.  My father would go out Wednesday nights as well although he’d be back in time for a cup of tea with my mother when her movie was over.  So with both parents out my older sister Mildred would be in charge of us kids.  My mother would say she would know if we were good or not.  How?  "A little birdie will tell me."  As a five year-old that is all I needed to know.  A bird flying up to my mother and tweeting to her about our behavior was not something I questioned.  My mother would know so I tried to behave for my sister.  Of course a greater incentive was my mother bringing back movie candy for us if my sister gave a good report.

Now, how good a baby sitter my sister was is open to debate. One night when my mother was out, sometime in 1951 or 1952, my older brother and I watched an episode of Lights Out.  Now maybe my sister was not aware of the nature of this show or maybe she was off doing homework or on the phone with a friend, but I recall quite clearly sitting on the couch watching an episode and being entirely absorbed by it.  Interestingly the program was broadcast at 9pm on Mondays.  Why was I up at that hour?  

Lights Out was of the suspense/horror genre, popular for many years on radio before appearing as a half hour telecast on NBC from 1949 to 1952.  It began with a man intoning the words "Lights Out" as if something bad were to happen any second.  He was right.  The show featured people who killed their wives, their coworkers, strangers, who stole from their best friends, who committed heinous acts out of revenge or greed or lust, who often avoided prosecution by the authorities only to meet a grisly end through ironic or even supernatural circumstances. It was not meant for six year-old kids.  I seem to recall a single candle at the end of the show which would suddenly flicker as the words Lights Out wavered across the screen of our tiny black and white TV. The show was similar to the comic books of the day which also focused on the gruesome and the macabre.    

On this particular show two men are somehow trapped in a cellar arguing over a treasure cache they have discovered there.  Finally greed triumphs over reason.  One kills the other to take his share of the booty.  As the exposition progressed I kept noticing in a corner of the cellar two mannequins dressed in some sort of military uniforms. After the murder the man is laughing with the realization he is very rich.  He rubs his hands together ignoring the two figures behind him. Suddenly the two figures with the uniforms begin to move. A jolt of fear goes through me.  Even though I'm frightened, I still watch.  The scariest part is the slow but relentless movement toward the guilty man as he cowers in a corner of the cellar unable to escape. He screams as they descend upon him.

This is what I remember of the episode.  There may have been more to it. Mostly it was the unexpected even surreal image of the two mannequins, devoid of emotion, moving slowly, inexorably, toward the man now trapped in this cellar full of treasure, the man's face vividly reflecting his panic and terror as he met his fate. Even now this is scary stuff.

Did nightmares follow?  I do know this was the beginning of a certain fascination, fixation even, I have into the strange, the odd, the fantastic, an amalgam of ideas and experiences I am perplexed by, curious with.  I connect it not so much with an interest in the unexplained or the supernatural but as a way to understand why people, including myself, do the things they do.  Often the cruel things, the selfish, the destructive things.  Reality is much more puzzling than any fiction.  Inanimate mannequins do not spring to life in reality but the look of terror on that man's face on Lights Out is the certainly the same look on the faces of all those who met violent ends in the wars that were to plague my childhood, my youth and my adulthood.

As far as I know my mother was not interested in the horror films that were a staple of B movies of the period.  She liked what we might call women's pictures.  "Bette Davis was my favorite," she would tell me.  Essentially my mother was watching the same movies that years later would become the back bone of Turner Classic Movies on cable.  Except she watched pristine prints on a big screen.

  

Let's take 1949.  I was four years-old.  There were more than 1600 films released that year.  Some are considered classics; others were shown for a week or so at small movie theaters before disappearing.  Years later interest in some of the forgotten films was revived when they'd play on some small TV station's Late Late Show.  A significant number were lost for good, stored in a careless way as to insure their deterioration. 

My mother went to the movies just about every week along with millions of other people.  Movies were big business then.  No one cared about opening weekend grosses or how the critics reacted.  It's a Tuesday or a Saturday, "Let's go to the movies."

