Shestories

I remember the day  this picture was taken. I was dressed by one of my older sisters, and  left to play with a white kitten somewhere in the house till I was called into the den where the picture was to be taken. The photographer told me to lay my hand on my father’s knee, and I  remember my father taking my hand in his, my smiling over at him as he smiled at me.  But when I look at this picture now, what I remember most about that day is that  I did not have  a care in the whole wide world.

Thirty years later, I walked  the oak-shaded sidewalk in front of this house holding my four-year-old son’s hand.  We would head out from my mother’s house for the fifteen minute walk to Main Street, where we could get  a  bowl of Conrad’s home-made ice cream.  The sidewalks  which we followed to town were cracked and buckled,  not so much from age as from the huge roots of those oak trees.    My son would ask  for the same stories each visit.  About my best childhood friend who lived in the house across the street whose parents still live there. About  the people next door who knew my family before I was born, and still  live there.  About climbing trees that were big when I was little whose very  roots were now ripping up the sidewalk.  He would sigh and dream aloud to me about what it would be like to grow up in  such a place, where nobody moved, where Gram lived around the corner, where Aunt Reeny’s ear was a bike ride away, where cousins lived in the next town. And he would promise me and himself aloud, that when he grew up, he would raise his family in  a place just  like this.  A place with strong and deep roots.

That was  when I’d start to worry. A mother wants to give her children everything they wish for, especially aunts and uncles and cousins who love you unconditionally. But my life quite simply demanded that I be elsewhere, as it does for many  nuclear  families. At that point those oak trees seemed to come alive, like that scene in The Wizard of Oz,  telling me  in a deep oak-tree voice that I was making one big mistake.  Nature simply  did not intend for children to be raised like that.

It was soon after that walk ten years ago with my son that I began researching my family at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.  I was  equipped  with a binder that held blank pieces of paper, ready to write it all down, very neatly, so my son could read, once he learned how to read, our family tree.  Some family trees  are all neat and tidy.  I once knew a woman who had  a formal picture of both her and her husband’s parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents.  Each picture was a 5 x 7,  framed in the same style frame, and  hung in chronological order on the walls of the alcove leading to her dining room.

I  discovered that my family’s history is not a series of 5 x 7 pictures hung in chronological order, nor does it lend itself to one of those geneological maps which depict a family as one tree with one set of roots. My binder of blank paper grew into a collection of stories about journeys, both external journeys and internal. For example, my father made an external journey to Ireland in 1965 to unearth his roots.  Years before that, he had made an internal journey at a Paulist Noviatiate, which  he entered in 1929 with the intent of becoming a  priest.  I was with my father in 1965, and  I have vivid memories  of  Dad on his search for Irish roots. I was not with him at the Paulist Novitiate, but I have a collection of  letters he received while he was there from his family and friends, letters which my father  kept  until he died, and which somehow found their way to me. These stories, and others, are what eventually found their way into my binder.

We have all  made similar external and  internal journeys.  The stories of those who journeyed before me have enabled me to come to understand my ancestors as more than a name  listed on the census in the National Archives and my parents as much more than Mom and Dad. And their stories have enabled me to  understand  my own journeys of which there have been so many.  And in the end I realized that I have nothing to fear from those deep-rooted oak trees.

Arboretum: Part One

The Timber Trade Route: Ireland to Maine

On their own soil, the Irish had  learned to survive without much wood. The Saxons had raped the countryside of  its woods and groves centuries earlier. The people came to rely on  the surrounding  peat bogs for  the fuel they needed, and they built their cottages using mud and stone for the walls.  However,  a family had to have at least one wooden beam of support over their heads.   So rare were these beams that when families were being evicted from their homes in the early 1800′s, even the most miserly of landlords would allow the destitute family to carry this one beam of wood  away with them. This was, for some,  their only hope of ever having another roof over their heads.

For others, there was another  source of hope.   By 1830 every seaport village in the south and west of Ireland  harbored  vessels which set sail in the spring for the St. Lawrence Seaway. There was an abundance of wood along the banks of the St. Lawrence,  and the merchants who owned these vessels prospered from this trade route.  But a trade route works best if there is a two-way trade, and sending empty ships to the St. Lawrence to pick up timber did not make good business sense. So the merchants offered passage to  the maritime provinces  for  fifteen shillings, which was far cheaper than the four or five pounds charged  for passage  to New York. Furthermore, the merchants offered immediate employment upon their arrival, as the immigrants would be paid to help load the ship with her new cargo.   The merchants won through this arrangement; they now had cheap ballast for their empty ships and a guaranteed labor force on the other side. The Irish immigrants won in that they had cheap passage to a new world that offered more hope  than the bleak horizon in Ireland.

But this employment lasted only through the summer. Then the young Irishman who had come to this new world to make a life for himself had a decision to make.  He could go into the Canadian woods, clear  some land, and begin to farm it. This was  lonely and rough; rough he could handle, but the social instincts of the Irish do not lend themselves to  such a solitary life.   His other choice was to become a lumberman at one of the many lumber camps also back in the woods, where the workers would spend the winter harvesting the forests for the next spring’s shipment of timber. Here there was plenty of work for the men and  plenty of companionship  among the company houses  supplied by their employer for their now young families.

Helen Hamlin, in her book  Nine Mile Bridge, describes life in  a lumber camp. Employed as a  schoolteacher in the lumber camp called  Churchill,  she  recalls   such   settlements  as anything but  a romantic  log cabin colony under the shadows of great spruces.  The shores of the ghostly lake in Churchill were lined with dri-ki,  which were the bleached dead stumps of drowned trees. The houses in the settlement were identical -  one and a half story company houses that had once, a long time ago,  been painted white.  There were few log cabins in the camp,  a couple of  woodsheds, outhouses, and pigsties.  The boarding house for the bachelors was a long barracks-like building.

On a Sunday afternoon late in the fall, Hamlin relates that one of these settlements would be quiet.  Doors would be let open to let in the late fall sunshine. Children would be playing outside – hopskotch and skipping rope.  Boys would be in the mud pond on log rafts, falling in and climbing back up again.  Men would stand around in small groups talking. some in suits and some in their lumberjack attire. Women would stand in the open doorways with their arms crossed under their aprons. On weekdays   Churchill was a droning beehive – sleds being loaded for the faraway camps, the sawmill in full-buzzing swing, the air fragrant with freshly-sawed pine and spruce.  Hammers pounded all day as the blacksmith repaired logging chains and made new sleds in preparation for the winter which was to come.

The long-timers in these camps in the maritime provinces were French Canadian. They spoke French. And if you didn’t speak French, you did not want to stay on too long as a lumberjack in the Maritime Provinces.  Stories came back to the camps of others who had left for the States, where  people spoke English, there was plenty of work , and the wages were high. So  the young Irishman would work  as a lumberjack  until enough money had been saved to start the journey south.  No ships were sailing south. There was only one way to get there, and that would be to walk.

Bernard Mclaughlin was one of these young men  who had left Ireland during the potato famine.  He left the ship he had come over on, and went to St. John, in Canada, where he met Mary Dulaharty, also an immigrant, but from Spain.  They were married in St. John on August 16, 1825.   Thousands of  immigrants, mostly Irish,  followed the coast of New Brunswick to Maine and continued along the trails and roads into New England. The McLaughlins followed the St. John River, and then up the Aroostook River, until they stopped at a logging camp in Aroostook County, Maine.  Land this far north  had only become part of the United States in 1838.

