Exactly as Pam Johnston said above: I settle in for a good read. Every post is a gem of a story, always told with clear eyed compassion. I (and all your devoted readers, I’m sure) hope that 2025 will bring you all good things.
Other people’s families have long fascinated me. My own seemed more a collection of snapshots than vignettes. Other than that is the long long saga of our grandmother.
My mother’s sister and she were close enough to share holidays but not regular visits. We cousins grew up together except Jean who was nine years older than I was. In her teen years she might have absented herself from our holidays. There was political tension at the table and there was our old grandmother referred to as senile. Over a lengthy decade she lived mainly at our house as the cousins’ father had frequent sabbaticals to far away places. There was Hawai’i before statehood, Guatemala, Chile, Ethiopia- places the grandmother would not visit. She required according to our mothers constant attention lest she have a “spell”, fall, and break her hip. Her seizures were called petit mal, and somewhat controlled by Dilantin. One knew when she had one coming on as she would begin to hum. It was deemed necessary to move her to a sofa to lie down until it passed. She moved so slowly anyway, her feet shuffling half a footstep at a time, that her seat at the table was invariably the one nearest the doorway.
It was not long before our grandmother was required to spend all day on the sofa lest she fall over in a more silent spell and break her hip. My mother declared that most older people had their hips break and then fall over, a catastrophe.
My mother then spent her days sitting in a chair next to the sofa upon which rested my grandmother covered in an afghan, watching Walter Cronkite while my mother made dinner. My grandmother would talk to Walter, demanding to know why he never stayed for dinner.
Once my grandmother escaped from the house and wandered the neighborhood, telling people my mother was pregnant again. This was a nearly unbelievable feat given her overall lack of physical capacity. She must have had a burst of energy. And no broken hip.
We attempted a family vacation, six of us crammed into the Oldsmobile, our first reliable car that did not overheat and leave us standing by some forlorn and dusty train tracks. We headed off to Harstine Island in the Puget Sound, site of a previous stolen set of summer days when there had been no sabbatical, a house owned by family friends. When we got there after two days on the road including a night in Coos Bay at a motor inn with all the beds in one room, our grandmother needed to go to the bathroom. The water to the house had been turned off. When my father could not find the valve right away, my mother insisted we turn around and go home. Which we did.
I tell this story because as a teenager I was full of blame. I blamed my mother most of all for destroying our family life by insisting her mother live with us and consume her with her neediness, spawning thoughts of physical disaster in the offing. I blamed my uncle and his sabbaticals that meant our grandmother was occupying our sofa far more than theirs. I blamed my grandmother’s sons for living their lives in Cuba and New Orleans and Pasadena without a care in the world and never once even making the drive to California where we languished year upon year with Grandma and Walter Cronkite and the endlessly occupied sofa. When my father died the summer after my grandmother’s demise from or with a broken hip my bitterness was complete.
My little sister had such different memories you would not think it was the same family. For Christmas this year I gave her a restoration of her cherished photo of our little grandmother for whom she is named and our tall father. It is her first Christmas without her husband of 49 years. We had an excellent holiday from our regular lives, playing cards as we did long ago, laughing like hooligans over trivialities and bozo moves in the game.
Thank you for this opportunity to shake out the family linens, long stored in the cupboard. Thank you for your stories.
Gail, I love your image of shaking out family stories. You have a doozie here. I could see your grandmother talking to Cronkite and feel your resentment. Yet for all the trouble in your family, you and your sister just had a warm and happy Christmas. Good for you! I'm glad to have you among my readers.
Fascinating to read more about your father and his estrangement from his family in his adult life. To have been born in India to missionairies was not what I had imagined his backstory might have been at all. He became so much more three-dimensional and human to me through your story.
It’s quite a tale, Jill (details in my first memoir, My Mother’s Daughter). My father survived religious trauma bordering on abuse, but never spoke a word against his parents.
I'm embarrassed as a reader of your memoir too many years ago to have not remembered that important dimension to his character. Now it makes me want to reread it!
You already have it! Surprising that you found it, since the book never found an American publisher and sold modestly even in Canada, where I have many fans. I’m still proud it it, though.
I don't have it on my shelf anymore. Too many moves since the early 90s. I recall finding a used copy in a bookstore on Prince Avenue in Athens, Georgia in late 1991. My association is to Melissa Fay Greene's Praying for Sheetrock which I think I bought new at the same time. Teaching in the J-school at UGA then. I see my public library doesn't have a copy. Maybe it's time to bring it back into print?
