Apparently Normal

                                       

Gin

There can be a strong feeling of familiarity among siblings. A sense of shared experiences.  Common values.  This isn’t surprising.  After all, you have the same parents.  You grew up in the same household. But families evolve too.  As I look back on growing up in Pittsfield in the fifties, I realize there were several different families embedded in mine over time. Along with me, my family growing up included my older brother David, and my parents.   They'll be a future family with younger siblings.  Then there was the one before I was born.  My mother, father and David. 

My parents married early in 1939. David arrived that fall.  A newly married couple raising a son through the war years.  What was that like?  Did they worry my father would be called into service?  How were they impacted by rationing?  What was their reaction to news about the war?  How did they feel about the bombings in Japan?

My mother did tell me that on VE Day she pushed me in my baby carriage up to North Street where throngs of people were happily celebrating. I wondered how people knew where to gather once they heard the news that the war in Europe had ended. In those days North Street was the focus of the community.  I assume people were instinctively drawn to it.

But stories about the years before I was born are few and far between.  My parents always talked about what we were doing now or what we might do in the near future.   I didn't have a sense of something being hidden or topics avoided; it was more about their "looking forward" sensibility.   I grew up with this attitude and therefore never asked questions about what jobs my father had before he was married or where they lived in North Adams before they moved to Pittsfield or what those war years were like for them.  As an adult I am sorry I didn't ask more questions.  As a child I simply accepted this family convention adopting the same stance that what was important in our lives was what was happening now and how that might influence the future.

Occasionally the past intruded.  A year before I was born, when he was five, my brother had a serious operation.  It started out routinely enough.  After a bout with tonsillitis, our family doctor suggested, as was common at that time, my brother have his tonsils removed.  However, the operation did not go as planned. Once the tonsils were removed, it was discovered that instead of adenoids, my brother had a tumor growing in the throat cavity reaching up toward the brain.  The local doctor who had been expecting a routine tonsillectomy decided this was beyond his scope.  The fear was the tumor was close to vital areas of the brain.  Plans were made for a specialist to perform another operation, this one in an Albany hospital, to remove the tumor.

My brother told me years later he recalled nothing traumatic about this.  He was in no pain. He had no idea anything serious was happening.  My parents kept their fears from him.  “I was treated like a king," he told me.  "All the medical people were so nice to me.  I imagine they were thinking, this poor little kid.  And even better, after the surgery they gave me ice cream for breakfast!"  There must have been great relief when my parents learned he'd be okay, that the tumor had been removed and was benign. I wonder if they asked why this tumor had developed in the first place and if so what they were told. 

Now I have so many questions. How did they manage the stress of the finances for the operation and the travel to Albany when they didn't have a car?  Did they worry about having other children?  About David's longevity?  Years after it happened I remember being told the facts about this operation. The emotional toll it must have taken was never a part of that conversation.  After all they were adults and I was a child. As a kid I just accepted what I was told. David was healthy.  He had survived.  That’s all that mattered. 

Within a year of this operation, I was born. March 30, 1945. In the blog entry, Thinking Like an Eight-Year-Old, I told the story of how my brother knocked a rock off the porch railing each day at our grandparents' house in North Adams as a way to keep track of the days he was away from home while my mother was in the hospital.  In those days, it was considered normal for a woman to stay in the hospital for a week to ten days after giving birth, likely medically unnecessary for my mother, but that was the rule. I was born at St Luke's Hospital in Pittsfield.  We weren't Catholic but it was the closest hospital to where we lived at the time.

At some point before or after David’s exile in North Adams, my father took him to St Luke's in time for maternity visiting hours.   My father spoke to the nun at the information desk.  "He has a new sister.  He's never been away from his mother before. He'd like to see her." My father wasn't sure what the nun’s reaction would be since children were excluded from the maternity ward.  She looked at my father. “The maternity ward is one flight up.  Children are not allowed on the elevator.  The stairs are at the end of the hall."   My father listened to her carefully worded sentences understanding her intention.  She would bend the rules for my brother.  This story was always told with a caveat about my father being surprised a nun could be so open-minded and kind.