In 1840,  Barney was 42 years old, and his wife, Mary, was 41years old.  They now had six children, one daughter and five sons, since their marriage fifteen years ago in St.John, Canada.     One can only imagine walking those riverside trails with your children in tow,  looking for a good place to settle down.  The McLaughlins would have heard stories about homesteaders in the West, who were given land to farm. Appealing to some immigrants, but not so much to the Irish, according to  Marcus Hansen in his book on immigrants  during this time period.  The Irishman’s love of land was only equaled by his love of  company. Tales of the prairies with distances without end, villages without a social life, and no churches of his faith compelled them to settle  in New England.

So, somewhere between 1830 and 1840 ,  Barney McLaughlin and his family stopped walking and  made a home out of a company house in Plymouth Grant, a logging community in Aroostook County, Maine.   John Dorsey, another Irishman, was a local who was living near a place called Fort Fairfield, which was in the same vicinity as the logging community. John and his wife, Mary, were   about the same age as Barney and Mary, and they also had a large family – three sons and two daughters.  In 1840, the census-taker came into Plymouth Grant. The  locals from the Fort Fairfield area as well as the lumberjacks formed a line to sign on with the census.. Only five men stood in line between John  Dorsey, a local landowner,  and Barney McLaughlin, a lumberjack.

Barney McLaughlin stayed at the  lumber camp until  1843, when the area north of the Fort Fairfield area,  which would come to be called Limestone, was opened for settlement.  Barney was able to buy lots at $1.25 per acre, 50 cents of which was to paid in money, and the remainder by road labor.  Barney took land at what would later come to be known “Four Corners”. Thier only neighbor, Andrew Phair, was about two miles away on the land he had purchased.

A survey of Limestone done by Rowe and Colby of Philadelphia in  1877 shows a great amount of  activity in the area over the course of those  thirty years.  “Four Corners” is shown as the intersection of  Caribou Road and Fort Fairfield Road.  If you were to walk down the Fort Fairfield Road from the Caribou Road, you would have passed  four farmhouses  each of which held one of the now deceased Barney’s son’s families.   James McLaughlin might have been sitting on his front porch, and he would have explained that he lived in his own  house here behind him, with his wife Bridget, and their  five children, all under the age of 10.  He could have pointed out his brother John’s house,  two doors down, where his brother  lived with his wife Katherine. Across the street were two more brothers, George, who was 25, and Barney, who was 26. Between those two brothers there were four more young children, all under the age of 10.  Then, he most likely would have pointed out a large parcel of land, and told you that it belongs to his sister, Catherine: this is the only lot on the survey map which is owned by a woman in 1877.

The census of 1880 shows these  four families still  living on the same road,  the four brothers now in their forties and late thirties, and their children  coming of age.  Catherine’s lot of land is now where she lives with her brother George; the census suggests that his wife Margaret has died, leaving him 8 children to raise with his sister’s help. Next door is his brother Barney and his sister-in-law Susan, who are raising their  7 children.  James is still across the street, with his wife Bridget, and their four children. Their oldest daughter, Ellen, is now living across the road with Barney and Susan to help with their family.  Next door to James is John McLaughlin and his wife Katherine; they still  have no children.

If you were to walk down the Fort Fairfield Road from the Caribou Road twenty years later in 1900,  the first house on your right would still be George Mclaughlin’s place.  Catherine, known by the children as Aunt Kit,  has since left the farm; apparently she  died on her way to California with a parson’s family.  She would have been in her late thirties. Most of  George’s children are gone, but for  his sons, George who is 24 , Michael 21,  and a daughter,  Catherine 22.  George Jr.  might explain to you that next door lives his Uncle Barney, who is now 65.  George might also explain to you that his Uncle Barney was named after his father, George’s  grandfather, who was one of the first settlers of Limestone. George might go on to tell you that he works  his father’s potato farm with his brother Mike. He would most likely tell you that the McLaughlin family has always farmed potatoes in Limestone.

In the fall of 1905,   George McLaughlin Jr. – now 29 – saw an attractive young woman sitting on the front porch of the house across the road  from his. Limestone was  a small town, and George knew that the new school  teacher who was from Fort Fairfield was boarding at his neighbor’s place.  George  walked across the road and introduced himself to this attractive young schoolteacher, Susie Dorsey. The next spring,  Barney’s grandson, George,  married John Dorsey’s great-granddaughter, Susie.

In 1900, Susie Dorsey had been a sixteen year-old girl living  in Fort Fairfield, Maine.   Her grandparents, Edward and  Hannah, had raised seven children in Fort Fairfield.  Susie had  four uncles and two aunts in the small town. Uncle Edward was the town’s stable keeper,  while her other uncles were farmers like her own father. All except for Uncle Miles, who  listed his occupation as “capitalist” in the 1900 census: he was the only capitalist in  a community whose members listed themselves as farmer, farm laborer, day laborer, servant, livery stable keeper, and town physician.  Susie Dorsey had 22 cousins in the small town of Fort Fairfield, who were between the ages of 6 and 20.  She could hardly walk through town without bumping into one of them. And the Dorseys held their heads just a little higher on the muddy main street of Fort Fairfield, or so the story goes, because of yet another story.

Susie’s great grandfather, John Dorsey.  had come to this part of Maine around 1825.  The story  is that he emigrated from Ireland to England  to work as a groom on the estate of  some English lord. The lord’s lady, Lady Anne, fell deeply in love with this handsome sweet-talking groom, and they ran away together to the new world.   Edward Dorsey, a descendant of this family line, wrote  in 1977:

“John and Lady Ann Richardson Dorsey were of the first generation and settled at the mouth of Johnston’s Brook around 1820. By the way, John was  a stablehand and groom, and from the information furnished by my late Dad, was quite a Ladie’s man. He was born in Westmeath County, Ireland and went to England where he was employed as a Groom for a family of nobility by the name of Richardson. He left hastily and secretly with the wife of Lord Richardson and came to Canada by boat and  then settled in Fort Fairfield in 1820.

John did emigrate to England  from Ireland, where he was born some time between 1790 and 1795.  After serving as a private in the British Service until he was in his thirties,    he received  a military land grant, which was lot 107 near Andover, Maine.   He did well there, for in 1840 he received another land grant closer to Fort Fairfield, which then became known as the Dorsey Road area. This was the same year he registered with the census at the logging community known as Plymouth Grant. Another document states that his wife, Mary Ann Richardson, was born in  Condyle City (sp) in 1795 .

She was married before she met John Dorsey, and she had a son by her first marriage. This boy’s name was Robert, and Mary Anne Richardson brought Robert with her when she left England with John Dorsey.  Robert was raised as John’s son, and  eventually Robert married into another Fort Fairfield family.  If Robert was the oldest son of an English Lord, he could have returned to England to claim his inheritance. But he did not.

This all  leaves considerable doubt about the Lady Ann Richardson story – charming as it is.  Why such stories exist gives an insight to our country  in the last quarter of the  twentieth century At that time there were happy diplomatic relations between the U.S. and England – so happy that the U.S. looked abroad for its standards, and England  stood out as the best role model.  This was most conspicuous in the cities where the daily press made a feature of English society news. However,  this preoccupation with things from England reached far into our countryside.  Knut Hamsun, a Norwegian novelist, was a self-proclaimed judge of artistic and cultural matters in the small Wisconsin village where he lived.  However, he understood that his opinion counted for naught if an Englishman were present.   The English newcomer  established usages of tone  through out society in the second half of that century.  Perhaps  Mary Ann, having been born in England, served such a function in the small community of Fort Fairfield, thus dubbing her Lady Ann.  Susie Dorsey, her great-granddaughter,  left Fort Fairfield  when she was 21 to teach  in a one-room schoolhouse in Limestone where half of her students spoke English and  half of her students spoke French.