Mine is a tale of a 1960 marriage between the college cheerleader, homecoming queen, sorority President and the independent, reclusive, editor of the yearbook, both just graduated and regardless of the obvious differences , thought they were in love. Three children, world travel, due to Naval commands, picture-perfect life to all friends and acquaintances and yet, when home with door closed, it was a different world, not from drinking but rather from a narcissistic personality undiagnosed disorder. Being a "good girl" growing up in the 1950's, I told myself this must be "normal" and others surely lived the same. Twenty years of feeling relief when he was gone for 6 months on a mission and dread when he came home and then every day when we heard the garage door opening, we scattered so as to avoid his stern look and actions. Finally, a divorce after twenty years and a new beginning. He immediately cut ties with me and his children, hasn't seen nor contacted them since 1985. His life , including 4 marriages after the divorce, must be hard to look back on, yet nothing has driven him to reconnect. He's missed all the joy's of their lives , six grandchildren, the laughter, tears, accomplishments, defeats, and knowing them, both as children and adults. I feel sorry for him, but not enough to pick up the phone. My divorce allowed me to surface as a joyful, loving mother and grandmother and for this, I am eternally grateful.
Sending deepest sympathies on the passing of Casey. It took courage to open your heart to a relationship that you knew was going to leave you alone and brokenhearted in the end and also opened up your heart, Nothing connects humanity like the shared vulnerability we have over relationships with the unselfish beings we welcome into our homes.
Oh, Lydia! I didn’t give a moment’s thought to losing him. The adoption was my husband’s idea, and my fear was that I couldn’t love a dog. Casey struck me as the best of a mediocre lot, but from day one I was smitten.
I think these ruptures are almost like the curse of family life, that we shouldn't think the idea of family so simple and pure as we wish. There are a few in my family, the most unfortunate a rupture between my father and his younger American-born half brother that occurred *twice*, the second time after healing as a consequence of their mother's death. Each incident was a little sordid and very unfortunate and sad. I've written about them a bit in other contexts. I have a half first cousin out there somewhere I haven't seen in over 50 years, since our grandmother's funeral.
There can’t be many families that escape these ruptures, so often inherited by later generations. Sometimes healing begins with one family member’s genealogical pursuits. You and that cousin may never reconnect, but when you’re both long gone a descendant might get curious.
Oh, yes. And flawed fathers can inspire irresistible stories. Compared to other adult children of confounding families, writers have it easy. We get to spin straw into gold.
They were a peripatetic bunch without a deep connection to your hometown. Theodore raised his family in the Baltimore area and many of them still live there. My father grew up in Victoria, B.C., where Theodore never lived. One of the saddest things about his family is that they were rarely all together in the same place.
My father died when I was an infant. He had 7 siblings and they all scattered and lost touch after he (the one who made the effort to stay connected) died. I’m in my 60s and in the last decade have found and connected with my dad’s youngest brother’s son, who is 78, and we met for the first time face to face at his son’s wedding in October. It took a lifetime to find that connection. I understand the urge to find all the pieces that connect us to family. It’s miraculous when you do find them. I know it’s plugged a big hole in my history and having family again is amazing.
I love this Rona, it feels like a short story and I can’t help thinking how your father tried, in his own way, to make amends. Letters are hard, the truth and feeling of them can get lost or minimized. … this feels like a real Christmas story.
The real Christmas stories pull hope from loss and longing. In 1956 my father didn’t know how to make amends. In old age he joined AA and got serious about it. For the first time, he focused on the pain of others instead of his own pain. I remember when he finally came clean with me, a tender moment that lightened but did not removr my burden. He’d be glad I got to know his family and wrote this story.
I was 4 in 1955. Dreaming on Xmas Eve of a bride doll. I never saw my father drunk. As story tells he ceased binge drinking ., elephantine proportions increased his rage , before my birth. He was dour Christmas morn . Tried his best. I’ve 5 sisters. We are torn apart. I hang on your words.
Jennifer, how terribly sad and familiar. Children tend to carry their parents’ burdens, sometimes throughout life. It’s unfair and yet it is human. I remind myself often that no one ever gets up in the morning and resolves, “I think I’ll become an alcoholic and mess with the heads of my kids.”
