Читать книгу AGREEMENTS: Lessons I Chose on My Journey toward the Light - Linda Stein-Luthke - Страница 9

When I was ten, I opened the well worn copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott that both my sisters had loved. Sandy is six years older and Bobbie is three years older. I loved to read the books they had read, (including Peyton Place!) but this book really changed my life.

Although my father made it clear that he’d have preferred that one of his offspring had been a son, he worked with the material that fate had dealt him and encouraged his daughters to use our minds. We were his “little women.” Our dinner time was filled with discussions about what my older sisters were learning in school. (As the youngest, I was relegated to active listener!) Daddy had never finished college because he had not wanted to take on the assigned role of an accountant in the family towel supply business. As the youngest of nine children of immigrant parents, he wasn’t given another choice. His family put an end to his tuition payments, and thus his academic aspirations.

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.