The census of 1910 shows George and Susie McLaughlin  living in Limestone with one servant, Iva Seger, and one day

laborer, Henry Fischer.  George’s Uncle William and Uncle Barney are still living on their farms, and two cousins,

William and Henry, are also running their own farms and raising a large brood of children. By 1920, George and Susie

have two young daughters, Eva and Bessie.  In 1929 Bessie joined her older sister Eva in New York

City, where the two young women  attended The College of Mount Saint Vincent.  One day during her sophomore year

Bessie was walking towards Seton Hall, her dorm, when she saw two of her classmates, Anne and Helen O’Dea.  Twin

sisters, they were standing  near the doorway talking with a young  man.  I am not sure who asked for the introduction:.

I do know  that Bessie  was introduced to the twin’s brother, Arthur.  They dated, fell in love, married and had seven

children in this order: Anna, Elizabeth, Arthur, Thomas, Maureen, Joseph, and me, whom my

mother named Susan Dorsey.

Arboretum continues on July 15.

I was sitting at the kitchen table of an Irish bungalow situated on the back street of a small Irish town when my father’s voice, reciting “Tree” by Joyce Kilmer, came on over the radio.  His translation of the poem into Irish had recently appeared in the local newspaper, and Radio Eire had subsequently invited him to their Sunday afternoon broadcast.  I  sat and listened with the Irish family with whom I was spending the weekend. We were all in the kitchen reading the Sunday papers, but the room suddenly stood still listening to what  must have been a most unusual sound  – Irish spoken with an American accent.  Not sure at all what the response would be  – was my father making a fool of himself here ? – I was greatly relieved when he ended  and Carmel, 16 at the time, turned to me and said “Ah sure, Susan, your father’s a great man.”

In 1920,  Arthur O’Dea  was a freshman at Park High School on Park Avenue in Rutherford, New Jersey.  He was an avid fan  of  his high school  football team. The 1920 Football Schedule was the compliments of Wallach Brothers,  a mens’ haberdashery on Broadway in New York City.  Written over Compliments of Wallach Bros. is Property of Art O’Dea. That would be my father’s writing, when he was just  boy of fifteen. When you open the football schedule, which is  a cardboard card  measuring 5″ x 4″, there is  a list of the dates and the opposing teams for that season. Dad  wrote Skedyouell at the top of this list.  He also wrote in the score for each game. Rutherford had a winning season that year, 10 and 0, according to the  totals he wrote in at the bottom of the Skedyouell.  However, there was a tie on November 20 between Chattle High School and Rutherford at Rutherford (7-7). He also rewrote Property of Arthur O’Dea on the  very bottom of  his Skedyouell.

On the opposite page  is the list of players, starting  with the team captain, and listing the varsity squad.  My father  had some  fifteen-year-old fun with these names. just as he did with the word schedule. The Manager is listed as D. Keep. Next to  Keep’s name Dad has inked your mouth shut.  A member of the varsity squad is listed as F. Lightfoot. Dad has inked in heavy hand.  R. Thorne is followed by  brier, C. Kiel by rudder, and E. Luke by warm.   Some of the varsity players have an asterisk next to their names, and it is noted at the end of this list that this marks the Letter Men. Dad has crossed out Men and inked in children.

In 1924 Dad was a senior in high school and he ran track. The  Official Program from the Sixth Annual Championship Track and Field Meet of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association says that this track meet was held in Palmer Stadium at Princeton University on Saturday, June 7, 1924 from 10:30 – 2:00.  Dad ran  as  number 3 in the 100 Yard Dash Class A High Schools, and the 220 Yard Dash in the Class A High Schools.  He received a medal for his performance in the 100 yard dash.  My father started New York University in the fall of  that year, and he was  living at the Zeta Psi House in University Heights.  His high school friend,  “Bres” ,  was  living in Brownson Hall at the University of Notre Dame, and wrote the following letter  to his former high school buddy.

October 23, 1924.

Dear Art,

John informs me that you think I owe you a letter. I’ll favor you with a little news.

Well, the football startled the East by beating the Army. They will meet a worthy opponent in Princeton, but will come out on top.  How did you like the playing of our captain on Saturday? He has certainly landed a place in football history.  NYU is having a a hard time according to the latest scores. They are not as you thought.

You seem to be taking every subject in college. John wants to know if you are taking sewing while Clate would also like to know if they show you how to push the carriage. 25 hours a week must be pretty hard. We are only taking eighteen hours. the quarter exams come in a couple  of weeks. Latin and Biology will give us the most trouble.

I suppose you take your daily beating from the sophs. Well, this is a real school! We have our fun without some one giving it to you. Hogan says that if you bring any more of these sad stories to his ears, he will disgrace you in  public by calling you a liar. John has developed into a hard nut, so hard that he claims he will beat a guy who calls him by his new name.

John feels that it in only right in dissolving the law firm of Weinberger and Falvinavo for the simple reason that his partner is lost in the eternal clutches of the women at St. Lawrence University in the wilds of New York State. So you see, his new name is both fitting and proper.

Now it is your turn to write; and don’t wait a couple   of weeks and then say I have not written you.

I will close now as the stuff that they call food is waiting to be devoured.

Your friend, Bres.

Two years later, in the fall of 1926,   Dad received the following letter from his Zeta Psi fraternity brother, John G. MacKnight.

Sunday. September 10, 1926

My dear Art,

I have your letter and I must confess that it leaves me puzzled. From the letterhead of the Paulist Novitiate and from your inquiry as to your standing in the fraternity, I was inclined to think that you were contemplating entering the priesthood. As this is a very serious step for anyone to take, I was wondering whether or not you had this in mind. I wish you would  tell me if such is your decision and let me know what your plans are.

I was extremely sorry to hear that you were not coming to New York to finish up this year, but after all you are the one who must decide on his future.

Best wishes from all of the brothers at the Phi.

Fraternally yours,

John  G. MacKnight

During his first three months at the Paulist  Novitiate in Oak Ridge, New Jersey, his father would drive the family to visit  him on the weekends. The following letter suggests that  sometime in November he wrote to his mother that the family should be preparing for Christmas in some way during the season of advent.

November 30, 1926

My dear Son,

When I awoke at 6:30 this morning I was so happy in the the thought that my child, my little boy, had already served at a mass for my dear mother. The mass here was at 7:30 and we were all present.

I am sure you would like to hear about my wonderful retreat.  Mother Lynch was my mother and we became great friends. She  is the dearest loveliest woman and was extremely kind to me. I think she assigned me the best rooms and I surely appreciated it.  I told her that perhaps she  thought I was old and decrepit and need a few luxuries in my old age.  She also said I needed no introduction as she knew I was your  mother the minute she laid eyes on me. Who shall take the compliment, you or I?  I could never begin to tell you in a letter all that I think of dear Father O’Keefe. His conferences were a joy never to be forgotten. When I see you I will try  to tell you about them.

In your letter you made the remark that you thought that I should prepare the family during the season of advent for the coming of our lord. Well, I had that very thought and am going to begin by including you. As a good means for this purpose I have asked the family to stay home from Oak Ridge until Christmas Day and all have consented although it will be a hard sacrifice for Helen and Anne. It will be a family  mortification and I hope it will be of great benefit to all.

Dad is as busy as he can be u p on the third floor. As usual he had a few surprises for me when I returned from the retreat. He has an old tin waste basket that was in the cellar for ages painted a vivid green  beside his desk. He also  received the Duraut radiator cover for the Packard (imagine my feelings).  He was so proud of  his artcraft. I am going to mail this on my way to pay the taxes a job which every good citizen make believe they are proud to do. Grandma O’Dea will be so happy to hear form you and I am sure it will make her understand a little better.  I will now close with love from all and may God bless you and keep you.

