[Above photo: A covered bridge, constructed in 1871, in Conway, MA]
11 December 2018
We’ve taken four days and driven a loop to see some of Linda’s relatives, including her beloved 107yo aunt, Pierena. She was Linda’s father’s sister, born in Pittsfield of Italian immigrant parents. Her memory is still sharp, although she’s not walked for the past 2 years, is hard of hearing, and processes things more slowly than 2 ½ years ago. Back to her in a bit.
We stayed the first night in Littleton, where the grandchildren live with Linda’s daughter and their father. Since I don’t have grandkids of my own bloodline, I so enjoy these: 5yo Amelia and 2 1/2yo James. The many levels of interaction and attachment are fascinating to watch, as Amelia is alternately very sweet and helpful with James and then quite bossy. James, for his part, is less subtle, trying to emulate his sister and then trying to eliminate her. They are so clever. Amelia, starting kindergarten this year, can tell you the first letter of a word after you say it. “Zebra”. “Z”. “George” (a tough one). “G”. Since James is so attentive to Amelia’s accomplishments, he’ll be doing it at 4yo! It is remarkable to see how Kyle and Rachael pull off good parenting, each working full-time jobs with long commutes.
I so pity the poor 16yo girls, and their babies, who I saw at Seneca Center. Determined to get pregnant so as to have someone to love them, they were naturally met with limitless demands on their time, attention, affection, and ingenuity. And demands which they were so ill-prepared to meet, since their own mothering had been so lacking. Amazingly, some were able to rise to their infant’s needs.
We swung by Conway, MA in the Berkshires to re-visit the site of a very happy childhood memory of mine. When I was five years old, after my mother’s first month-long hospitalization for depression, she and I took the train from Seattle to Washington, DC to see old friends, the Lloyds. I was so tired at their dinner party for my mother that I put my head in the warm, soft mash potatoes and fell asleep! We then went to Boston and somehow got to Conway in the Berkshires where my grandparents had a small ancient farmhouse in which they lived half the year. There was a tumble-down barn nearby where we kept two horses my mother rented for us. We rode them daily on the local dirt roads and through the covered bridges. My grandfather, a very kindly and gentle man, let me beat him at casino and canasta repeatedly until I thought I was a genius. It was a lovely, warm time, the softest memory of a childhood filled with more-than-optimal family drama. The only sour note for me, and I recall thinking it then in some form, was that it seemed unfair that I should be allowed to go and that my brother, Charles, only 2 ½ years older, was not. My mother’s absence had been at least as hard on him. Linda suggested that in those days the youngest child was often taken to ease the load of the parent staying behind with the rest of the brood.
Next we drove to Pittsfield, at the western edge of Massachusetts, to visit the newly-bereaved widow of Linda’s beloved first cousin, John. Bobbi was lovely and took us in fine detail through John’s descent into Alzheimer’s over an 11 year period. Threats and rages, disappearances, and so forth were contained by her love for him. It was a sobering but very endearing account, a terrible end to a wonderful, loving relationship.
Then to Linda’s brother’s home in Selkirk, south of Albany. He and his wife have a beautiful old house on 30 acres of Hudson River-front. They were welcoming and fed us well. I caught up on more of the Orsi family history. Linda and I had talked as we drove about how complex it is to blend already-formed family cultures in old age. Well, I’m old; she’s not. We each attempt to open ourselves to understanding the ebbs and flows of family history, emotions and rituals in order to more fully align with the other.
Richard is a Family Medicine physician, running his own clinic with two nurse practitioners, a lab assistant, etc., working 80 hours/week to maintain his independent operation. He notes that he has been unable to hire a partner, since current Family Medicine graduates all seem to want to be hospitalists, which allows for a more controlled and less demanding lifestyle.
Now we are finishing a visit in Manchester, Vermont. It is a little town 20 miles north of Bennington where Aunt Pierena lives with her daughter and son-in-law. Manchester is nestled up against the Green Mountains and deer, fox, and bear abound. Larry and Janice bought a 244yo house a year ago, big enough to accommodate all their kids’ families for gatherings. It is in pristine shape and spectacularly lovely. It was the Weller Tavern and served for gatherings of locals, beginning in 1774, who pledged their lives in support of “friends and neighbors”, like Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, who were being persecuted by the British Crown. Ethan Allen shortly after surprised the British and took Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, the first victorious sortie in the Revolutionary War. There are numerous fireplaces with adjacent brandy warmers, 2 foot wide pine floor planks, and a cozy room with built-in benches and an ancient bar. I look at a house like this and, after my initial flush of admiration and appreciation, think “Lots of trim to keep up with.” They love keeping a beautiful home, so it suits them.
Next we’ll arrange to FaceTime with Linda’s sister, Donna, at her ashram in Kerala, S. India, so Pierena and three more Orsi women can chat. Then it’s a 7-8 hour drive to Bar Harbor through the Green Mountains in VT and the White Mountains in NH.
In eleven days I head west to San Francisco, Hong Kong, and, via Dragonair, Yangon. I’m hoping Dragonair is not a close relative of Lion Air, whose plane just crashed into the sea soon after leaving Jakarta, killing all aboard!
I apparently have some apprehension about my next steps.
A Psychiatrist in Myanmar 