Most of my memories start a few years later when we were living at Stanley Avenue. I've written about this neighborhood in the blogs Moving and Neighborhood Cultures. I found this a great place to live.  The apartment was the second floor of a two-story home.  We entered our living area using a stairway attached to the side of the house.  The door at the landing opened into the kitchen near the back of the house.  The room at the front was my parents' bedroom.  The bedroom I shared with my brother was to the side of the kitchen.  A main room in the center served as a living room.  I imagine it was once a single family home with an interior stairway from the main level.  The outer stairway must have been added when it was redesigned to support a rental unit on the second floor. It was an unusual arrangement.  It must have been difficult in the winter.  My father would have had to shovel snow off the wooden stairs to keep them clear as they were the only way in and out of the house.

It bothered my parents two siblings of different genders shared a single bedroom especially as my brother was close to becoming a teenager.  We had bunk beds.  My brother had the top and I the bottom.  There is a photo of us in those beds.  I recall the day it was taken.  I was recuperating from a bad case of whopping cough, still spending much of my time in bed resting.  A family friend had come over to visit my father. Since he had his camera with him, it was suggested he take a photo.  My brother jumped onto the top bunk for a quick snapshot.  His smile, as always, is a bit ironic.  He was willing to participate but also managed to communicate he was above all this.

While my parents may have been bothered by the living arrangements, I recall sharing the room with my brother with fondness. One time my brother was told to clean up the room.  He used one of my favorite playground games, “Mother, may I?”  to make it fun. From the top bunk, he'd say, "Take three umbrella steps.”  I'd ask, “Mother, may I?” I'd twirl over to the pile of clothes on the floor.  "Bend down and pick up the clothes." “Mother, may I?"  "Take four giant steps to the laundry basket.”  “Mother, may I?"  He was multi-tasking. Playing with me, resting on the bed, and getting the room picked up.

Sharing a room wasn't all work. One night David made our room magical.  It was early evening in the summer when he called me.  "Ginny.  Come outside."  I saw he had several empty glass jars.   "Look."  He pointed to our yard where I could see the small flickering lights of fireflies.  He had prepared each glass jar by adding a few blades of grass. The lids had been punched through to admit air.   He showed me how to catch the fireflies in the jars.  We ran around the yard, chasing the blinking lights. When we had two or three fireflies in one jar we would screw on the cover, pick up the next jar and start again.  Once each jar had two or three of the glowing bugs, we took the jars inside.  David arranged the jars on the floor near my bed. "Tomorrow we will set them free,” he said, “but tonight they are for you." Shutting the lights off I fell asleep to the quiet glow of these soft flickering lights.

   

It was bittersweet the next morning when we realized our precautions were not enough.  None of the fireflies had survived. I had been looking forward to opening the jars and watching them fly away in the morning. We never captured them again. The place to enjoy them was in the yard.

Since we didn't own a camera at the time, snapshots are few.  Surprisingly, though, there are some 9 by 12 professional photos in our family album dated from the early 50's.   At no other time did we go to a professional photography studio for a sitting.  When I asked my mother about them, she told me during those early years, when it was just the four of us, my father sometimes worked the evening shift at the GE returning home near midnight.  On those nights, my mother would do housework in the evening, listening as she worked to the local radio station that played jazz. I’ve written about my parents’ love of jazz before.  They’d even make vacation trips to New York to listen to jazz bands live.

Once a week, the radio personality would hold a contest. The first person to call in naming the song or the artist of the record the disc jockey played would win a prize, a free sitting at a professional photography studio.  It’s likely my mother called in with the correct answer before the song even finished playing. After a while the disc jockey began to recognize her.  “Is that you? The person who won last week?”  He respected my mother’s knowledge of the music he also loved. After my mother had won four times, one photo for each of us, she stopped calling even when she had the answer. Which she did all the time.  Our house could have been wall-papered with portraits. 

I don't recall being at the photography studio but I love my picture. I am sitting sideways to the camera, a smile on my face, my hands around my knees. I'm wearing a frilly plaid dress with a matching bow in my blond curly hair. Where did that hair go!  My eyes are looking right into the camera.  Looking pretty, pretty, pretty good. Never mind the hair, where did this happy-go-lucky little girl go?