Lovingly, Mother

On February 8 of the following year, 1927, she writes:

Dear Arthur,

Tuesday is the day of the week in this house for me to look for your letter. When Helen and Nan arrive at home the first question is “did Arthur write?’ and there is a scramble to see who will get it first.  Your letter today was unusually interesting and I quite agree with you that  every    church in the land should have a Paulist book rack.  But my dear boy don’t ask me to approach Father Smith on this subject for I am almost certain he would not do it.  However, if I have the opportunity to suggest it,, I won’t let it pass. Father smith never refused me anything I asked of him, but I am always careful to study him well first.

And so you did see the tracks (of our car) in the ice out where we skidded.  It was well Larry was aware of the situation and got the car out very easily. I started to walk down the hill but changed my mind for I thought I might better roll down in the car than on my head. Dad is working hard to get away tonight, I don’t know just where and I don’t think he does either. He wrote to Mr Wilkins about the matter and I hope all will be stilled and rid  this controversy.

March 3, 1927

Dear Arthur,

I bought the life of Father Doyle and  have read some of it. My usually was you know and last night I started it in earnest and have read about half of the preface. Helen and Nan  would devour it if they got hold of it, but I was wondering if I should allow them to read it Don’t you think they are too young?

March 31, 1927

My dear son,

A year ago today if you  remember you started for Washington and I shall never forget how happy it made us all to see you start.  Usually I worried  a little more or less whenever you took a trip, but not on that occasion for I knew you were in a holy place. And when you came home,  I read your eyes as   usual and then I knew.  I am sure you often wonder if we miss you and while I never say that we do, you may be sure that there are many lonely  hours, especially the evenings. We are getting used to it now, and offer it all up and thank God for his goodness to us.

Dad  is in Buffalo this week giving several talks on the revision of the regulations. I am enclosing a picture of Bishop O’Dea that I discovered in the NCNC paper and while I don’t know if he is a relation I think it is nice to know there is some one making the name so exalted in the church.

I was wondering if you didn’t need socks or a tie and if so , may  I bring them to you on Easter Sunday? Also ask Father Skinner if he will allow us to pay your dentist bill and if we use that blank check  that you have or is you have destroyed it  I will send you another. Dad and I would be happy to send money for you necessities if  permitted, so let me know.

April 26, 1927

My dear son,

Your letter arrived early this morning and so Helen and Nan read it before they left for school. Needless to say the contents delighted them, particularly the fact the you are going to try to preach. If they could only “listen in” We will all be praying for you and all the other novices that the Holy Ghost may inspire you to do very well.

Uncle Ben was unable to visit you last week as he had been very busy and half sick too. He had a very trying case at the hospital and after every means known was used, the young man died. He was only twenty-four and Ben was all broken up over it.  He and Bub are going to Buck Hill Falls over the weekend  for a rest and he needs it. he looks miserable.

The Easter collection here amounted to $2283 and the proceeds form the Passion play the week before was $1000/ I though you might like to know how well we are doing.  The collection East Rutherford was around $1400,a and in Hasbrouck Heights $750.

May 5, 1927

My dear son,

We reached home Sunday at 7:45 as the traffic was heavy through  Mountain View, and Dad had a sour experience. We were all very tired and went to bed early. It is  quite warm here today and every one you see passing  seems to act lazy and tired. Even the children are dragging their feet. Spring fever is catching.

The Ford was towed out of ht yard yesterday for which I am thankful and I never want see another piece of such art ion my premises.  Mr.  brown was here yesterday and he is thinking that he may buy a nother car if he can find a good second hand one, and if he only would their place would look respectable again.

There remains but one letter from his father dated March 9, 1927. The letterhead reads “Hotel Woodruff, Watertown, New York.”

Dear Son Arthur,

A few lines which I presume will surprise you coming  from this place which you will remember so well as our stopping place for the night of August 26. The next day  you will recall from your tiresome ordeal in the part you occupied as chauffeur over the long strange roads to Montreal. There are of course many places and instances the trip brings back to our memory which on the whole was  wonderful for us.

I was home yesterday when your letter arrived. All were glad that you are keeping well and happy and  thus far find no hardships with the Lenten requirements assigned to Romans. It is a welcome period for the Catholic butcher, but as I have had to confine myself to slight  ration more or less for some time I do not find it hard to refrain from the forbidden eats.

I was at Oswego today arrived here this evening,  will go to Sackett Harbor in A.M. and possibly spend balance of week at Watertown.  We had some rain Sunday and remained home all day after Mass except  for an auto ride of 40 minutes in the late afternoon. The radio still offers excellent entertainment at home any evening and on Sunday afternoon.

All are well and filling their usual routine duties, the girls at school, music, etc, your mother with the housework, meals. NY. shopping and occasional town visit. All the other rattled families are well and apparently prosperous of late indicated by new vehicles, house improvement, etc.

My business trips  of the usual touring order, hard to tell when or where I am going next. Fortunately I have not had a call from headquarters to go anywhere, so my itinerary has been left to my own promiscuous selections. It  is well that I have district confines or I might have strayed and been lost in Yellowstone Park or other district quarters worthy of my inspection.

We have visited the novitiate so regularly we will all miss the  trip during the lenten period. I believe your mother and the girls have consoled themselves to is as a Lenten sacrifice.  Of course it deprives me of  considerable practice  necessary to acquire the title of efficient auto pilot – but so long as the mechanism of the chariot behaves itself, I am well satisfied not to exert it.

Trusting that you will remain in good health and be happy and successful with your work, I am as ever,

Your loving father,

D.J.O’Dea

In the summer of 1928, my father went to Haiti with Father Lynahan, another Paulist and friend of the O’Dea family. However, sometime in the next year after his return, my father left the  Paulist Novitiate with three of his Novitiate friends. Together they pooled their money and bought a car and drove to California and back to celebrate their decision. In January of 1931 he received a letter from a Novitiate buddy  who  was now the assistant sacristan at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park California.

Dear Art,

I was sure glad to  receive your letter Art and I  am sure you know that this delay in replying does not indicate anything to the contrary. Although you would like to do a lot of moaning about it if you could get hold of me. You still kill the women, you big virile brute, and one cannot blame the  poor damsels for finding a weakness in you as I have often told you before. Your real future lies in Hollywood but I know you. You hate to leave the home talent to despair to satisfy merely popular demand. I was just wondering whether you are laughing or  whether it is down on the table. Sure wish I was there to see you, but please let me know as I know you will in might strong language. All kidding aside I appreciate your telling me about that little affair  and I wish I had seen the girl. But now I know there is another, s o write and tell me about her.  Remember when we used  to talk those things and many others over…There is much more I would like to say but I must bring this letter to a close. By the way, if you still have the negatives of some of those pictures we took on the trip, I would like to have them, especially the one with the indian, and those around the lake, and that one of myself in your back yard.  I have an album now, so please enclose a snapshot of yourself.

In early February  of 1931 my father received a letter from one of his novitiate buddies who was now in Rome.

Dear Arthur,

Well, as I’ve already agreed, our class is certainly well scattered with three of them here; Paul Ward and Bob Murphy ordained and doing priestly work; you  (to be?)a lawyer; Gavigan a professor; Cyril Barker a happy, married man and a father; Brenne far away in California still studying and not far from the priesthood; Slattery off somewhere doing business; Dever on the verge of getting married, happily I hope; Burke is still at St. Mary’s in Baltimore, and not far from ordination. Gosh who would have believed that the class of 1926 would have dispersed so far and wide! I often wonder back to those days and like to think about them. I can still picture you in your cassock and sash and birretta – you of the rosy red cheeks. Well, God is good and if we only be faithful we shall all meet again.

