This did not stop his love of learning. I thought he was a wonderful teacher, just as I was told his father was, who had been a professional tutor in Russia before he came to the U.S. So, we learned to appreciate great music, literature, philosophy, and the finer grammatical points of the English language.
Our father instilled in us the understanding that a woman’s mind was a terrible thing to waste. Louisa May Alcott only reinforced this belief in me. Her Little Women were accomplished and developed. I loved everything about the book and when I learned that Madame Alexander made Little Women dolls, I wanted those dolls! Well, I did.
My tenth year offered several occasions for my parents to acquire these dolls for me. Beth came at Chanukah followed by Meg when a boy from the neighborhood, who was a good friend of mine, took very bad aim with a sling shot and a stone lodged in my right eye. I had to lie in the hospital, flat on my back with sandbags on either side of my head for one week while my eye healed – a torturous experience which saved my vision. My eyes were covered with bandages, but I could hold Meg and feel her beautiful dress and hair…
Marmee came when the Weiner twins -- who swore they loved me but only tormented me -- broke one of my fingers during ballroom dancing class one Sunday afternoon.
I worked in Daddy’s office to earn Jo and Amy. My set was complete!
One day in Brownies I realized that two other girls also had sets of the dolls and we formed a club to have all the dolls play together. We celebrated all the March family birthdays, sewed wardrobes, built elaborate residences on our bedroom floors, and had a marvelous time enacting various scenes from the books.
Our Little Women club offered wonderful friendships based on something that transcended the divisions that Mother continued to remind me were very real. I ignored her words of caution: “When you are all older and must be more active in your own faiths these friendships will end.”
Three years later, we were still friends. My “club sisters” were among the more popular girls at junior high, and by default, so was I. It was a wonderful time for me. Since I was still on my quest to see where our differences lay, I attended their Christian Sunday schools where I, apparently, asked far too many questions. After a few of those visits, I was not invited back to the Sunday schools!
But I did have my curiosity satisfied in other ways. My parents subscribed to Time, Life, and Look magazines and I devoured each issue to learn about the world. Then Daddy invested in a subscription of the big Time/Life books. When the one on “Religions of the World” arrived, it was the most fantastic gift. I still have a copy of this book and treasure it even now. I loved every word, every picture. Here was proof that there was more than one way to view God. All that I read made perfect sense to me. Why didn’t others see how similar all these beliefs were at their core? They all believed there was a God that created our world and wanted to acknowledge that God. Each religion just chose different ways to do it. What was the problem?
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Then, when I was twelve, my life took a tremendous turn. Mother and Daddy informed us that Mother had become pregnant. It seemed that they had had a romantic interlude after dropping Sandy at college in Cincinnati. Daddy was thrilled. Maybe this child would be the boy he’d always wanted. -- It was not difficult to see that Mother was despondent. She was not healthy and took many medications for her depression. The bathroom cabinet was full of labeled bottles. Most of them had her name on them. I never asked what they were for. I also knew she had varicose veins and that carrying a child would not help this condition. I knew these things because I listened very closely when my parents talked and thought I wasn’t listening.
This was the age when I should have begun puberty in earnest. I didn’t. One by one, my friends began their periods. My parents were so preoccupied with the pregnancy that now entailed a move to a bigger home so that Mother and baby could be on the first floor, that they never noticed or seemed to care what was happening to me. I didn’t bring it to their attention either. If being a woman meant being as sick as my mother, I didn’t want any part of it. I’d pass on that one.
In the spring of 1959, my brother Howard was born by C-section. My sisters Sandy and Bobbie had come home to help care for him initially because mother was just too sick. We took turns caring for our baby brother at night. One night, I heard him cry, but was just too tired to go to him. When I fully awoke I realized that I had gathered my blankets into a bundle and was rocking them like a baby. I fell back asleep, thankfully aware that it was Sandy’s turn to care for my brother that night.
My thirteenth summer was spent with a baby on my hip. Both my sisters returned to their other pursuits and left me home to care for this lovely infant. I groused and complained, but actually grew to love caring for him.
Then one day, when I was feeding him, Mother passed out on the kitchen floor. Daddy raced home from work after I called him. An ambulance came and took Mother to the hospital. I was left with the baby. Even though they had no explanation for why Mom had passed out, somehow I knew that the baby was really mine to care for from that moment on. I was angry, but there was no choice. Toward the end of summer I was sent to camp for two weeks for some “R and R.” The whole time I worried about my little brother and my Mom. Could she handle things without me there? Not for much longer.
Chapter 4
A Mess and a Message
Daddy was a great believer in psychiatry and decided that both Bobbie and I were in need of therapy. Bobbie never complained. I complained too much. So, once a year he sent me for a checkup. The diagnosis was always the same. “She’s fine. She’s the only one with her ego intact. Her demands and complaints are actually rational. Leave her be.”
You see, Daddy thought I should be happy to want to help with the needs of the family. After all, that was how he was raised. He had to sacrifice for the sake of his family. Mother also had to sacrifice after her father died of alcoholism. She was the oldest of four children and the responsibility of the children’s care thus fell to my mother when my grandmother went to work to support the family.
I didn’t see it that way. What I did see was that my oldest sister went away to college. My middle sister was about to leave for school and I was left at home to care for my brother. Not only was I wearing all their hand-me-downs, now I was to quietly accept that they would have all the freedom they needed to pursue their goals while I remained compliantly at home to take care of my mother and brother.
What was fair about that? My school activities and partying were drastically curtailed because of the family demands. I just wanted mother to get well and take care of the baby she had chosen to have.
My parents sent me to a lake-side camp at the end of that first summer. There, some kids and I were asked to move a few big stones from the shore of the lake. I picked up a stone and collapsed in a heap with a searing pain in my back. The staff took me for x-rays. At the hospital the doctor found I had a spinal deformity stemming from a birth defect that impacted on my spinal cord. No more heavy lifting for me!
I came home and rested, and was told I should wear a brace and take extra care to help straighten and strengthen my spine. The brace was out of the question in my mind. It would only make me look even more different from the other kids than I already did. The fact that my back curved in a bizarre way had not escaped my attention. I had already decided that I was deformed and wore my clothing to cover this deformity as much as possible.