Being a younger sister to an older brother might mean he could manipulate me so as to avoid doing any work and getting his room clean, but it also meant that I got to participate when something fun happened to him.   When he was ten, he won a contest.  He had drawn the best likeness of Freddy Friehofer.  Freddy Friehofer, a white rabbit, was the drawn mascot of the Freihofer’s Bakery. He was a prominent feature on an early children's TV show called the Breadtime Hour.  Yes. That was the real name.  No one called it that, though.  To all of us, it was the Freddy Friehofer show. David was going to be on it. And I was too.

   

The show began in 1949, a fifteen minute show each weekday night from 5:15 to 5:30 on channel 6 in Schenectady, New York. Channel 6 began their evening broadcast with this program. For the fifteen minutes before the Breadtime Hour, channel 6 broadcast the test pattern. Test patterns are not familiar to TV viewers of today, but in the 50s people really did adjust their sets, fixing the horizontal and the vertical lines of the black and white picture by aligning them to the test pattern.  At 5:30 came the national kid shows like Howdy Doody, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Superman and the Cisco Kid.  But from 5:15 to 5:30 in this local market, Freddy's was the show to watch.

The Breadtime Hour featured real kids watching the show from the set itself.  Sitting on bleacher type seats, they participated in the show as well.   One activity I particularly liked was the doodle segment.  The host would have a child come forward to draw a squiggle, some random marks on a large piece of poster paper. Then with just a few lines, the host would turn it into a picture of a clown or a horse.  I found this amazing. Before the end of the show, all the children in the gallery would get cupcakes or cookies to eat; any kid with a birthday would get a special song and a whole round cake. It was simple and fun.  I don't remember actually being on the show, but my mother used to tell the story of that day this way.

David had won the contest without her being aware of it. He saw the show at a friend's house as we didn't have a TV at the time.  In any case, he received a letter declaring he was the winner. The announcement included a date for him to be on the show to be recognized and collect his prize.  The best picture and artist were to be featured that night.  My mother was always one to support her children. She was proud he had won.  I wonder if she, even for a second, pondered telling him it wasn't possible for him to be on the show.  After all, we didn't have a car and the broadcast studio was in Schenectady, 60 miles away. My mother needed a plan.

She recalled packing us kids up and taking busses, first a brief ride to the Pittsfield bus station, then a long ride to downtown Schenectady. Timing was everything as this was a live show beginning right at 5:15. Arriving at the station on time, my mother got her two kids into the studio. Some peanut gallery wrangler settled me in.  My brother had a special seat near the front so he could come forward when they were to display his picture of Freddy to receive his prize. 

My mother told me, “You were younger than most of the kids there.  You talked all through the show.  You never stopped talking. You kept looking for me off stage and waving.  You were talking to the host, interrupting him as he was talking to other kids.  You kept asking questions."  My mother also told me, "Part way through the show, remember this was all of fifteen minutes, but it was live, the people backstage decided to give you a cupcake figuring you couldn't talk when you had a cupcake in your mouth. That worked for a while."

At some point, they called my brother's name and he came forward.  They showed his picture of Freddy and gave him his prize, a large cake in the shape of Freddy Freihofer's head, the very thing that David drew to win.

So now I conjure up an image. It's 5:30 at that broadcast studio in Schenectady.  The kids from the peanut gallery are filing out with their parents.  My mother has me with one hand, an eye on David, and is holding a huge box, the rabbit head cake that David has just won.  I imagine her sitting on the bus, juggling the cake box, with a four-year-old and a grinning son proud to have been on TV.  What time would they have arrived back home? Would I have done this for one of my kids?  I wonder.  I bet I ate a lot of that cake though.

I had my own brush with TV kids' show fame. I have a letter in black and white to prove it.   When I was eight, just a bit younger than David was when he won the drawing contest, we were living at Dewey Avenue. This was where I recall watching TV.

As was common in those days, the set had a rabbit ears antenna perched on top.  My brother would move them around to see what position would get the best picture. We would all advise him when the picture was good, but as soon as he stopped touching the antenna, the picture would often go sideways at an angle or start to roll.  It was iffy how clear the picture was going to be at any particular time. Cable TV was still years away for Pittsfield.