In June of 1932 he completed law school at New York University. In the same month, he received the following letter  from Father Skinner;

Dear Arthur,

Accept my congratulations on your graduation. You are finishing at a time when the country needs men of  sound principles and courage. I trust you will do your share towards the upholding of Christian standards in the troubled world.

May God bless  you

Yours sincerely in Christ,

Robert Skinner

My father always had a large black crucifix hung over his bed, and I remember being told that it had come  from the seminary days.  I also remember seeing  a small stamp sized picture of Christ kneeling in prayer in a garden. It was  a brown sketch on a white background.  It was held around his neck not by a chain but by two white narrow ribbons, almost like flat cords: from the left corner of the stamp sized picture a cord went to his back where another stamp sized picture was held. Another cord ran from the right corner on the from to the right corner on the back. This was also from    his seminary days…and it intrigued me. The cord was yellowed with age, and I sensed my mother did not have much time for it, or perhaps she would have washed it for him. As a  child, I thought he must have been torn between these two worlds if he still hung onto stuff like that. My mother had a such a strong distaste for the dogmatic side of Catholicism that I was suspicous, at times, that this is what my parents had fought about when they were dating during my mother’s junior year of college.  Because of this disagreement, my mother had packed her bags, put on her beaver coat, and returned to her parent’s potato farm  in Limestone.   What my father then did is perhaps best explained in the following letter  from Gene Meade, a former novitiate buddy who was now at the Apostolic Mission  House in Brookland Station in Washington.D.C.

November 27, 1932

Dear Arthur,

I received your card from “nowhere” in Maine.  When I first looked at the card I thought you were in Ireland. I read Limerick instead of Limestone. HaHa.  Anyhow I hope you got your fill of “pomme de terres” up in Maine. Why did you go  up there? Deer hunting, I suppose. Well, Arthur, I am anxious to know how  the bar exam came out. I hope and pray OK.  I heard part of the Army Notre Dame game yesterday. Did you see it? What do you  think of the election? Why not come down here for the Inauguration? Joe Tray is in Rome, so only Kenny, Barker, and I are left of the old guard. Remember me to all. Let me hear from you soon. I ask your good prayer.

Yours, Gene Meade

Arthur O’Dea and Bessie McLaughlin were married in Limestone, Maine on June 14, 1933.

Arboretum continues on July 30.

My first trip to Ireland was in 1965. I was 11 years old and traveling with Dad, as Mom had stayed home to help prepare for my sister’s  wedding, which would occur  less than a week after our return to the States. I was not aware at the time that I was accompanying my father on a mission from God. Dad was going to Ireland to find his roots.  In January, he had written the following letter to  Mr. Carthy  of  Loughrea,  a town situated in  southwest County Galway.

January 19, 1965

My dear Mr. Carthy:

In New York City last night I met a young lady from Loughrea who so kindly referred me to you in my quest to find any relatives  I may have in Loughrea. My maternal grandmother, Anne Mullen, was  born in Loughrea about the year 1845. She was apparently of  a fine family in Loughrea who were reluctant to her marriage with my maternal grandfather , Thomas Willis of Woodford.  My grandfather was probably  of a poorer farm family than my grandmother. During this courtship he would walk from Woodford to Loughrea barefoot carrying his shoes under his arms, putting them on at Loughrea to take my grandmother to a dance and then taking them off and carrying them home to Woodford barefoot, to save them from wearing out. My grandmother, Anne Mullen and grandfather  Thomas Willis eloped, married, and came to the United States about 1870. My grandfather’s mother gave him a red heifer to take to the fair and sell for himself. It was with this money he was able to get married.

At the turn of the century my grandparents returned to Galway for a visit and both met their old friends and relatives. They had with them their youngest son, Benedict Patrick  Willis, then about 12 years of age.     My grandmother Anne Mullen of Loughrea must have had brothers and sisters whose grandchildren would be living in Loughrea. Likewise, my grandfather Tom Willis of Woodford must have brothers or sisters whose grandchildren would be living in Woodford today.

I plan to come to Galway soon to  find my relatives – the Mullens of Loughrea  or the Willises of Woodford. When I do I hope to have  the pleasure of your assistance. Perhaps in the meantime you may know some of these people who would be interested enough to help me find such relatives in advance.

I trust I am not imposing on your time with this lengthy letter or your kindness in seeking such personal assistance. Be assured if it is any trouble I do not expect you to go out of your way for a stranger.

Thanking you in anticipation  of helpful information you may find available, I am,

Cordially yours,

AJO:rht

My father sent this letter from his chambers at the Bergen County Court House in Hackensack, New Jersey.  My guess is that Mr. Carthy might have filed such a letter away, as the Irish are inclined to set things aside for a while. However, the letterhead on my father’s stationary  told Mr. Carthy an American judge was asking for his assistance. His rather quick reply  only furthers this  theory of mine.

January 26, 1965

Dear Judge O’Dea,

I am having enquiries made here in Loughrea in an effort to trace the relatives of your maternal grandmother, Anne Mullen, and a friend of mine, Councillor Franks Mullins, Woodford, is having the records examined in  Woodford. When our enquiries have been completed, I shall get in touch with you again and let you have whatever information we  happen to come across.

Incidentally, as far as I know there is no “native” Mullen family in the Loughrea area today, and the surname Willis is non-existant in the Woodford area, according to Councillor Mullins. Councillor Mullins told me that there were two families of that name living in Bolag, Woodford about fifty years ago.

To satisfy my curiosity, you might wet me know the name and address of the lady  who told you to write to me.  I was in the U.S. last October for a holiday and met many people from Loughrea while I was over there. Two of my sisters live in New York where I also have many relatives.

With very best wishes,

I remain,

Yours sincerely,

I can remember what seemed like endless forays that summer into small, quiet towns and villages and out into  the country following the trail to the Mullen and Willis  relatives. This   finally ended at a  small cement bungalow built very near the edge of a country road in Bolag, an area just outside of Woodford. An elderly woman lived there  with her two college-aged sons,  who were not in college but worked “the farm.”  These  young men eyed  us and seemed  slightly amused.  Then we followed this woman around back and across a rock-strewn field, splattered with cow and sheep dung, to a cluster of low shrubs, within which there were the meager remains of an old brick fireplace. Of course, this was the fireplace that my father’s ancestors had left when they emigrated to America. Pictures were taken,  we got back into our car, and I never saw this woman  nor her  sons, our Irish relatives, again.

My recollection of this event is that it was awkward. Dad had finally found something

to give him closure on his quest, but in actual fact he had very little to say to these people and

they to him.  The ride back to the thatched cottage,  which  he had rented for the three week

visit,  must have been  tough on Dad.  At 11 years of age,  I was  oblivious to  the feelings he

surely was trying to sort out.

About a week later we took yet another  ride  south into County Clare  to see  a castle  which was, supposedly,  the O’Dea castle. Dad had strategically switched  his search to the paternal side. This quest was getting old for me, and I think I had reached a point where I was not really buying into this search any more.  But Dad was determined to have one more go at it. There were no  road markers to the castle. I recall stopping  along the road and asking farmers in their fields  and women riding  their bikes how to get to the O’Dea castle, and going down one-lane farm roads splattered with the remnants of the  herd of cows which had gone before us.  Just when I wanted to suggest we turn around, since I thought we were lost  again,  we spotted the ruins of a castle in the middle of a field where sheep were  quietly grazing.

The castle was a rectangular-shaped structure which stood about eighty feet in the air.  There appeared  to be randomly placed windows on three sides. The fourth side was falling down in ruin.  The entrance was boarded up, so that no one could enter.  We walked its circumference once or twice, and I walked away and took a  picture of my father standing before it, with his hands planted on  his waist and a cigar  planted in his mouth,  looking up at the O’Dea castle. I think this moment  was the closest my father ever got to  finding his rightful roots.  We had no other information about this castle other than that this place was called Dysert O’Dea.