My core. Gut. Story. My family of origin. Appearances. Paramount. 6 daughters . My take. Our parents had no biz having. Created. I believe in passion. Mother Catholic. My father marginally atheist. He never joined us in Good Shepherd Church Beverly Hills CA. My sisters . From 84 down to 70 . Alive and surprisingly healthy (stories of addictions , depression, anxiety and denial ) I’ve been the Voice . Kid in emperors new clothes. The most bullied by my father. Probably most feared I’ll write the story . We were not overtly abused. Never physically. Emotionally in need of attention. We needed. I’ve given my children the benefit of my losses . I could go on but it’s Sunday ! Perhaps I’ll write the story as a letter . Not sure to whom I’ll pen
My family (very extensive, both my parents had a huge number of siblings - I forget how many, 9 each?) and my husband's family (less extensive, but more than nothing) never had a big falling out. In both cases, our parents just never kept up with any of them, so we might as well have had a falling out. My husband and I were just discussing this the other day - how there are tons of cousins (and once removeds) that we know nothing about. Not even lost letters! At least our own family shows no sign of falling out. Hooray for reunions.
Ann, the Maynard reunion was tremendous fun and inspired one of our best road trips ever. It was fascinating to see that seriousness of moral purpose appears to run in the family, an inheritance from Thomas Henry and Eliza, minus the hellfire and brimstone. Theodore had many children who built a strong network, and without them the reunion wouldn’t have happened. A roundabout way of saying that if you ever get the chance to attend a family reunion, take it.
Me, too, but only my Dad. He gave me a lot but almost every time I met more distant members of my family (or Ray’s), there was very little of that spark that says ‘I want to know you better’. I wish there were.
Lovely writing, as always. I settle in for a good read anytime I see a new post from you.
Oh, wonderful. Thank you.
Exactly as Pam Johnston said above: I settle in for a good read. Every post is a gem of a story, always told with clear eyed compassion. I (and all your devoted readers, I’m sure) hope that 2025 will bring you all good things.
Thanks so much, Elizabeth.
I couldn't agree more, Pam!
Gld to know, Sue.
Other people’s families have long fascinated me. My own seemed more a collection of snapshots than vignettes. Other than that is the long long saga of our grandmother.
My mother’s sister and she were close enough to share holidays but not regular visits. We cousins grew up together except Jean who was nine years older than I was. In her teen years she might have absented herself from our holidays. There was political tension at the table and there was our old grandmother referred to as senile. Over a lengthy decade she lived mainly at our house as the cousins’ father had frequent sabbaticals to far away places. There was Hawai’i before statehood, Guatemala, Chile, Ethiopia- places the grandmother would not visit. She required according to our mothers constant attention lest she have a “spell”, fall, and break her hip. Her seizures were called petit mal, and somewhat controlled by Dilantin. One knew when she had one coming on as she would begin to hum. It was deemed necessary to move her to a sofa to lie down until it passed. She moved so slowly anyway, her feet shuffling half a footstep at a time, that her seat at the table was invariably the one nearest the doorway.
It was not long before our grandmother was required to spend all day on the sofa lest she fall over in a more silent spell and break her hip. My mother declared that most older people had their hips break and then fall over, a catastrophe.
My mother then spent her days sitting in a chair next to the sofa upon which rested my grandmother covered in an afghan, watching Walter Cronkite while my mother made dinner. My grandmother would talk to Walter, demanding to know why he never stayed for dinner.
Once my grandmother escaped from the house and wandered the neighborhood, telling people my mother was pregnant again. This was a nearly unbelievable feat given her overall lack of physical capacity. She must have had a burst of energy. And no broken hip.
We attempted a family vacation, six of us crammed into the Oldsmobile, our first reliable car that did not overheat and leave us standing by some forlorn and dusty train tracks. We headed off to Harstine Island in the Puget Sound, site of a previous stolen set of summer days when there had been no sabbatical, a house owned by family friends. When we got there after two days on the road including a night in Coos Bay at a motor inn with all the beds in one room, our grandmother needed to go to the bathroom. The water to the house had been turned off. When my father could not find the valve right away, my mother insisted we turn around and go home. Which we did.
I tell this story because as a teenager I was full of blame. I blamed my mother most of all for destroying our family life by insisting her mother live with us and consume her with her neediness, spawning thoughts of physical disaster in the offing. I blamed my uncle and his sabbaticals that meant our grandmother was occupying our sofa far more than theirs. I blamed my grandmother’s sons for living their lives in Cuba and New Orleans and Pasadena without a care in the world and never once even making the drive to California where we languished year upon year with Grandma and Walter Cronkite and the endlessly occupied sofa. When my father died the summer after my grandmother’s demise from or with a broken hip my bitterness was complete.