Even so, I looked forward each night to the Howdy Doody show.  I liked the goofy clown, the friendly host, and the marionettes.  I found the villainous one, Phineas T Bluster, most interesting.  One part of the show consisted of a skit which involved the different marionettes.  One evening I told my mother they should make a story about Bluster's middle initial, a mystery about what the T really stood for.  She said I should tell them my idea.  I wrote a letter with my suggestion which my mother mailed to the Howdy Doody Show. 

I was so thrilled the day a reply came in the mail.  It was typed on paper with the letterhead, National Broadcasting Company, Inc. RCA Building, Radio City, New York, 20 N.Y.  It was signed by both Howdy Doody and (Buffalo) Bob Smith. I noticed that Howdy's writing was sticklike and crooked.  I guess it isn't easy for a marionette to write smoothly.

Even though the letter didn’t specifically mention my idea, they thanked me profusely for my interest in the show. They expressed the hope I'd keep on watching.  They even said they wished they could meet me in person but quickly admitted that would be impossible adding, “We feel that we are with you each weekday at your TV set.”

I certainly did keep watching. For a few weeks I was sure my suggested story would be on the next show. But the T in Bluster’s name remained a mystery.  However, unlike David's transitory claim to fame, he was on live TV with no way to either preserve the show, or the cake, I have the letter, proof of my encounter with the best known icon of fifties children’s TV. 

There were some things David did that I missed out on by virtue of his being older or male or perhaps both.   When he was twelve my father took him to New York City for a day.  I remember my father explaining to my mother, "We'll take the excursion train.”  I wasn't sure what an “excursion train" was, but it sounded exciting.  Once there they went to one of the jazz clubs my parents used to enjoy when they took  summer vacations in New York.

The place was called Jazz at the Plaza, a jazz club at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 7th Street.  My father, who was never shy, asked all the performers to sign David’s placemat menu.  My father told some of the musicians, “David plays the clarinet himself. He likes jazz.” There are many signatures squeezed among the print on the placemat, some upside down, some in the margins, some written over the prices of drinks.  Some of the names are exotic.  “Uncle Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith”, “Wild Bill Davis”,  ”Pee Wee Russell”,
“Oran ‘Hot Lips’ Page.”  Other players didn't include their nicknames but offered encouraging comments.  "Keep on swinging.” “Practice makes perfect.”  “Good Luck.” 

David played his clarinet throughout high school both in an informal jazz group and in the marching band.  He never kept at it in college or as an adult.  Years later, after my parents had died, I made a copy of the placemat from the family scrapbook and mailed the original to my brother who was then living in California. The placemat with all its signatures is now framed, hanging in the apartment of his daughter, a tribute to a time and to people long gone by. 

My biggest claim to fame during those early years was due to my name.  One fall, my father responded to an announcement in the GE newspaper.   “Does anyone have a daughter named Virginia who is around seven or eight?"  The paper, which was for and about the GE workforce, wanted to do a photo feature for the Christmas edition highlighting the letter Virginia O'Hanlon wrote to the New York  Sun with its famous editorial response, “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.” They wanted a real Virginia as a model.

This moment was all mine.  The photo shoot was held at our house at Stanley Avenue. We all dressed up.  I chose my favorite dress, cranberry colored with a white lace bib and cranberry colored bow.  My father wore a suit with his favorite tie, the one that had an "R" for Robare on it.  I was the focus.  I loved it.   My father had read me the letter in preparation and even though I didn't understand all the words, I knew generally what it was about. I was eager to please the man with the camera.

He brought in some props.  Empty boxes wrapped in Christmas paper tied with colorful bows to set the scene. He obviously had a plan all mapped for the images he wanted to capture.  "Jump up and down and look happy,” the photographer would say.  And I would jump and clap and smile.  "Sit at the desk to pretend you are writing
to the editor." And I would sit and write.  "Stand next to your father and look like you are reading the letter in the newspaper." And I would stand and look.  "Sit in the chair and look like you are wondering if there is a Santa Claus.” And I would sit and wonder.

Then he told me I was going to pretend to open some presents. He looked about sadly, “I don't think I brought enough here. I'd like a bigger pile of presents in the picture."  Then the most amazing thing happened.  My mother said, “Wait a minute.”  She went out into the hall and came back with an armful of wrapped gifts.  This was extraordinary to me. This was a day in early December. We never saw a gift until Christmas morning.  Presents were always a big surprise.  I was actually shocked to realize they were in the house at all. 

