Illustration by Sabrina Silverio

It wasn’t a headline. I was playing Bridge Doctor online while waiting for the antihistamine to kick-in at 5 am this morning, hoping it would calm down my sneeze mechanism. The message “you have exceeded your allowable number of hands for the day unless you want to pay more moolah” scrolled a banner across my screen, and I clicked the window closed. My facebook feed confronted me with the CNN red and white logo, every article and photograph addressing the latest shameful comment or action from the Trump team, or the newest rebuttal to Trump, all of humanity seemingly embroiled in a spitting match. And then I read that someone spat at Eric Trump in a restaurant—such contempt displayed on both sides. I decided to go back to bed and try this day again later.

I woke up, thankful. Thankful to be able to try again. Thankful that others have more endurance than I do. Grateful for people like Expertina, who seem capable of reasoning us out of hopelessness. So, yes, this is my blog post to ask you to have hope. And if you don’t, read this commentary by Suzanne Heagy of The Gloria Sirens blog. Please, and thank you.

https://thegloriasirens.com/2019/06/26/dear-expertina/

(Originally published in June of 2016)

After several days of radio, TV, and internet news, Facebook and Instagram posts, and Twitter feeds, I vented on the phone to my lifelong best friend when she had more than enough in her life to deal with, ending the conversation apologetically and vowing I would do something this time. I will advocate. I will participate. I will no longer be emotionally or politically constipated as I have been since I left the Washington D.C. area in 1990. In the intervening years, I discovered that people will hate you for what you believe, for the way you live, or love. My apologies to the South. The space we currently inhabit is not regional, but global, influenced by social, economic, and cultural tides.

Yesterday, as I took refuge from the heat in my home, bereft of a working air conditioner, I drove by an example of the Culture of Hate in my four-years-newly-adopted hometown: Frostproof, Florida.  Since Obama’s second term in office began, a particular sign has hung on the security fence of the former citrus plant.

Yesterday, I discovered a new one, also hateful.

Vote for whom you choose. Post their placard in your yard. Spread leaflets. Join the volunteer call center asking for donations. Discuss your choice rationally, and I will listen. However, don’t make your choice about hatred, or put that hatred on display.

I pointed my car south on Highway 27, missing the turns for the errands I planned to run, taking a sudden detour into the parking lot of a local quilting shop. I do not quilt. Something about perusing colorful, crisp fabrics, rows of bolted cloth (and not to discount the quiet hum of central air conditioning), drew me inside. The bright young clerk explained the sales items, pricing structure, and inquired about my quilting experience.

“I have a dear friend who quilts competitively and has won numerous awards,” I replied, proudly showing her the photo from a recent text of said friend’s latest project. “Just browsing!” I piped.

She returned to folding squares of cloth, known in the quilting world as fat quarters: square cut quarter yards of cloth, providing the quilter with maximum choices of fabric at minimum investment. I hovered over the box of fat quarters, enticed by the palette of hues. I arranged my choices on the work-space, mixing patterns and depth of color: red crosshatched with orange, orange dotted with yellow, a splash of honeysuckle to border a thatch of green, deepest indigo blue to follow, regency purple to close.

I turned to the clerk and said, “I need your help.”

Having watched me amass the swatches, she asked me, “What are you making?”

“A banner,” I blurted out, my voice thick, suddenly knowing–something to do at last. “A rainbow banner. To hang on my front window. For Orlando.”

The clerk beamed her approval, helping me choose the backing. She measured and cut and packaged everything I needed.

I am no seamstress. Mrs. Carrico, my 7th grade home economics teacher, would attest: I am dogged if not particularly talented. My Texan grandmother, Anna Pearl, did not bestow on me her professional seamstress skills of stitching and darting, keeping pattern proportions in her mind’s eye, shoulders roped with a measuring tape, pins protruding from her lips.

Even my mother, an accomplished home decorator, often chided me, “Stop whimpering every time you prick your finger. Learn to use a thimble!”

But I can doggedly produce a straight seam on a Singer machine if moved to do so.