My little sister had such different memories you would not think it was the same family. For Christmas this year I gave her a restoration of her cherished photo of our little grandmother for whom she is named and our tall father. It is her first Christmas without her husband of 49 years. We had an excellent holiday from our regular lives, playing cards as we did long ago, laughing like hooligans over trivialities and bozo moves in the game.
Thank you for this opportunity to shake out the family linens, long stored in the cupboard. Thank you for your stories.
Gail, I love your image of shaking out family stories. You have a doozie here. I could see your grandmother talking to Cronkite and feel your resentment. Yet for all the trouble in your family, you and your sister just had a warm and happy Christmas. Good for you! I'm glad to have you among my readers.
Fascinating to read more about your father and his estrangement from his family in his adult life. To have been born in India to missionairies was not what I had imagined his backstory might have been at all. He became so much more three-dimensional and human to me through your story.
It’s quite a tale, Jill (details in my first memoir, My Mother’s Daughter). My father survived religious trauma bordering on abuse, but never spoke a word against his parents.
I'm embarrassed as a reader of your memoir too many years ago to have not remembered that important dimension to his character. Now it makes me want to reread it!
You already have it! Surprising that you found it, since the book never found an American publisher and sold modestly even in Canada, where I have many fans. I’m still proud it it, though.
I don't have it on my shelf anymore. Too many moves since the early 90s. I recall finding a used copy in a bookstore on Prince Avenue in Athens, Georgia in late 1991. My association is to Melissa Fay Greene's Praying for Sheetrock which I think I bought new at the same time. Teaching in the J-school at UGA then. I see my public library doesn't have a copy. Maybe it's time to bring it back into print?
I’m glad there’s more in this in the memoir. It’s on the pile of memoirs on my nightstand, and I’ll be digging in soon. ♥️
Same, Jill. I was surprised by this too and also thought, ah, I see.
Mine is a tale of a 1960 marriage between the college cheerleader, homecoming queen, sorority President and the independent, reclusive, editor of the yearbook, both just graduated and regardless of the obvious differences , thought they were in love. Three children, world travel, due to Naval commands, picture-perfect life to all friends and acquaintances and yet, when home with door closed, it was a different world, not from drinking but rather from a narcissistic personality undiagnosed disorder. Being a "good girl" growing up in the 1950's, I told myself this must be "normal" and others surely lived the same. Twenty years of feeling relief when he was gone for 6 months on a mission and dread when he came home and then every day when we heard the garage door opening, we scattered so as to avoid his stern look and actions. Finally, a divorce after twenty years and a new beginning. He immediately cut ties with me and his children, hasn't seen nor contacted them since 1985. His life , including 4 marriages after the divorce, must be hard to look back on, yet nothing has driven him to reconnect. He's missed all the joy's of their lives , six grandchildren, the laughter, tears, accomplishments, defeats, and knowing them, both as children and adults. I feel sorry for him, but not enough to pick up the phone. My divorce allowed me to surface as a joyful, loving mother and grandmother and for this, I am eternally grateful.
You freed yourself. Stories like yours bring hope to others. What a stunted life he led compared to yours, so rich in love.
Beautiful well-written story.
Thank you, David.
Sending deepest sympathies on the passing of Casey. It took courage to open your heart to a relationship that you knew was going to leave you alone and brokenhearted in the end and also opened up your heart, Nothing connects humanity like the shared vulnerability we have over relationships with the unselfish beings we welcome into our homes.
Oh, Lydia! I didn’t give a moment’s thought to losing him. The adoption was my husband’s idea, and my fear was that I couldn’t love a dog. Casey struck me as the best of a mediocre lot, but from day one I was smitten.
Thank you Rona. Told with honesty and clarity. Not real common these days : )
I'm proud to keep the flame. Thanks, Richard.
Remarkable storytelling, as always.
Thank you, Maria!
I think these ruptures are almost like the curse of family life, that we shouldn't think the idea of family so simple and pure as we wish. There are a few in my family, the most unfortunate a rupture between my father and his younger American-born half brother that occurred *twice*, the second time after healing as a consequence of their mother's death. Each incident was a little sordid and very unfortunate and sad. I've written about them a bit in other contexts. I have a half first cousin out there somewhere I haven't seen in over 50 years, since our grandmother's funeral.
