Losses 1977

In fall 1977, in California where I had lived since 1971, I enrolled in a seminar that caused me to look back at my childhood and think about early influences on my life. Thick notebooks from that "Inner Growth Seminar (I.G.S.)" – filled with my notes, assignments and journal entries – have lain dormant in storage for decades.

Now, with time on my hands because of the coronavirus shutdowns and stay-at-home orders, I've opened old boxes and reviewed the contents to sort out what might be tossed or kept.

Here's a relevant excerpt from my journal, written on October 5, 1977:

I have just written my IGS homework, and then 1 1/2 hours of uninterrupted 'brainstorming' of childhood memories. I started writing down clues, fragments, scenes – anything that came to my head – just to get it down for future reference. No judgment, no thoughts about my parents, just my memories. What can I see? What did I do? Where & how did I play?  The memories are coming faster than I can write. My hand is cramped. One pen has run out of ink & I'm using up a 2nd!

Tears came as I wrote about the Delhi farm. I wish I could go back there. It is so special to have memories like that. Why do these places have to leave the family?  I am sad that my kids can't play there as I did. 

Locust Lawn is spoiled, cut by Rte 95.
My old yard is overgrown, changed.
The big old barn was demolished.
The woods were cut down.
Granddaddy's house and the playhouse are gone or sold.
Delhi is sold.
Pine Knoll burned. The land is for sale.
Kermit's house was moved.
The 1-room schoolhouse was torn down after my 1st grade.

I'm really crying by now. I have remembered these places so clearly tonight and feel the loss. 

What will my kids remember? I feel sad that they do not know the woods + fields + meadows + big old barns + old family houses I played in. 

Tonight –just for tonight– I wish the world had not changed. I want to go back & play in those streams along Nichols Street.

All but one of those losses were in Danvers.

"Delhi farm" refers to an old dairy farm in the Catskills of New York. My mother took us there at least once a year to revisit the places she had loved as a child, spending summers on her grandfather's farm, which his father (James MacDonald) had started in 1850. That property was sold in 1972 after the last of the MacDonald sisters died. End of an era. Memories and photos remain.

For Danvers memories, I created this blog in 2007, thinking that I  – as a"new" writer in a Senior Center's writing group –  was writing for the first time about my Danvers childhood.  Ha!  I hadn't remembered the pages and pages I'd scribbled in notebooks in 1977.

Epidemics

For the past month I've had much time to read and reflect about epidemics. The "novel" coronavirus spreading and affecting so many people today is new and shocking, but if you step back and look at history, there is some comfort in the fact that we humans have survived MANY previous epidemics.

An article published April 3 in the Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, MA), in a series titled "Readers' voices in the time of coronavirus," helped me gain this perspective. The author, Marcia Burick, describes her own experience getting polio during the polio epidemic that swept the country in the summers of 1951-1953.  Her article, Polio and the COVID-19 virus: Taking in personally, opens this way:

"There's never been anything like this before." Well, yes there has. The fear of serious illness, the randomness of it all, the mystery of why it happened, when will it ever end, will there be after effects? All this talk of ventilators and respirators, and the need to find more. For me, this triggered a memory from long ago, 66 years ago, in fact to September of 1953.

Oh, yes! In Danvers, in my childhood, polio was a scary subject. My parents were worried. Some of their friends were stricken. I especially remember one man who used to ski regularly with my parents, and then he was ill, and had to be in a wheelchair because of polio. I also remember lining up at school to get a "shot" - to be vaccinated against polio.

In my lifetime there have been several cycles of epidemics. The HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980's, when I worked at Stanford University, was devastating, killing some of my colleagues so quickly. It seemed we were going to memorial services every week. A big staff meeting was called to discuss how to stay safe, but so little (at that time) was known about the strange new illness that we were left with more questions than answers. Eventually HIV/AIDS became more understood and manageable. One of my favorite Stanford colleagues was able to survive many years after his diagnosis, and enjoy some time in retirement.

Here I sit, in retirement, sequestered at home and not knowing when or if I might become sick because of this new virus. On one level, it is scary. On another level, it is a peaceful time for reading, writing, walking with the dog, watching movies, and working on projects. I've become quite familiar with virtual meetings (via ZOOM, GoToMeeting, or other online tools), and I'm trying to be helpful to the community at large. This week, in my role as a board member of nonprofit Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts (FCAWM), I wrote a one-page document that we intend to distribute to front-line institutions (hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, etc.) to help them guide families who are dealing with deaths of loved ones. I've called it "Tips for consumers about funeral options during the Covid-19 pandemic." 

Maple Ice Cream

This week a review in my local newspaper compared various brands of maple-flavored ice cream. The reviewer, Elizabeth Román, sampled Friendly's, Hood, and Bart's ice creams. When she mentioned maple walnut, my mind filled with childhood memories.

Maple walnut was my father's favorite. He loved ice cream, especially maple walnut.

Maple walnut was NOT my favorite. My first encounter with it, as a very young girl, was upsetting.  After one bite, I rejected it, complaining to my parents that the ice cream "had BONES in it!"

That became a favorite family story, retold many times. I definitely preferred plain vanilla or other ice creams without surprises inside.

I agree with Elizabeth Román. As she praised Bart's ice cream, she wrote, "Can I just say it's refreshing to eat maple ice cream without walnuts in it. I have never been a big walnut fan and this ice cream does fine without them."  Yes!  Gradually I did accept other nuts in ice cream, but not walnuts. I didn't much like the slightly-bitter taste of walnuts.

She concludes her review with a suggestion that makes me smile, and think of Daddy again.

It occurred to me that you could also buy some really good quality vanilla ice cream and pour local maple syrup on it. That would probably be amazing, too.

Yes! Yes!  Daddy loved to do that!  And we had local maple syrup, made by Mommy as she boiled down the sap we collected from nearby maple trees.  See my earlier article (March 2008) about how we made maple syrup in Danvers.