I worked in my mother-in-law’s sewing room past the afternoon into evening, through frayed thread and bunched corners, frozen bobbins and slipping needles, singeing my fingers with the iron as I flattened seams. Two banners lay upon my kitchen island that evening, a small offering, fending off the culture of hate, nudging me towards hope, and action.

As I hand-whipped the final stitches in place, measured the points on which to slip the drapery hooks, coiled out the twine I would use to suspend the banners from our windows, my anger moved outward. I let it go. I let it go.

Bleachers rise up from the sandstone plaza in front of Notre Dame, viewing stands or resting places or vantage points for tourists or foot weary street hawkers, or gypsies searching for their next shill.  The police drive slowly in and out of the plaza in their electric cars, discouraging pickpockets and dispersing crowds.  An iron gate cordons off the verdant walkway above the river, a dog-free zone where parents allow their toddlers to roll on the grass and grannies and grandkids alike exclaim over the fresh green of the raised gardens: lime-hued flowers—bells of Ireland, massive spider mums, lacy ferns—interspersed with shocks of blue delphinium and tiny bachelor buttons, and the occasional column of white snapdragon.

We leave the cathedral gardens through more iron walls to cross the river.  All the wire mesh fencing along the bridges here are woven into tapestries of metal, padlocks of all make and sizes hooked and latched to the grids of wire, like hearts carved in ancient trees. “Alicia loves Patrice” reads one. “Alphonse and Magritte, 2010” reads another, brass and chrome and iron proclaiming allegiance to l’amour.

On the far side of the river, in the shade beyond the bato-boat entry steps, two panhandlers rest after the day’s exertions. They share a can of beer, slick with condensation, and chortle sweet entreatments to their pets. One man cradles a small brown and white rabbit in his lap. Collar and leash seem superfluous as we observe the creature gazing up into its’ master’s face. An equally enrapt guinea pig nestles in the lap of the second gentleman of the street. Perhaps one of the locks on the bridge bears the names of these pets and their protectors?  David wonders if we should ask to take a photo and how much do I think they will demand as a fee?  But the moment passes. We stroll on in search of a friendly cafe, a glass of chilled vin blanc, and a carafe of much-needed water.  Will we cradle our hands across the table on our first night in Paris where even rabbits wear the look of love?

An interesting interview in the New York Times caused some early morning musing today (see the link to the article below).

I tended bar for three years around the corner from The Round Robin Bar in Washington D.C. (where the afore-mentioned interview took place) in the mid-to-late 1970s, serving classic cocktails to many government and military employees, embassy workers, as well as staffers from the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. It was a gift to grow up in and live in our nation’s capital where diversity is everywhere–always has been. Among the fascinating experiences was meeting and getting to know permanent White House staff (a regular customer was a White House butler) and Secret Service personnel. The Texans came on duty with LBJ, the Californians with Nixon, and then there was an entirely new generation with Jimmy Carter. The Carterites tended to navigate to the bars around George Washington University near Washington Circle, or Georgetown. But occasionally, we would serve a group of West Wing staff and congressional interns hanging out with cheap pitchers of beer on our sidewalk cafe, tousled-haired men with ties loosened, women with their sling-back heels off, enjoying the sunset over Pennsylvania Avenue.

It was a good time to be a young adult. Cocaine and other recreational drugs hadn’t thoroughly infiltrated the service trade yet. The White House was not closed off to traffic, and you could sit on a bench in Lafayette Park with your bag lunch and a bottle of soda and listen to the “protester-of-the-day,” watching people walk in circles, chanting: political theater, democracy-at-work entertainment. But things got ugly the year the Shah of Iran was deposed. One of our workers, here from Iran on a “petroleum engineer” scholarship, told stories of marching with hoods on their heads so the royal hitmen would not kill them, or persecute their family back home, or follow them home or to work so the Shah’s supporters could report protesting students’ addresses to immigration and get their student visas rescinded.

For my children: the current world crises of energy/environment, middle east and third world conflicts, paranoia over who is a terrorist and under what guise or avenue they get here, are not new. We grew up with these issues also.