The photographer piled the real gifts among the empty wrapped boxes arranging them to his liking.  I smiled.  Not just for the camera, but because I could tell one of the packages my mother had brought out was a cylindrical box that rattled a bit when I moved it. Lincoln Logs, something I wanted, came in a package like that. I was going to get them Christmas Day!  This was so exciting.  "Sit among the gifts and pretend to open them." And I sat and pretended to open. It was a great day.

Even better was the day in December, 1952, when the GE Pittsfield Work News came out with a full page spread with pictures of me and my family interspersed with the text of the original 1897 letter and editorial. If there was ever a cuter kid totally invested in a photo essay I don’t where she would be. I have to say, I nailed it. We saved a copy and added it to the scrapbook. Looking at the photo that features the four of us, I see the iconic family of that time as represented in schoolbooks and on TV: A mother, a father, an older brother, and a younger sister.  That was about to change.

I remember my father offering this response when some adult commented on how far apart we children were in age. "We wanted to have two children close together.  But Ginny came almost six years after David.  If we knew what we were doing we could have sold it to the Catholic Church."  Every time he said this, my mother would look exasperated and say, “Oh, John.”  I never understood exactly why she was distressed at what he said.  I did get she felt it wasn't appropriate.   However, they must have been saying, “Oh. John” a bit more, because it wasn’t until I was nine that my sister Vicki was born.

I was excited when my mother told me she was going to have a baby.  However, that winter day in January, 1954, when she brought Vicki home, I was concerned when I saw my new sister for the first time. I knew what babies looked like from TV ads showing cooing, smiling infants all soft and smooth and giggly.  I am sitting on the couch already to play.  My mother brings the new baby to me.  She is all wrapped up in a blanket.  I look down as my mother places Vicki in my lap.  What is this?  Her face is all scrunched up, wrinkled and red.  She isn't looking at me. She isn't laughing. She isn't waving her arms to play.  She is just laying there. I’m not sure I'm going to like this after all. I’m thinking, “Is something wrong with her?”

Vicki eventually became the kind of baby I recognized.  She did wave her arms and coo at me.   Before long she  was smiling at me as well.  Peek-a-boo was a favorite game.  I pushed her around Dewey Avenue in her carriage.  Soon she was crawling and then walking. She was turning into a person I could play with. 

When we moved to Plunkett, part of my job was to set up Vicki’s room.  With my mother’s help I put her crib together.  When Vicki was three and I was twelve, all of us now living on Montgomery Avenue, another announcement was made.  My newest sister Lisa arrived on March 21,1957.  Now we are a family of six, my parents and four kids with a span of eighteen years between David and the new baby. With the addition of Vicki and Lisa, my perspective of family changed. The six of us now comprised what I call my second family.

My brother had graduated high school a few months after Lisa was born. He was still living at home having enrolled in an engineering apprentice program at the Pittsfield GE.  This was an intense four-year program, working days at the GE and taking college classes in the evenings.  From my point of view, he was like another adult in the household.  As a teenager, I was in the middle.  Not grownup like my brother, but not as young as my two sisters.  I took care of them frequently as a way to help my mother. To me reading books or singing songs to Vicki and Lisa was more fun and a lot easier than the cooking and cleaning my mother did while I entertained my sisters.

I don’t often remember specific dates but June 17, 1959 is an exception.  I had just graduated from North Junior High School the day before.  I was free until September when I would begin the next chapter of my school life at Pittsfield High. The week ahead was special.  Not only had summer vacation begun, but the week would end with a big family celebration in North Adams.  My aunt, my mother’s younger sister, was getting married on Saturday.  My mother was a member of the wedding party, the matron of honor.  There was going to be a reception after the wedding with my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my parents, my brother, my two sisters and me.

It was a Wednesday.  I woke up feeling a little odd.  Why wasn't I going to school?  It always took me a few days to adjust to the reality of being on summer vacation. Just after lunch my mother told me she had some errands to do.

“Watch Lisa.  She has a cold and I don't want to take her out."  I was fine with this plan.  Lisa, who had been fussy earlier, was sleeping. I figured I'd read until she woke up.   