Many movies to see in 1949. There was The Third Man, an existential movie about the people involved in the black market in postwar Vienna; The Good Old Summertime featured Judy Garland; Janet Leigh was a young widow and Robert Mitchum a sales clerk in Holiday Affair.  

The Fountainhead starred Gary Cooper espousing a philosophy many college students would embrace during my years at college.  There was the musical On the Town, the John Wayne western She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, a crazed mother-obsessed James Cagney in White Heat. Olivia de Havilland deals with both a handsome young man and an emotionally abusive father in The Heiress.  Corruption and power plays the leads in All the King's Men.

There were some good films that year for my mother to see. The comically infused Adam's Rib, the underwater romance Neptune's Daughter and the tear-jerker A Letter to Three Wives. Bing Crosby was a time traveller in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Ingrid Bergman was directed by Alfred Hitchcock in Under Capricorn, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced together again in The Barkleys of Broadway.  Darker themes would prevail in the noir Criss Cross, the thriller The Window, and the social drama Pinky.

There were hundreds more films released in 1949, most obscure from our vantage point.  How about Red, Hot and Blue, Chicken Every Sunday, The Interrupted Journey.  Or character films with titles like Flaxy Martin, The Great Dan Patch, or The Story of Molly X.

Certainly my mother enjoyed some of the movies she watched better than others but her pleasure was going to the movies, not going to a particular movie. Some nights she got Cary Grant, other nights she dealt with Flaxy Martin.

She and her cousin may have been disappointed at one film but pleasantly surprised at how good another one was.  By limiting her awareness of what she was going to see every week, she was rewarded by discovering films she otherwise might have missed.  Sitting in the Egleston she watched people fall in and out of love, was drawn in by situations arising, turning complex, and being resolved, was swept away to Paris and Rome and New York, spent time in offices and night clubs and small towns, saw men killed, women married, and babies born, puzzled over the strange behavior of some of the characters but recognized in herself and her friends the motivations of some of the others, was introduced to new faces but always loved seeing again her old friends, Cary and Bette, Clark and Vivien, and Humphrey and Greer. It was fun and interesting and absorbing, different from life at home with a husband and kids.  It was life as reflected off the silver screen, in about 90 minutes, mostly in black and white.  All this and free dishes as well.

The dish thing began in the 1930s to get people into the seats at movie houses, mostly the neighborhood houses.  Dish night at the Egleston was on Wednesday so that is the night my mother and her friends would target as their movie night. Manufacturers of dinnerware would contract with theater chains to sell their dishes at wholesale enabling the owners to give the product away as an incentive.

It could take a while to accumulate a place setting of eight considering the number of plates and cups and saucers and bowls one had to collect individually once a week.  Then there were the gravy boats and butter dishes and sugar bowls and all the other sundry serving and specialty items that might be included.  I don't remember a gravy boat on our table but I do remember various cereal bowls and saucers from breakfasts over the years.  I believe my mother's current household has a few of these long ago dishes pushed toward the back of a cupboard.

While movies presented their own view of the world, real life was back again as soon as you walking out of the theatre. There is a photograph of a cheerful me, about two or three, blonde, smiling, healthy-looking, standing next to my brother and a neighborhood girl about my brother's age, maybe six, taken on the sidewalk by the side of the house. Apart from the wonderful sense of time and place the photo imparts, it's also interesting to see that I have a harness around me.  In the warm weather my mother would sort of reign me in with the harness around my chest, the strap tied to the porch.  That way, presumably, I could be out in the yard playing in the dirt or with some cars or blocks while she could tend to whatever housework was pressing inside.  

It worked most of the time. Except for the time or two it didn't.  Maybe I was bored with my cars or heard kids from the nearby schoolyard or just wanted a few more feet of freedom.  Somehow I was able to wriggle free of the harness and explore my limited world without being tethered to it.  I didn't go far, and the street we lived on had very few cars, but still it must have been a shock to my mother who, when coming out to check on me, found just a heap of straps where I should have been.  A quick search in the neighborhood and there I was. Maybe the next time the harness was drawn just a bit tighter.