Building a wall or closing the government is a lazy and foolish approach to world problems. Only through diversity and respectful consideration can we come together. Let’s agree to disagree, be respectful of each other’s differences, and find our common humanity.

I know, I know, easier said than done. Ally and David–we need a cocktail for this, metaphorically, and for imbibement. Maybe that’s an excellent place to start: an end of day conversation over a pitcher of refreshments as the light wanes. I’ve heard worse ideas recently.

Cheers, everybody!

Here is my response to the headline of The New Yorker column: After the Kavanaugh Allegations, Republicans Offer a Shocking Defense: Sexual Assault Isn’t a Big Deal

Let me tell you a little story that I find “shocking”—how experiencing sexual assault on a regular, systemic basis while growing into womanhood can cause a young woman to play into the hands of misogynists and predators.

I stopped dating halfway through my junior year of high school because perfectly nice male friends and classmates who were clearly overrun by testosterone demonstrated far more interest in sex than I did. I was not interested at all. Even at that age, with no experience whatsoever, I knew I wanted to be in charge of my body and my sexual destiny. I had a right for it to be my choice. So, when I was ready, I chose the time, the place, and the person. After honest and open discussion with the somewhat-older man I had begun dating at the age of 19, I welcomed the act. It was lovely, memorable, just right.

We broke up when he confessed he was falling in love with me. Evidence of my lack of knowledge and experience, I was caught unawares. I thought I was ready for sex. I never anticipated being prepared for love. Humbled and ashamed, I ended the relationship.

Several months later, I was raped in the basement of my home while my parents watched TV upstairs in the den. I protested and whimpered, but could not admit to myself that it was rape at the time because the new male friend on whom I thought I had a crush kept saying, “I know you aren’t a virgin; I know you want it.” But I didn’t. A month later he called me on the phone, and in a voice full of what I believed was remorse and contrition, he invited me to a Grateful Dead concert, promising me it was not a date, but an apology. We would go with a mixed group of friends.  Someone I had known since middle school was driving. I agreed to go. He raped me in the back seat of the station wagon on the way to the concert. I tried to push him off and vocally protested repeatedly. There was only silence in the car.

As a result, at the age of 19 and for many years to follow I began to think of men as the opposition, learning to gauge safety and comfort levels when dealing with the opposite sex. First and foremost: who is a friend and who is a foe? Only my gay male friends were safe. For most others: If I am out with a man and they lean in and I say no will I be branded a tease? If I tell myself I am in charge, and I say yes, but I don’t enjoy it, am I a whore? If I fall for them, but they don’t fall for me am I an easy lay and someone who puts out? If they fall for me, and I have to stop the relationship and honestly let them know I don’t feel the same way about them, am I a ball-buster and a bitch?

But systemic sexual assault did not just apply to the social interaction/dating experience. Assault occurred in unexpected places in the 1970s and 80s. When shopping in the produce aisle of Safeway (I was wearing a simple T-shirt and jeans, nothing provocative, I assure you) a man approached me from behind, reaching around and grabbing my breasts. He whispered huskily, “I prefer my melons a little larger, but they are ripe enough.” I whipped around as he ran into the next aisle. I approached the produce manager for help. His response as I stood outraged and trembling before him?  A derisive chuckle and the comment, “Maybe you should stay away from the melon bins.” (Are you laughing? Should you be laughing?)

While waiting for the “WALK” sign at a traffic light during rush hour on a busy Washington DC street corner, a man in a bespoke suit wrapped his hands across my backside and asked, “Young lady, has anyone told you that you have a most delicious ass?” I froze, trying to stammer an appropriate protest as he swung his umbrella in arcs and crossed the street. A few of the customers who observed this from the nearby sidewalk café did laugh. I ducked my head.

The dishwashers at the restaurant where I worked regularly cursed women in English and Spanish, calling us whores and cunts, pantomiming masturbation on the outside of their greasy aprons when we entered the kitchen to pick up our orders. Our manager? A big laugh in response and advice to get tough and ignore it.