I recently returned from a three week visit to  Ireland, thirty years after that first visit with my father. On the day I visited Dysert O’Dea, my seventeen-year-old son was with me.  As I drove along the same narrow lanes I had travelled with my father, I asked him to read the signposts for me since I had lost my glasses the first week in Ireland.  I could sense the same unease  from my son that I remembered when traveling those  same narrow roads with my father.  But in those thirty years there had been one change. There were signposts to Dysert O’Dea , which  was now billed as the  “Clare Archeology Centre.”   I was  curious as to  what was going on there now.

Mr. John O’Day, an American from Wisconsin, bought the ruin in 1970 and with the help of a person named Risteard Ua Croinen restored it.  The castle was then opened to the public and  houses both the history of the O’Dea clan side by side with archeological  artifacts from the surrounding countryside.  Walking through the restored rooms of the castle, I learned   the history of the castle and the O’Dea’s who lived there.

The castle was built between 1470 and 1490 by Diarmuid O’Dea.  One of those randomly placed windows I had noticed over thirty years ago was actually a murder hole. The O’Dea clan used the murderhole  over the front doorway to  discourage unwanted guests by pouring hot tar  on them as they approached the doorway. In 1570 the Earl of Ormond took the castle from the O’Dea’s by force, but by 1584 it was back  in the  hands of  the family.  Conor O’Dea  fought the Protestant Bishop of Kildare for the castle,  and Conor fought for the place again during the reign of Charles II. Conor’s sons, Michael and James, supported James II, and through this,   lost their claims to the castle.  At  that time the Synge family took over the lands and the castle gradually fell into ruins. Mr. O’Day purchased the ruin from the Synge family.

The  tour of the castle includes a video which  explains in detail the battle of Dysert O’Dea on May 10, in 1318.  Richard De Clare marched his army of 600 horses and 2000 foot soldiers toward the Dysert O’Dea, the O’Dea clan being, at the time, one of the most powerful clans in County Clare.  De Clare divided his army into three  parts – the third of which was to attack O’Dea’s stronghold.    At Macken’s Bridge, which crosses a small stream near the castle,  the O’Dea’s pretended to retreat over the ford and De Clare’s army  rushed across  after them, cutting themselves off  from the main army. The O’Dea men,  who lay waiting in ambush, then attacked and killed De Clare before he could be rescued by his own men.  Conor O’Dea, the video states, used his own ax on De Clare. For the following two centuries County Clare remained free of English domination.

The  restored castle is still bordered by fields populated by  sheep and cows. However, a  marked  history trail   circles  the grounds,  and  guides you to  the 11th century roundtower as well as St. Tola’s Church, which is the resting place of Joan O’Dea, wife of Michael O’Dea , who was the last chieftain of his clan.  I also saw St. Tola’s High Cross , a remarkable Celtic cross,   numerous stone forts dating  from the first millennium a.d., and    Tobar Oireachta, which is  a sacred spring well.  As I walked around the grounds, my son went off with his camera and every once in a while our paths met. He seemed immersed in the process of taking pictures of what he found interesting.

My thoughts on the road as we left Dysert O’Dea were of my father, and how  much this would have meant to him back in 1965.  I know his  Irish-American heart would have  beat a little harder when the video got to the part about Conor O’Dea driving the English away.  Dad would have read every word about the place and walked every inch of the landscape, explained in detail in the walking tour of the grounds. Finally,  Dad would have been able to  read the Latin inscription over Joan O’Dea’s tombstone, which states: “Death comes to all without regard for station, weak and strong all come to the funeral pyre of death.”

When my father did not link with  his Irish relations in that small cement cottage in Bolag, he did not give up. He hired a tutor so that he could  study the Irish language, and he learned all that he could about  Irish art and Irish history. Over the next ten years,  he would travel to Ireland every summer to study more, and  during the academic year back in the States, he would teach night classes on the subject so dear to his heart.  However, my father’s  innate desire to connect with his own ancestors  would have  been even more  fulfilled for him  there in  the chancel of  St. Tola’s Church, built into the same  earth where O’Dea’s had lived  for centuries.   I could feel my father’s presence close to me as I walked the grounds of the Dysert,  watching me as I watched my son make his own way around these  ruins rooted in the soil of our ancestors.

And I remember  falls in Virginia, when I  would rake leaves, leaves, and more leaves until around Thanksgiving I just gave up. I would look up at the oak tree in our back yard, and there on her branches would be even more curled-up brown leaves which still refused to fall down. The oak tree does not loose all its leaves in the fall.  It keeps the dried remains of  dead leaves on her branches throughout the winter. So  even after a snowfall in January,  you can see an oak tree leaf being blown around the snow-covered backyard.  Even as spring erupted around me, I could  look up at that oak tree, and there, hanging onto the branches were the withered forms of last year’s leaves, so dry they would crack in your hands if you held one. The oak tree  will hang onto a few of last year’s leaves, even as the fresh new growth of spring appears elsewhere on the same branch.

It was a few years later that  I  found myself standing under  an enormous old banyan tree in the back yard of our house in Cuba. Banyan trees do not have the traditional root system  like the oak.On the contrary, as the banyan’s branches grow out and up toward the sun,  a vine will sprout from the branch and make its way from the branch to the ground,  where it will root. Through this natural rerooting system, the vine grows to form another supporting trunk for the tree. As a result of this,  one banyan tree will appear, at first sight, as a stand of trees until you get under it and look up, only to discover it is but one tree.

A pattern  of  clarity itself  to me in this canopy. Stories I’d been trying to understand are now understood. There are some things in my life that I need to hold onto, as fast as the oak tree holds  onto last year’s leaves.    There are other things I seem to  naturally grow toward,  as the banyan tree repeatedly reaches for the sun and the blue sky, rerooting herself along the way.  My life is a journey of growth, reaching out to touch something yet unnamed beyond the blue sky,  dropping low for those nutrients  found  in the loamy soil of my ancestors, holding fast the stories of those who journeyed before me. And whereever I am, whenever I want to,  I can close my eyes and I can see them -  my ancestors- Barney, Lady Anne, Susie, Jerome, Catherine, Daniel,  Bessie and Arthur. I can see them all, dancing under the banyan tree.

I once asked one of my older brother Arthur what the nicest thing was that Mom ever did for him.  He told me a story from the time when he had finished law school and had begun working for a law firm in the wealthy northern New Jersey town of Tenafly. He had married during law school and there were three or four of his eventual nine children at home, in a new house he had bought, with one tremendous mortgage. He had a briefcase which his wife had  given to him as a graduation gift, and he laughed when he recalled that all he had to take to work in his briefcase  was his lunch.  Back then, Art was just starting out.

One day he was out of the office for some reason, and he happened to drive by 250 Mill Street on his return. He noticed that Mom’s Dodge Dart was in the driveway, so he decided to stop by and say hello.  Mom looked him over from head to toe as he came in the kitchen door, telling him how terrific he looked, and  then they sat together in the dining room  drinking tea. Art proudly told her about this and told her about that – all that was going on with the kids and with  the new job and with the new house. Mom listened patiently. It was getting near lunch time, so Mom offered to treat him to lunch in town, and  Art readily agreed.  Walking down Main Street in Westwood,  Mom took her oldest son by the arm and asked if she could treat him to a new pair of shoes. Art blushed, looking down and seeing the worn leather shoes on his feet.  The shoe budget  was stretched to the limit as it was just to cover the four children.  Mom asked Art to let her do this for him. It would make her happy.  Art knew it would make him that much more comfortable with his new  colleagues.   So they went in to the shoe store, and Mom bought him the finest pair of Florsheim shoes the store had to offer.