There can’t be many families that escape these ruptures, so often inherited by later generations. Sometimes healing begins with one family member’s genealogical pursuits. You and that cousin may never reconnect, but when you’re both long gone a descendant might get curious.
Rona, I too am writing about my father, again. And there will be another again. They stay with us, don't they?
Oh, yes. And flawed fathers can inspire irresistible stories. Compared to other adult children of confounding families, writers have it easy. We get to spin straw into gold.
I love all your posts, but this one (that I also loved) grabbed me immediately since I grew up in Port Washington. Didn’t know the Maynards, though.
They were a peripatetic bunch without a deep connection to your hometown. Theodore raised his family in the Baltimore area and many of them still live there. My father grew up in Victoria, B.C., where Theodore never lived. One of the saddest things about his family is that they were rarely all together in the same place.
My father died when I was an infant. He had 7 siblings and they all scattered and lost touch after he (the one who made the effort to stay connected) died. I’m in my 60s and in the last decade have found and connected with my dad’s youngest brother’s son, who is 78, and we met for the first time face to face at his son’s wedding in October. It took a lifetime to find that connection. I understand the urge to find all the pieces that connect us to family. It’s miraculous when you do find them. I know it’s plugged a big hole in my history and having family again is amazing.
Isn’t it? I’m so glad you and your relative are mending the tear. The sins of the parents can be redeemed more often than we know by the children.
Lovely and heartbreaking, Rona.
Thank you, Ruth.
I love it.
I think I need to write a poem.
I love to inspire other writers. Thank you for letting me know, Jessie.
I love this Rona, it feels like a short story and I can’t help thinking how your father tried, in his own way, to make amends. Letters are hard, the truth and feeling of them can get lost or minimized. … this feels like a real Christmas story.
The real Christmas stories pull hope from loss and longing. In 1956 my father didn’t know how to make amends. In old age he joined AA and got serious about it. For the first time, he focused on the pain of others instead of his own pain. I remember when he finally came clean with me, a tender moment that lightened but did not removr my burden. He’d be glad I got to know his family and wrote this story.
I was 4 in 1955. Dreaming on Xmas Eve of a bride doll. I never saw my father drunk. As story tells he ceased binge drinking ., elephantine proportions increased his rage , before my birth. He was dour Christmas morn . Tried his best. I’ve 5 sisters. We are torn apart. I hang on your words.
Jennifer, how terribly sad and familiar. Children tend to carry their parents’ burdens, sometimes throughout life. It’s unfair and yet it is human. I remind myself often that no one ever gets up in the morning and resolves, “I think I’ll become an alcoholic and mess with the heads of my kids.”
My core. Gut. Story. My family of origin. Appearances. Paramount. 6 daughters . My take. Our parents had no biz having. Created. I believe in passion. Mother Catholic. My father marginally atheist. He never joined us in Good Shepherd Church Beverly Hills CA. My sisters . From 84 down to 70 . Alive and surprisingly healthy (stories of addictions , depression, anxiety and denial ) I’ve been the Voice . Kid in emperors new clothes. The most bullied by my father. Probably most feared I’ll write the story . We were not overtly abused. Never physically. Emotionally in need of attention. We needed. I’ve given my children the benefit of my losses . I could go on but it’s Sunday ! Perhaps I’ll write the story as a letter . Not sure to whom I’ll pen
Yes, beautifully written.
My family (very extensive, both my parents had a huge number of siblings - I forget how many, 9 each?) and my husband's family (less extensive, but more than nothing) never had a big falling out. In both cases, our parents just never kept up with any of them, so we might as well have had a falling out. My husband and I were just discussing this the other day - how there are tons of cousins (and once removeds) that we know nothing about. Not even lost letters! At least our own family shows no sign of falling out. Hooray for reunions.
Ann, the Maynard reunion was tremendous fun and inspired one of our best road trips ever. It was fascinating to see that seriousness of moral purpose appears to run in the family, an inheritance from Thomas Henry and Eliza, minus the hellfire and brimstone. Theodore had many children who built a strong network, and without them the reunion wouldn’t have happened. A roundabout way of saying that if you ever get the chance to attend a family reunion, take it.
Depends on the family. Seriousness of moral purpose would be great, but did not run in most of the members of either family. Nor humour.
Humor makes hard things bearable and I was lucky to grow up with it.
Me, too, but only my Dad. He gave me a lot but almost every time I met more distant members of my family (or Ray’s), there was very little of that spark that says ‘I want to know you better’. I wish there were.