I am certain that if I had told my father or brother-in-law about these experiences, they would have expressed outrage and made promises to protect me that would have been impossible to keep. These were everyday occurrences taking place in public places. If anyone noticed and disapproved, they looked the other way. No one ever came to my aid with the exception of my friend Art, the gay bar manager who came to my rescue after I explained the daily specials to a customer and asked him if he had any questions, “Yes,” he responded.  “I bet my friend here five bucks that you have never had an orgasm. Am I right?” Art banned the men from the restaurant.

In the years that followed, I stopped hoping to be saved or protected. I learned to live defensively, to face the daily beast when it rose up.

I began to think of myself as an optimistic realist. I never thought my prince would come. When I met my first husband, finding we had common goals about opening our own restaurant, basking in the glow of being treated professionally, knowing my opinions mattered, my intelligence was respected, and I experienced being both wooed and ASKED, I fell in love. Or should I say, I came to love him? He was deserving of love. But I did him a huge disservice. The truth came out when on the eve of my bachelorette dinner my best friend tried to talk me out of marriage. “Why are you marrying him? Are you in love with him?” My answer: “I do love him. We have common goals. And I believe this is as good as I will do. I will be safe in marriage.” This was my answer after living with the man for over a year, experiencing excruciating arguments set off by his volatile temper and frequent episodes of unjustified jealousy. I knew that marriage and relationships were hard. I expected to be challenged. I thought I was strong and brave. I no longer backed down. I defended myself verbally. I thought marital strife and forgiveness was a normal pattern.

Seven years later, after the jealousy and temper evolved into both physical and emotional abuse, I realized that my husband never trusted me not just because he had witnessed a similar pattern of behavior between his parents as he grew up. I came to understand that men could also be victims of the systemic acceptance of sexual assault and misogyny once they entered into a relationship with a woman. The Madonna complex is not a myth; it is real. He could only have trusted me if he knew I was a virgin when we met. But did his mistrust justify his actions? No, they did not.

My response to all the controversy over the allegations against Kavanaugh is this: put the shoe on the other foot. Although my story is one of female vs. male, let’s not discount that anyone, no matter their sexual identity, might have similar experiences.  Imagine a society where everyone is victimized, demeaned in some way, or sexually assaulted. Would you report it? Would you be too ashamed or confused to tell? Would you easily trust others? Would you trust yourselves? Would you confess to your lover that you were not a virgin, because that meant you were easy, or soiled?

Or, as The New Yorker interprets the Republican defense: is sexual assault not a big deal?

I still have nightmares over making bad decisions, am plagued with guilt over the kind men who loved me whom I could not love back, anger at myself for not fighting harder, not protesting louder, not demanding accountability of the men who abused me, not calling it “rape.”

Does judge Kavanaugh have any remorse or regrets? Or do we just give him a blank check on accountability? If you are a person who ever had your freedom or value dis-regarded or compromised, do you really want him defending the constitution that guarantees you that freedom, that equality?

I do not.

Please read the article in the attached link, and share. This is important.

In the last few weeks of my father’s life, his doctor gave him permission to move back into the little cottage behind our house. Dad had lost a leg to diabetes. After surgery, he struggled diligently in physical therapy, yearning to live with my mom once again. During 41 years of marriage, my dad took care of my mother, ever her sentinel, vigilant for signs of her recurring mental illness. Now she took care of him. Mom made sure he ate and took his insulin on time, serving him copious cups of coffee, calling us for help as needed. On the days when Dad found the wheelchair too cumbersome to navigate the sidewalk to our back door, I brought them their meals. I often discovered them in a gentle embrace, sitting side by side on the bed, just holding on. Or Mom would stand behind his chair at the kitchen table, arms around his shoulders, dropping small kisses on his head every few moments. This is how I found them on the morning my father died.