I went to check on her a few times.  It sounded to me like she had a stuffy nose and couldn't breathe easily. I rocked her a bit to calm her and went back to my reading.  Then she started to make funny sounds.  I looked at her. She was moving her arms erratically. Her eyes looked oddly wrong.  Quickly picking her up, I ran downstairs to bring her to our next-door neighbor, Ollie, for advice.  Just as Ollie came out to the porch in response to my call, I saw my mother walking toward the house. Together Ollie and I brought Lisa to her. 

I described how Lisa had been acting.  My mother calmly told me, "She had a convulsion. I am going to take her to Dr. Carpenter.  Ollie, Call John and tell him to meet me there.  Ginny.  Keep an eye on Vicki." My mother went walking off, carrying Lisa, now quieter, wrapped in her blanket.  Dr Carpenter, our family physician, had an office about a mile away on North Street. Did my mother walk to a bus stop?  Get a cab?   I can't say.  My only image is of her walking down the street with the baby in her arms.

Now my job was to take care of Vicki.  I was very focused on this. I was determined to keep out of my mind any possibility that anything unusual was going on.  Vicki and I spent the next few hours in the house.  I imagine I made some sandwiches when she said she was hungry. I have a strong memory of singing and marching around the living room to records that featured the poetry of A.A. Milne:

            "They're changing guards at Buckingham Palace.

             Christopher Robin went down with Alice. 

            Alice is marrying one of the guards.

            ‘A soldier's life is terrible hard,’ says Alice.”

Our neighbor knocked on the door once or twice that afternoon to see if we needed anything.   I thought that was odd, as I often babysat without such hovering from her.  I concentrated on being with Vicki not really thinking of Lisa or my parents at all.   It was early evening when I spotted my parents walking home together. As she walked I could see my mother was leaning heavily against my father. My stomach began to clench up as I suddenly realized they were going to tell us something awful.   I was right.  When they got to the door, my father said, "Lisa has died." 

That evening is a blur.  I don't recall David coming home or my parents telling him what had happened.  I don't recall Vicki's reaction although I did wonder if she understood what was really happening. After all she was only five.

My single vivid memory of the evening was overhearing my father as he called the minister at the Unitarian Church. “My little daughter has died,” was all I heard as my father's voice broke. Hearing him cry shocked me.  I couldn't imagine anything that would make my father cry.  

There must have been many other phone calls that evening, but I was not privy to them. That awful day ended.  As I tried to fall asleep, what I remember thinking about was that my mother and father had to sleep in their room with Lisa’s empty crib.

When we got up it was Thursday.  My parents were busy putting into place the plans they had made the night before.  "Ginny, you and Vicki are going up to North Adams today.  You'll stay with Grandma and Grandpa.  We'll be up on Saturday for the wedding.  Your job is to take care of Vicki."

So Vicki and I stayed with my grandparents for the next two days. I don't recall any talk about Lisa or what our parents were doing.  I suppose my grandparents thought it was too upsetting for us. 

While Vicki and I were at my grandparents', my parents had a service at the Unitarian Church for Lisa.   My brother attended and likely people from the church and from our neighborhood. It may sound unusual that I know so little about this but my sister's funeral  was not talked about in front of me.  Lisa was buried in the North Adams cemetery where it turns out we had a family plot, one I had never previously heard of or visited.  I don’t even know if there was a graveside service.  Even though I was right there in North Adams I didn’t learn about these details until much later in my life.

I know this is beginning to sound like a broken record, but again I remember nothing about the wedding. There is a photograph of my mother standing next to the bride and groom on a lovely sunny day taken outside the Episcopal Church in North Adams.  She is wearing a long pink satin gown holding a pink bouquet.  She looks lovely.  It’s difficult to believe looking at this picture that she buried her youngest child the previous day.  Thinking about it, I am in awe of how she managed to get through this day. My father isn’t in the picture but I know it was his fear of being out of control and publicly distraught that contributed to the desire of my parents to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.

When we arrived home after the wedding, the house had no signs of Lisa.   Her toys, clothes, crib, highchair.  All of it was gone.  There was no talk of being sad about what had happened.  It was too painful for my parents to discuss.   They adopted a “Lets move on from here.” approach and that is what we did.

