Women Over Fifty

I have a picture on my refrigerator (who doesn’t?).  This is a tiny picture taken when I was 10 or 11 years old.  I was tall for my age then, and I’m standing tall next to my Dad.  I loved my Dad and he had a lot to do with my childhood.

• He looked at me like I was a real person with lots of potential.
• I was his only daughter and he reminded me of that a lot
• He was a person of importance and a keeper of knowledge.
• He made me feel special

When it came to raising me, it was my mother who had did it.  I remember her working, cooking, taking care of my brothers and I.  I remember snuggling next to her and sleeping my way through the sermon at church. 

When it came to leaving a lasting impression, it was my Dad.  He took us on drives and picnics and to see the sights.  It was his way of relaxing - to be with his family.

Dad taught me to love the West and its wide-open spaces.  At the time, I was growing up in a row house in Philadelphia.  I had little knowledge of the West but for my Dad’s tales of how it was.  He’d grown up in Washington and Oregon.  He spent his summers with his Grandfather Helberg, a giant of a man who had homesteaded his farm on the Washington-Oregon border.  That farm was homesteaded in Oregon Territory.  It was just a quirk of latitude that caused the state line to divide that farm.

I grew up in a row house, which was a lot like a railroad flat in that the rooms were one behind the other.  Upstairs there was a hallway that led to all the bedrooms, but otherwise, they progressed one behind the other.

I went to Conwell Elementary School.  There was a traffic light on the corner and a policeman to help us cross when it was time for school.  My school yard was concrete.  I lived in a world of buildings built next to each other and up to the sidewalk. 

Our house was special in that it had a porch in the front and a little grass in front of that.  Dad really hated mowing that grass.  He used a hand mower, but the grass patch was so small, it was hard to maneuver the mower.  He used to joke that it would be easier to cut the grass with a pair of scissors.  That might inspire him to talk about living in the West, where fields stretched further than the eye could see.  He talked about riding horses and helping bring in the wheat and the hay.  It was hard to imagine.

Dad made it a point to take us to the green places of the city.  We visited Pennypack Park so many times we knew the features of each park area.  We loved to “swim” in the creek.  Mom and Dad would pack a picnic for us.  Dad would always remind us that in the West things were bigger and not so crowded. 

One summer we moved West.  After stopping in Ohio to visit with my mother’s parents (she had grown up in the house where they still lived) we took off for the West.  For the first time in my life, I was dressed in jeans and T shirts.  (Mother had always considered pants not ladylike enough for her daughter.)

We were used to leaving and arriving at our destination in one day.  Even to visit Ohio was only one long day of travel.  It was a long, long drive to the West.

I have spoken many times about Dad stopping the car one day when the three of us were being rambunctious.  Usually that meant we were going to be paddled and told to be quiet.  This time we stopped in the wide-open spaces.  I think we must have been so busy being annoyed with each other that we hadn’t been watching the change in scenery.  Dad made us face away from the car and scream.  When we did, there was no echo, and it was scary to me.  It was like I couldn’t hear my voice, or that it had been swallowed up.  It was then that I began to have a feel for the West and how it was.  Not long after that we saw our first real cowboy, riding a horse and all.

When we crossed the Rockies, my mother, who was a city girl at heart and never liked moving, became terrified at the steep drops only feet away from the road where our car traveled.  I think those mountains brought out all of her fears about living away from the city.  We children were struck silent as she alternately cried and laughed and begged my Dad to stop the car.  He must have stopped at some point and let her calm herself, but at the time she was begging to stop, there was nowhere to stop except in the traffic lane.

I suspect that there were a few comments from the back seat such as “Look, I can see all the way to the bottom.  It must be a mile deep.  Why isn’t there a guard rail here?”  Perhaps there being no stopping place also guaranteed our survival.  I remember a very angry Dad telling us to shut up.

Our family did move West and my mother adjusted as she always did.  For years she took the train to Ohio every now and then to visit her family.   We kids loved the West.  In our little town there wasn’t much to stop us from going here and there and all over the place.  We acquired bicycles and began to bicycle down the roads looking for shady creeks and broken basalt cliffs to play on.  The West meant we had a lot of freedom.

Marilynne 

Trackback URI | Comments RSS