After we returned from the hospital on that day of loss, my mother shyly confessed that they had fallen in love all over again, quietly repeating their marriage vows to each other one morning at dawn. They had both acknowledged that some things in life could not ever get “fixed.” I knew they were happy.

http://aplus.com/a/advice-for-dating-someone-with-depression?utm_campaign=i102&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=a109190

Some days start softly and never build up to a crescendo of anything. Productivity maintains a steady turtle-like pace, no ebb and flow. The day opens clean and bright. The sky offers no contrast. No urgency awaits. This is life in the slow lane.

The phone rings. The slightly sleepy voice of your adult son chimes hello. Just checking in, confirming his relentless work schedule: full of double shifts, lacking days off for weeks to come. His voice holds his smile, grateful for the busyness as well as the business, no complaints. Nor have you, full of thanks that he calls. Yes, he says, he continues to take his supplements—but he could do better and vows he will. Meanwhile, launching into a detailed discussion with his father (who quickly grabbed the other extension), they discuss making healthy homemade bowls of ramen, the optimal way to cut the vegetables, to lower the salt content of the broth, which soy sauce to buy at the Asian market, expounding on the pleasures of cooking for yourself on a tight budget and succeeding!

You hang up the phone and sigh. Glad that this phone call was not fraught with drama, knowing that as long as you are a parent, each ring will produce first worry, then joy. No lack of confidence in your off-spring, just the nature of the beast.

A second call, not moments later: the daughter checks in! It’s a dad and daughter call to discuss bargain hunting for new tires. But you listen, enjoying the camaraderie, knowing tidbits of life stories will creep into the discussion: a treasured friend, in her third attempt at college, graduates on Friday, newly accepted into a competitive Master degree program. The cats are due for their shots. Is it time for new cat carriers, she wonders? The offer her boyfriend made on a house remains unanswered. She, too, recently talked to her brother, confirming a general cheerfulness.

Amid societal, political, economic, news-stream turmoil, how gratifying to encounter such a morning, such a gift. I vow not to be complacent, but on this day, in this small town, in this moment, expressing thanks that all is well.

Easter preparations proceed at full tilt, the patio cleaned and set for 16 diners, flowers arranged, ham ready for the oven, cheeses grated for the shrimp and crab casserole, eggs decorated, eggs deviled in three ways. Scalloped pineapple emerges fragrant and crusty from the oven (an old-fashioned/new recipe from my friend Wilma who wowed us with it at the Tax-Aide Volunteer luncheon) as the perfect ham accompaniment, and so many other dishes and goodies coming from friends and neighbors.

So, contemplating leftovers and in need of bread for luncheon tomorrow, I resurrected an old recipe which I have not made since we sold The Purcellville Inn in 1986: Cottage Cheese Dill Bread. Listening to classic rock and roll and working at my baking station on the big kitchen island, I measured and stirred, proofed and patted, a second rise of the soft dough, and the result was two beautifully browned Pullman loaves, slathered with Irish butter and coarse salt. My husband-of-almost-thirty-years’ comment? “You’ve been holding out on me again, sweetheart!”

He’s right. Always good to go back and visit the oldies-but-goodies. Happy Easter. The bread has arisen.

Family Road Trip 1955

(This post was originally published on the Gloria Sirens blog in June of 2014.)

I only ever imagined the whispers behind shielding hands: “Did you hear about her mom?” “Did you see the ambulance at the house yesterday afternoon?” “I heard she was crying again in Anthropology class today!” I did not grow up subject to pointing fingers or the snickers of my peers. The neighbors never failed to bring us dinner when my mother was hospitalized nor was she ostracized from her various social organizations after a stint in the state mental ward. The community always welcomed my mother back, offered the next employment opportunity, praised her charm, her grace, her lovely home, and her well-groomed, well-behaved children.

Or at least, that is how I remember the events surrounding my mother’s lifelong mental illness. Perhaps, people did recoil from us socially, or avoided speaking with her on the street, or did not include me in their children’s’ sleepovers because they had heard about Wynelle, and her troubles.  I will never know. Perhaps we lived in a kinder, gentler world in those days when Congress debated the Civil Rights Act, and the neighborhood crafted and hung a street-wide banner celebrating Mr. Mullikan’s bravery when his fire truck arrived first to a recent fire, and good manners prevented us from spitting out the tough and gamey mutton stew served every spring at the community fundraiser, its green-tinged sauce gluey with mint jelly.