What must it have been like for my parents?  First, trying to accept that a young and seemingly healthy child had died so quickly.  There was some early concern that Lisa may have died of meningitis, a very contagious illness.  If that had been the case, her belongings would have been burned to prevent the possibility of further infections.  

As it turned out Lisa had died of complications of tuberous sclerosis, a disease none of us had ever heard of.  Had Lisa lived, we were told, she would have been severely mentally impaired. The phrase I recall was, "She had reached the height of her mental powers at the age she died.”  The damage to her brain from the disease would have started to interfere with cognition from then on.  These are the facts that my parents were told in those first few days when the shock of what had happened was still vivid.   Did they worry that whatever had happened to Lisa was related to what had happened to David?  Did they fear for their other children or their potential grandchildren?  Amidst all this they had to accomplish the painful job of removing all my sister’s clothes, toys and furniture. All done in the two days before the big family wedding in which my mother played a major role. 

It was confusing for me. If this had happened while I was still in school my friends and teachers would have been aware of it and acknowledged it in some way. Since it was summer vacation I didn’t have that support. I don’t even know if I wanted it.  Years later my brother David alluded to his memories.  “What was wrong with me? Why wasn’t I more upset?  After all, my younger sister died.”  I could say the same thing about myself.  Why wasn’t I more upset?  Maybe I was. There is no doubt the entire family was impacted by this tragedy.   However, our feelings may have been mitigated, or even repressed, because it was so very important to my parents that we have a normal life.  Being sad about Lisa’s death was not a part of that plan.  My parents’ way forward was simply to avoid any mention of what had happened. 

The denial was so complete I was a college student before I actually connected Lisa's death and the wedding.  They were two separate events to me. The fact they were two days apart never entered my mind. It wasn’t until even later in my life, I’m an adult now, married with kids of my own, that I realized my mother was pregnant with my brother Chris when Lisa died. This knowledge raised even more questions for me about that time. What was it like to be expecting another child just after your baby daughter has died of something as unexpected and unusual as tuberous sclerosis. 

The day they told us there was a new baby coming, the three of us, David, Vicki and I were all sitting on the couch, my parents standing in front of us.  They presented this news to us in a positive light in keeping with their belief that moving on was the best policy.   I followed right along with this philosophy.  I was excited about having a new baby in the house.  David, on the other hand was less enchanted.  “This is embarrassing,” he exclaimed. “My mother pregnant.  How can I bring my friends here.”  Laughing he pointed to me.  “It would be better if it were Ginny.”  “Gee, David, I’m only a teenager,” I responded shaking my head in disbelief. Clearly my brother’s off beat sense of humor was still intact.

With the birth of Chris in 1960, we became a family with four kids again; an older brother, me, my sister and a baby boy.  Now there are twenty-one years between the oldest and the youngest. But this arrangement, all of us under one roof, doesn’t last very long.  I leave for college in 1962,  get married a few years later, begin to establish my own life.  David had left the house a few years earlier; he himself was married with children of his own. 

A new family grouping becomes evident, one that reflects that earliest first family in many ways. Still two parents. One a stay-at-home who keeps house, shops, cleans, and cooks meals. The other out in the work force earning the paycheck.  Two children at home, going to school, interacting with one another.  However, like the images in Alice's Looking Glass, the reflection isn't exact. Now my father is the housekeeper; my mother is the breadwinner; the older child is a girl, the younger a boy. 

This family was adapting to new conditions. The age difference between my parents begins to play a role in their lives. (My father was thirteen years older than my mother.)  He had had enough of working at the the GE, taking early retirement. There was still work at home. Taking care of two kids, Chris, just 10, and Vicki, a teenager.  While he now had time to read, do crossword puzzles, and play cards, he also took on household chores including cooking dinners.  

At the same time my mother restarts her life as her own self.  No longer identified as someone's wife or mother but as Margaret.  She takes a job outside the home, learns to drive a car, and develops relationships with co-workers independent of her family.  My brother Chris and sister Vicki grow up in this household structure. They had the same parents as David and I but under different circumstances than the ones in which we grew up.  These are different times and different people. One example. I never embraced David’s passion for jazz in the way Vicki’s love of the Beatles was wholeheartedly taken up by our brother Chris.  