Anna, my oldest sister, was also the oldest child of the seven children.  When she was in high school, she wanted to get a job in town. Berchtold’s Bakery needed a part-timer behind the counter, and Anna wanted to apply.  She was sure Dad would not let her work while she was in high school.  So she went to Mom with her plan to apply, and maybe if she actually got the job, Dad would relent. Mom agreed, and kept Anna’s secret until the job was hers. And Dad  mysteriously relented.

My sister Elizabeth  told me another story in answer to the same question. Miss Hughes, her high school Latin teacher, assigned translations every night.  Her students, who did not like Miss Hughes, had gotten their hands on the answer sheets; these were passed around the study halls each day so that the next day’s homework was not only complete, but 100% correct. The students felt justified. From their perspective, this was about as much effort as Miss Hughes was putting into teaching them. One day in study hall  my sister Liz got caught in the act by  Pussy Foot (alias the principal) on one of his routine spying expeditions.

Liz went home for lunch that day, and sat at the small kitchen table explaining her plight to Mom.  Mom listened silently, with her familiar “mm-hmmm” following each stage of the story.  Liz finished her story, and Mom’s only remark was a final “mm-hmm”. Liz went back to school, fully expecting to be expelled.  There was a rumor in the halls  that afternoon  that Liz O’Dea’s Mom had been seen entering the school. Liz was sure this was the end of her life.

Liz never heard another word from anybody about this event. And she certainly did not bring the subject up.  Soon afterward, Miss Hughes was replaced by Mr. O’Connell, and Latin I proceeded in the time-honored way  – vocabulary, declensions, conjugations…..and no answer sheets in sight.  It was years later that Liz learned that Mom had marched  directly from the kitchen table to the principal’s office where she revealed her wrath over the Latin class debacle and demanded a more competent Latin teacher.

My mother married  when she was  21.  In the next ten years she had 5 children. Then there was this long-and-never-understood-by-me pause of   ten years before she had my  brother Joseph, and then a year later  me.  On the day I was born, my mother was 42.  I won’t lie to you; there are pitfalls in having older parents. My father was even  seven years older than my mother.  When “the first five” tell stories about their experiences growing up with Mom, it is almost as if they are talking about some one else, for this is not the mother I knew. Yet, at the same time, it is: I just see her through a different lens.

When I was in elementary school, Mom was in her  fifties.  Kathy, the girl who lived across the street, had a young mother. One spring day Kathy and I  were walking home from school together, and  Kathy had gotten into trouble once too often at  school and dreaded going home to her house to tell her mother. I remember her pleading with me if she could come to my house and talk to my mother first – her reason being “Your Mom listens.” I have noticed myself that women in their fifties are pretty good listeners.

During my high school years, I never saw much physical contact or amorous glances between my parents, who were in their sixties. However, I saw something else. Shortly after I finished high school, my father was given six months to live due to cancer. I watched my mother nurse him, at home, till the day he died.  She would gently comb his hair, cut his nails, and  clean his false teeth for him.  When I close my eyes and try to visualize love – what love really is between a man and a woman – one of the images that always appears is Mom combing Dad’s hair in front of the dining room mirror.

I was in my early twenties when I  met the man I would marry. My father had  passed away, and Mom had been left a widow.  All her married  life, her husband had paid all the bills and, well, taken care of all that stuff – as was the custom for their generation. Upon my father’s death,  Mom had to quickly assume responsibilities that were previously unknown to her. It was shortly after my engagement party that my mother gave me the three thousand dollars that Dad had left in his will for my wedding. Mom told me, basically, to do it myself. She said it would be a good experience for me. And it most certainly was.

When I called Mom up on my 35th birthday, I was moaning about how old I  felt. Mom’s response was typical: “I always loved it when one of my children turned 35. I could finally have an interesting conversation with them.” I took the hint, and quickly changed the subject. Ever since then, when I hear people moaning about how old they are, or bragging about how young they are constantly mistaken for, I  think about my mother’s comment, and  look forward to their reaching  their “35th” birthday and being able to talk about something more interesting.

When I was  42,  the age my mother was when she gave birth to me,  Mom, at 84,  was exactly twice my age. She had suffered a series of ailments and illnesses that had made her feeble, to say the least. The last time she  was strong enough to go out for lunch with me, she was far too quiet on the return trip to the nursing home, sitting shot-gun there next to me  in my car, perhaps wondering if she’d ever go out for lunch again..  Then she said – out of nowhere -  “Susie, never be afraid of anything. Once you give in to fear, it may as well all be over.”

My lens on her is different, but this is the same woman who bought the smart young lawyer a much-needed pair of shoes,  kept the oldest child’s  secret,  rose to another’s defense, cautioned her youngest child from fear.  But of all my memories of my mother, none is as strong as her voice on that early spring day back in 1975.

Flying across the Atlantic Ocean, I had tried not to think. This was not much of a battle as I was dog-tired – both physically and emotionally. I knew that the relationship I had been having  for  the last six years was over, but that was all I knew. I had no idea what I would do next. I  stared out  the plane’s window, planning to be a librarian. I envisioned myself a petite gray-haired spinster in some small New England town library – maybe Vergennes, the small town  I knew as an eleven year-old girl – and I would never have much to do with anybody or anything other than dusty dog-eared books for the rest of my life. I had taken an honest look at myself  and was certain that – much like musty old books – nobody would ever check me out again.

From JFK International Airport, I took a bus which was headed to Northern Jersey’s Route 17. The driver  told me that he could drop me at The Fireplace, which is a hamburger hangout from my high school days and about 15 minutes from home. On the bus I figured that the five dollars I had in my wallet was not enough for a taxi to the house on Mill Street, so I would have to call for a ride. I hoped Mom would be home – if not, I would just wait for her. I had not even called her to say I was coming home. And now I was afraid of the questions Mom had every right to ask: Is the engagement off? What engagement? What went wrong? I haven’t figured that out yet. Are you OK? I forget what ok is, Mom. When I got this far in this imagined conversation  sitting in the back of that bus, the tears would well up in my eyes.  I quickly closed my eyes, leaving the one escaped tear to dry at the corner of my eyes while I tried  to recreate the smell of that  library in  my mind. I suppose some would call it  the musty smell of old books and wrinkle their noses in disgust. But as I sat on that bus, that recreated smell brought me back to a childhood innocence of summer afternoons spent buried in a book where love conquered all, to a time  before I knew what musty was. Before I knew what musty felt like.

It was early April, and on that day I walked into The Fireplace, it was very much a warm spring day. As it was now near lunch time,  people were sitting around eating burgers  in jeans and light sweatshirts.  I had been traveling for a long time, and I guess I looked pretty bad, as I noticed some  people stop eating to stare at me. I carried two pieces of worn luggage and I was wearing some tattered jeans. Because my two suitcases were packed full with everything  I  owned,  I had had no choice but to wear the knee-length raccoon and leather  coat that my father  had given me  when I had come home for the Christmas holidays two years ago. I  had never worn the coat, as it made me stand out too much  on the streets of London, just as it seemed to be making me stand out there at The Fireplace. Only that day I didn’t have time to care about standing out.

I walked over to the public phone and dialed that  familiar number: 666-0040. Mom answered on the third ring. She thought I was calling from England, so I told her I was at The Fireplace, and I was hoping that she could come and get me. There was a pause, and then she said “I’m on my way, Susie.”

I do not remember our conversation on the ride home. But I distinctly remember this: Mom did not ask me one single question. Perhaps she updated me on what my  older brothers and sisters were up to, what she ‘d done to the house lately, or who she’d seen around town recently that I might know. As she spoke, I felt her love caressing me through that familiar voice; an unspoken love which understood  without explanation and soothed without being told what hurt. That day she did not ask me a single question that in any way addressed why or how I suddenly appeared at The Fireplace – and she never did.     Whenever I want to, I can close my eyes and hear her voice that day.