I do know that despite my memories of understanding neighbors and friends, we did not openly discuss my mother’s illness. It remained “that thing which will be unnamed” until I was seventeen years old and the only child left in the house. I confronted my father and demanded that he explain why Mom’s sickness, her frequent absence, the many times we observed strange white-coated men strapping her into a straitjacket or onto an ambulance gurney—why this was allowed to exist and what in God’s name made her this way? After twenty years of putting out the fire, my father was no closer to knowing the reason for the embers of her disease than I was. Each episode and method of treatment, from barbaric hydro-therapy and electric shock sessions to increasingly complex pill cocktails, only entrenched her more deeply in illness, the proverbial cure harsher than the disease.

Yes, she heard voices at times. Yes, she ran naked out onto the balcony of her home and tossed flower pots into the street and yard below. Yes, she gave generous gifts and keepsakes to new and old friends and friends of friends, only to ask for the gifts back afterwards, when she was feeling more rational. Somehow my father kept us out of debt after her manic spending sprees. She called us down to scrambled egg breakfasts at 2 am. But never did she wield a weapon or threaten us or anyone else.  Or so I thought until my oldest sister told me recently of a scene at the Sunday dinner table when Mom rose from her chair, snatched the carving knife and held it aloft. My sister seized our hands and flew with us upstairs, locking the bedroom door and soothing us with 45 rpm records and fashion magazines.  I don’t have any recollection of this episode, none at all. My father never spoke of what transpired afterwards.

Over the years I held onto scraps of joy. I took pride in my mother’s ability to return to us. I praised her strength, marveled at her ability to head out into the world after a set-back. I planted kisses on her temples, each side implanted with a crescent-shaped scar where the shock-therapy headset pressed against her flesh. And I give prayers of thanks daily for being blessed with a husband who agreed jointly to take on her care in her later years, years during which she attended our children’s recitals and sports events and school assemblies, until hydrocephalus, water on the brain, stole her speech. Mom’s body folded in on itself and her once nimble dancing limbs failed to support her to walk. I will never know if she knew her surroundings in the last few months or if the psychosis of her disease held her captive. I don’t know if she ever heard me say, “Goodbye, Mom. We love you.”

As I listen to the commentary and interviews in broadcast media and read op-ed pieces about the recent stabbings and shootings, I struggle to accept the truth: there but for some sort of grace goes my family. We could have been chasing after my mother on a paranoid spree of violence. We could any day be the victims of someone else’s unstable loved one. So could you. How do we face such a threat? How do we diffuse the ill, who are so often victims themselves? One of the largest struggles my family faced was one of accountability, as do our legislatures and fellow citizens, wrestling and debating gun control and policies and funding addressing mental health, or mental illness.

I suggest a starting point: don’t point fingers. Not at each other or organized health care or legislative bodies, and especially not at the displaced, disenfranchised, dysfunctional souls that populate our planet.  And there will be no whispers behind shielding fingers. Be vocal about your discomfort if discomfort is what you feel. Mental illness takes hostage both victim and observer. And take action. Read about mental illness. If you are a researcher or medical specialist or a survivor—write about mental illness so we can hear your story, gain from your knowledge.  Talk about mental illness—to your spouse, your parents, your kids. Much can be said for the hereditary factors involving mental illness. Know your family history. Maybe eccentric Aunt Flavia was bipolar. Maybe Grandpa drank to quiet the voices in his head.

And for heaven’s sake, be kind. In all my experiences with my mother and the many other victims of mental illness I have encountered–on the street, in doctor’s offices, in mental wards–small acts of kindness speak a universal language of comfort. Our family prayer is “Be ye kind, one to another. Amen.” And no, we did not get this from Ellen DeGeneres, but I applaud that she speaks a similar phrase at the end of her daily talk show, omitting the Amen, of course. Whether you pray or just send good “intentions” out into the world, please engage yourself in an effort to understand and treat mental illness. Our collective mental health depends on it.