Family relationships vary with the situations we find ourselves in.  If my older brother had not moved to California, would we have developed a stronger relationship?   We reconnected later in life but he was already ill by that point with much of our conversations focusing on his health. My relationship with my sister was different. She lived closer and we saw each other often. With the encouragement of Bill, Vicki and I began to talk about Lisa’s death.  As adults it was still a mystery to us. From this distance of many years, we shared what little we knew about the circumstances, hypothesized why our parents had never talked about what had happened that day, and began to make connections among three events that had been completely separate in our minds: the realization that my aunt’s wedding happened the same week Lisa died and on top of that my mother was pregnant with Chris during both events. After all these years of my mother never mentioning the tragic death of my sister, even though we were close as adults, it still felt uncomfortable to now broach this subject with my mother.  Somehow it was just too personal a line to cross.  But we still wanted to know what had happened.

After my father  died, and still uncomfortable about bringing up the subject with my mother, my sister and I decided we would request Lisa’s medical records. 

With that report we finally learned the details of her illness including the fact that Lisa had had an abnormal EEG the year before after my mother had told her family doctor, “Something is wrong with this child.” Even though the EEG was abnormal, no one followed up assuming Lisa’s nervous system was still developing.  I realize now my mother’s legitimate concerns were dismissed. 

The examination of Lisa’s brain and central nervous system proved my mother’s instincts were correct.  There was something wrong with this child. Although today some people can live close to normal lives with tuberous sclerosis complex, it’s likely, based on the post mortem examination which showed complications in organs other than the brain, Lisa would have had further seizures, developmental delay,  and intellectual disability. 

Reading the report Vicki and I were surprised to learn this condition is a genetic disorder. Since neither of my parents had any symptoms of tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), Lisa’s affliction was the result of a spontaneous genetic mutation.  Since this can effect the siblings of the affected child, the report continues with an assessment of whether my brothers and sister, and me actually, were also impacted by TSC. There was one astounding sentence.

“This child [Lisa] had one sibling with a craniopharyngioma, one with a supernumerary tooth that had to be removed, one that shows facial asymmetry and one apparently normal.”

Vicki and I reading this sentence realized the craniopharyngioma was the medical terminology for David’s tumor when he was five.  Vicki acknowledged, “I’m the one with the extra tooth!”  “So,” I exclaimed, “Chris and I are left to fight over which of us had the facial asymmetry, whatever that is, and which of us is apparently normal.” 

Late in my mother's life, my sister and I did eventually bring up the subject of Lisa's death with her.  You might be picturing here a Lifetime movie moment full of emotional catharsis. However, real life is not a carefully scripted drama.  We didn't have screen writers helping us say just the right thing.  The memory I have of the conversation is anti-climatic.  We told her we had requested Lisa's medical records as we wanted to understand the details of what had happened.  We asked why we never talked about Lisa in the days following her death.   She sighed,  "I feel like I made a mistake.  But that was how your father wanted it.  He felt it would be better for you kids if we didn't dwell on the sadness."   Vicki and I could see even now, so many years later, how hard it was for her to relive those times.  We saw no reason to add to her discomfort.  So we joked about one of us being “apparently normal" and left it at that.

After putting all the pieces together I realize a picture in our family album that I always thought was of Vicki and Chris was in fact of Vicki and Lisa.  This misidentification is another aspect of my family’s effort to put the sadness of Lisa’s death behind us.  After a while I guess I forgot what she even looked like.

In the picture Lisa is sitting in a baby swing  suspended between the living and dining rooms.  Behind is Vicki, standing, appearing to give Lisa a little push.  There is nothing unusual about this picture. It’s quite normal. Lisa looks to be about nine months-old, big for her age; Vicki is three. Lisa, looking sweet and cute, is wide-eyed, glancing at someone, maybe her mother, just off to the side. 

As I look at this picture I think of my two sisters, one in my life now and one not. I wonder how Lisa would have enhanced our family as she grew through childhood to an adult.  Had she lived Lisa would have had both a brother and sister close to her in age, a first for our family. Looking at this photo brings such thoughts to mind.  What might have been…  

Ultimately I'm thankful for all my different families, my brothers and sisters, their personalities, the life we shared and still share, the rich memories, even the ones that are sad. These experiences we have, embedded as they are in time, make an even “apparently normal” family extraordinary.