Most of my memories of stores in Jamaica Plain were those of businesses just up School Street at Egleston Square.  It was only a few minutes walk.  At seven or eight I'd walk up to the square myself.  Occasionally my mother would want to walk over to Centre Street which then, and now, is considered JP's main drag. It was in the summer usually in mid-afternoon when we began the journey.

I don't recall the exact route we took to get there. We were walking. Centre Street is fairly long with a number of shopping districts along it. It was much further away than Washington Street. I seem to remember going down Dalrymple Street and then following Boylston Street under the railroad tracks to Centre.  Maybe we cut over to Paul Gore Street.  I wasn't aware of street names then. It was green with trees shading the sidewalks.  Many houses, a residential area, some with hedges and flowering shrubs in front.

For this trip my mother would have a small carriage.  My younger brother would be the one being pushed; I'd walk along side, my hand wrapped around one of the carriage's metal handles.  I'd get tired after a while so with enough whining my mother would put me in the carriage and my little brother would walk for a while.  I was way too old and likely too big to be pushed in a carriage, but I loved it in there.  For one thing I wasn't walking.  It was cool in there, and pleasantly dark. The world going by outside was mostly the canopy of trees interrupted by patches of blue sky and sudden shafts of sunlight. Then there was the movement.  A slight rocking, a bit bumpy. The occasional curve or feeling of going down an incline.  It was great.  I was always so disappointed when the carriage stopped and I heard my mother say, "You're too heavy.  Get out.  Let Lawrence back in."  

We had maybe an hour or so to spend on Centre Street. My mother would go to a bakery for bread, sometimes a pound cake or those cookies that were half chocolate icing and half vanilla.  She had other errands, maybe stop for something my father may have needed; occasionally we'd get an ice cream cone, for 10 cents almost more than a little kid could handle.  Just about the time both my brother and I were becoming cranky, my father would pick us up and drive us home, the carriage folded in the trunk of the car.

Our neighbor on the School Street side of our house were the Laurers.  They had a son, older than us, a teenager I suppose.  The one thing I remember about him was how strict his upbringing was.  Studying all the time.  No TV.  Drilled to be very polite and grown up.  I don't know if all of that were true but tat's what I was told.  All that discipline.  I considered the Laurers people to avoid.  I thought if they found out some of the things I did they would tell my parents with possibly unpleasant consequences.  

The house they lived in was a single family.  It too backed on to the Ellis Mendell School but instead of a small backyard like we had they had a larger yard most of which was taken over by a garden.  Flowers, vegetables. I was told never to go in there.  Well, perhaps I required more of the discipline their son received.  One day I noticed a few of their flowers were growing through the fence into our yard.  "Wait," I may have thought, "those flowers aren't really there in their yard, they're in my yard."  They were large, colorful, lots of petals, zinnias maybe. By bending them against the fence I was able to free them.  I picked four or five to proudly present to my mother who was working in the kitchen.  Well, she wasn't happy.

"We told you not to go into the Laurer's garden."  I tried to explain the flowers themselves weren't in Laurer's garden.  "They wanted to come into our backyard," I explained.  Somehow Mrs. Laurer was told what happened.  Maybe my mother marched me over there.  What I do remember is Mrs. Laurer's reaction.  She thought it was cute.  Just a little boy giving his mother some flowers.  I'm still glad I wasn't her son but my impression of her softened from then on.

I sucked my thumb when I was a kid.  My parents were not happy about it especially when it continued on and off for several years.  I was still indulging in this behavior as late as six years-old.  Thumb sucking is a soothing response to a number of different conditions, including stress.  That was me.  Anxiety, nervousness, worry, all companions of mine during those years in one form or another, at some level or another.  My thumb, always the one on my right hand, helped me deal with that stress.  