Living with mental illness: tilting at windmills

We gathered our Irish spirits in the gloaming of Friday evening, dining with friends and family on Corned Beef and Cabbage, finishing up our meal with Barmbrack fruitcake and pecan whiskey hard sauce. Not until Saturday did we think to dive into Spotify for tunes and dirges, a cacophony of fiddles and flutes, rogues with whiskey rough voices shouting drinking songs, and tenors crooning ballads.

Treasured neighbors joined us for Guinness stew on Saturday evening, sitting around afterward over oat-crusted apple crisp, sipping Sexton single malt (or wine or water), tapping our toes, telling our stories. Whether true or not, surely, we all have a little Irish in us.

Sunday morning, inspiration struck and brunch topped the fare of the weekend: soft scrambled eggs flecked with green, black bread toast, smoked salmon with watercress and dilled crème, mashed potato pancakes—a meal to inspire memories. I dug into my writing and research archives, finding the census reports documenting my grandparents, next rooting through old photo albums, scanning the treasures I found.

In 1900, my paternal grandparents were born, one generation removed from the Irish potato famine, bred of hardworking peasant stock from County Cork. If Grandpa White had been born in Ireland, would he have migrated north, finding work among the shipwrights of Belfast who built the Titanic, instead of becoming a pipe-fitter and welder for the Tennessee Valley Authority?

The 1920 U.S. census listed my grandmother, Lottie Dale Barney Fagey, as a “housemaid” in the home of a widow who inherited and ran her late husband’s mercantile business with her two adult sons. The husband most likely died in The Great War. Lottie Dale cooked, cleaned, and looked after Widow Tompkins’s 9-year old daughter, Margaret.

Not two years later, on my father’s birth, young Lottie became known as Dale White. One picture survives from her courtship with my grandfather, Cletis Goldie White. Dale wears a smocked apron overdress and a haircap, standing with her hands clasped in front. Cletis grips a tree branch, hanging playful and teasing, kicking his feet, his Paddy cap tilted rakishly.

My father’s family lived in southern Illinois and the western part of Indiana, traveling from outlying towns and small cities to Indianapolis, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky, following railroad maintenance work, building roads and bridges, and toiling in mines and small oil fields. Mamaw and Papaw White (as we called Cletis and Dale), found some constancy after Great-grandad White retired. The railroad granted him a life-lease on a sharecropper’s farm, a scrap of land near the railroad lines Great-grandad walked and inspected with his lantern (the original occupation of those known as “linemen”). In between work projects, my grandparents parked their trailer on the land, sharing water from the well, jerry-rigging electricity from the single pole at the corner of their dirt road and the paved two-lane county road leading into Allendale, Illinois.

I never knew them in the years they struggled to raise a family during the depression, or how they felt sending their first son, my father, off to war at age 18, or both sons off to the Korean War. My memories are of sitting on the porch of my great-grandparents’ house, shelling beans and peas, shucking corn, sitting on top of the hand-crank ice cream maker to provide traction when the churning became difficult, our mouths watering at the smell of a freshly-plucked chicken frying in lard. We were charmed, thinking that outhouses, pot-bellied stoves for heating and cooking, and water hand-pumped into the kitchen all marvelous adventures in the 1960s. We scrubbed our clothes on a washboard, hanging them to dry in the backyard, and competed with each other for the right to wash my grandmother’s glorious head of shiny white hair. She would park her walker next to the well, and we rinsed her hair with water drawn in a galvanized bucket.

My grandparents moved to a series of trailer parks after Great-grandad died and they lost the lease on the farm, relocating to Indianapolis to live with my aunt after Mamaw broke her hip for a second time. My final memories of them are of illness, and flares of Irish temper always ending in laughter. Mamaw called Papaw a rascal.  He called her “old woman.” They died just a year apart. They loved for a lifetime.