I suppose that New York City was as far away from my mother’s home in Northern Maine as London was from  my hometown in northern New Jersey.   In 1932, during my mother’s junior year of college,  there was an argument between my mother and father, who had been dating  for some time. Mom once referred to it as a fight. “We had a fight”  she’d say.  For some reason, I don’t know why, I could never ask her what it was about.  But I wondered about it. Had she secretly dated someone else? Had he? Or was it his sisters, whom my mother was deeply suspicious of  for the rest of her life? Did they do something which deeply angered my mother, and  my father stood up for his sisters?

Anyway, Mom packed her suitcases, and put on her full-length beaver coat her father had given her as a going-away-to-college present, and headed back to the potato farm. I had known about this story for years, and my imagination was always tied to figuring out what they fought about.  But now a mother myself, my imagination is firmly fixed on another scene: how my grandmother, Susie Dorsey McLaughlin,  received my mother. I will never know what my parents fought about,  but I do know how my mother was received at the end of that journey, for that is how she received me at the end of mine. And I know what my role will be when one of my own children limps home in defeat.

Arboretum is continued on December 28.

My mother, Bessie McLaughlin O’Dea, had one sister Eva, and Eva had one daughter, Sheila.  My mother raised her family in New Jersey, but Eva married and settled in her hometown, Limestone,  which allowed  her daughter,  Sheila,  to grow up just down the road from her grandparent’s potato farm.  Sheila wrote the following letter to my sister Anna  upon being asked what her memories were of our grandmother, Susan Dorsey McLaughlin, who was born on May 4  in 1884.

Dear Anna,

The last time you wrote you said you would like more information about Gram – Susan Dorsey McLaughlin. I have been gathering my thoughts and memories of her. I knew and called her ‘Big Mama”. That is probably because I was under her care from when I was a baby. My mother had a hard time being a mother at that time and I recall quiet talk about her “breakdown.”Anyway, Big Mama was not big…she was statuesque with perfect posture, head held high and back ramrod straight. Later in life she had back problems like my mother and me. We called the “McLaughlin back.”   She was generous with love and attention, and she embraced her homemaker skills with zeal and dedication. Her house was always squeaky clean – spring and fall cleaning big time.  My mother was very unhappy that she did the same thing for the church, washing floors on hands and knees!

I have many, many cherished memories of her: coming home from the harvest and putting our feet in the warm oven and eating freshly baked donuts; she always called me “dear;” I was elated to have her permission to pick sweet peas my grandfather planted every year for her. Her porch, the “veranda”, had a blue ceiling just like the sky and one piece of furniture was a large rocker painted white with wallpaper flowers cut and pasted on the back. She also called her porch the “davenport” or the “piazza”, this being my favorite as I felt transported.  Her kitchen was to be admired – she had a 25 gallon ceramic flour bin – she baked constantly….one day for bread, another for donuts, and another for cakes and cookies; I knew that as a young wife she fed a crew of 40 men three meals a day!

She was a neatly dressed woman. She wore Sears housedresses, always an apron starched and adorned with her brooch of the day. She wore corsets with many ties and snaps that she had made in Canada. She loved jewelry and hats and wore each whenever she went out.  Every once in a while my grandmother would say “Get dressed up. We’re driving to Canada to visit our relatives.”  I did not know, nor did my mother, of any Canadian relatives, but I happily went along for the ride. My mother thought it was funny that I was the only one invited on these treks.   Before marrying , my grandmother taught school in a one-room schoolhouse. In her later years she would come to visit our back yard in the summer after Sunday mass. My father had two pitchers of orange juice, one plain for her – she abhorred liquor- and one spiked with vodka. Got forbid she’d get the wrong one, my mother said.

We spent many hours on the lawn in the summer preparing vegetables from the garden; shelling peas, snapping green beans. Quiet conversation and stories abounded. I liked going to my grandmother’s house for an overnight because she would let me stay in “the rose boudoir”. This was a small room with pale pink flower wallpaper, a bed covered in pink taffeta and crocheted coverlet. The vanity had mirrors and a small stool.  I wonder where my grandmother got this worldly streak –  the piazza and rose boudoir. Was it that she traveled to Florida several times by train?

She kept a pantry. In it were jars full of apples for pies, homemade mincemeat and preserved garden vegetables. The pantry also included two prizes: homemade crabapple jelly and green tomato pickles.  I cannot imagine the time it took to make each of them. So very much work.  She always had the latest utility – an ironing press to iron sheets and pillowcases and towels and linens. She and Papa had one of the first tv’s in town, though she turned it off when beer commercials came on….”Damn shits (Schlitz) beer”  she’d say.

We had a lot of family dinners at her house – she’d open the doors to the fancy living room for the occasion! I found a diary she once started- she wrote emotionally about the suffrage movement and  she detailed trips to Florida by train!

The women I knew who were  friends with my grandmother had lovely, tea-party names such as Viola, Vina, Phoebe, Dolly, Eva, Bessie, Gladys, Jen, Hazel, Elizabeth, and so one.  Phoebe was a relative who was almost emaciated-looking; yet, like other women of her time, she was gracious, strong, and enduring. She owned and managed a successful dress shop in Fort Fairfield.  The bridge parties were a big deal to both my grandmother and my mother. Being in a small rural town, one had to make an effort to socialize. People often lived far apart and could not get outside easily in the winter. So the isolation motivated them to get together the other three seasons. There were card table linens for tea and goodies. I think this was seen as more important than the game where they ignored the rules and bid like this: 3 spades, 1 heart, 2 clubs, 4 hearts, 2 spades, and so on.

Freddie Philbrook lived across the street from my grandmother.  He was a pig and potato farmer who had a round, ruddy face with that real Irishman look – and smile he did most of the time. Three or four times a year he would walk across the street down the long gravel highway to my grandparent’s house to visit my grandfather. Freddie called him “Romey”. He marched up the steps in his farmer overalls and muddy manured boots. He was greeted like royalty and immediately escorted into the formal living room where he was seated on the blue velvet couch.  My grandfather would ask Gram to pour two glasses of whiskey “neat”. But sometime he would chide her with saying “Ye watered it, Susie.” Freddie and Papa would visit a long time talking about potatoes, this and last year’s crop, other farmers and their crops. I have no idea how this relationship developed. Freddie was known to be a somewhat unsavory character. Rumor had it that Freddie smuggled at least two wives from Canada in empty potato barrels. What happened to the ones that were replaced was unknown. Some speculated that they lay at the bottom of the manure pile! I do know they liked and respected one another very much.

Well, Anna, these are only a few memories I have of her. I loved her greatly – she was my model for independence, beauty, and g race.  Gram was a woman of quiet yet diligent faith. She fulfilled all her Catholic duties, had a crucifix over her bed and holy water in a dispenser by the door. She said the rosary every night as did my mother. She lived to attend my wedding in July 1964 – wore her fox stole with a beautiful lace dress. Once when stopped by the local police for going through a stop sign, she said “Young man, I know I stopped because I put it in second gear!”

Her demise was long and painful. It exacted heavy toll on my Mom and Dad. And I don’t think my mother was ever the same again. “Eva dear” I hear her in my musings.

Lots of love, hope you are all well.

Sheila

Susan Dorsey McLaughlin with her daughters, Eva and Bessie.

Thank you, Sheila, for allowing this beautiful letter be a part of Arboretum for all our family to enjoy. Sheila Mooney is a  published writer and accomplished artist. You can visit her website at swmooney.com