My parents didn't particularly care until my permanent teeth began to come in.  At this point the thumb sucking might affect how those teeth lined up, in particular if the upper front teeth began to tip outward.  Their concerns about the teeth might have been warranted as I had a callus on my thumb where the two front teeth irritated the skin.  Still that sense of well being engendered by the thumb sucking meant more to me than warnings "my teeth would fall out."  

My older brother would tease me, something about "still being a baby."  Well, I sort of was. Worse was the threat from my father to put some sort of bad tasting ointment on my thumb as an inducement to stop putting it in my mouth.  I don't know if it ever went that far.  I stopped sucking it in front of everyone waiting until I was curled up in bed in the dark where no one would notice.  Eventually I stopped sucking my thumb for the same reason all kids finally do, peer pressure from kids at school.  I didn't care if my brother called me a baby but I didn't want the kids at school to think I still was. Slowly but surely the behavior faded away. 

In those early years, in spite of my worries and anxieties, I felt well taken care of in my home at 5 Adams Circle.  My mother had children very early, she was 20 when my sister was born; she was 32 when my younger brother came along.  Only with mistakes come real knowledge; only with experience comes real wisdom.  One early March day when I was a year old my mother dressed me too warmly and put me in the carriage on our porch. It was only my father's timely intervention that may have prevented some serious heat stroke. Another lesson learned.

Like me my mother had her own anxiety issues. It was important she took a break from the roles of mother and housewife.  I've talked about the Boston stores, about going to the movies, the times at Franklin Park and at Lake Pearl.  All these were an essential part of her life.  There were the small moments as well.  One in particular.

I don't remember very much about Christmas at the house on Adams Circle.  Most of those memories are from the years in Hyde Park. I do know every Christmas Eve my father would go up to his parents' on School Street and my mother would go down to hers on Haverford Street next to the Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic church.  My mother's family would walk over to the church for the ritualistic, celebratory Midnight Mass.  This was a special service commemorating the essential religious heart of Christmas, the birth of Christ.  Churches were crowded.  The joke was that many lapsed Catholics attended church three times a year, Christmas, Easter and their funerals.  This was not a somber occasion, however.  A number of priests took part, the church was often decorated, candles burned, choirs sang religious and even traditional Christmas carols. The real celebrating came after the service.

My mother, her parents, uncles, aunts, her many cousins, would gather at the house on Haverford Street.  It was a custom not to eat before Mass so now was the time to bring out the holiday food, breads and jams, cold meats, cheeses, pastries, it could be quite a feast.  Along with it came the drink.  Beer for many; my mother would sip a little whiskey.  Gifts were exchanged. It was often a time when family animosities were put aside, when there was truly Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.

It was early in the morning when my mother would leave her parents home to walk the few blocks back to Adams Circle.  She walked alone but it was Christmas morning.  She felt safe, at peace, for a moment the universal feelings that Christmas represents wrapped around her.  She had had a night off from her duties as a mother and housewife.  She still looked forward to being home, to putting a few things under her own Christmas tree for us kids to see in the morning. 

It begins to snow lightly.  It's two in the morning.  No sounds.  Early on Christmas Day.  A whole new year soon to begin.  Up Haverford lit just by the flickering gas lamps. Past the dark walls of the Dunn Storage company building. She turns left onto Dalrymple Street, now only a block from home.  

Near the stairs leading up to Adams Circle, my mother pauses for a moment, listening to the almost imperceptible whisper of the falling snow.  Around her most of the houses are dark, but one or two glow with Christmas candles in a front window. Standing there my mother is where no one can bother her, interfere with her, criticize her, contradict her, pressure her, disrespect her. She looks up feeling the slight tickle of snowflakes on her young and pretty face. I matter, she thinks. I do make a difference. I am accomplishing something. She will continue to persevere, to work hard, to make mistakes, to be brought down and lifted up, to struggle in life, to embrace life, to do the best she can.  She looks around her.  She realizes the white glow isn't snow anymore; she's amidst millions of stars. 

She walks the rest of the way home, to her sleeping kids, her waiting husband, to the rest of her long life.