“Grow Children Now – Grass Later”
To every thing there is a season,
And a time to every purpose under the heaven.
- Ecclesiastes 3:1,
King James Version
It had been nine years since the
end of World War II. My daily fear of losing
Leon
had slowly dissipated, but now it returned.
My days were a nightmare. My
nights were worse. I’d lie in bed,
staring up at the ceiling, wondering what was to become of us. I longed for sleep to provide me with at
least a few hours of respite in which I could stop worrying about Leon ’s health,
yet it eluded me. I was exhausted,
mindlessly handling all the little chores of running the household, chores that
used to give me such pleasure.
When I thought I could bear the
waiting no longer, Dave Kaufman called to say my husband was showing signs of
improvement. He’d turned the corner and
was no longer in danger of dying. Before
I could ask for details, Dave said I could bring Leon home, warning me he’d need to
stay in bed recuperating for at least two months. Two months!
I could easily handle two months of nursing my darling back to
health. I’d treasure every moment of it,
knowing I had almost lost him. With a
light heart, I sent Connie off to school, took Philip upstairs to his Nannie
Annie, and rushed to get Leon
and bring him home.
As soon as we arrived and Leon was
comfortably settled in bed, I called my sister to tell her the wonderful
news. Karyl had been my major support
through these trying times. We talked
every day on the phone and she never failed to say she knew Leon would pull
through. On
this day, though cheered by hearing Leon had come home from the
hospital, her voice sounded heavy. She
told me Herb was exhibiting symptoms similar to Leon ’s and their physician had just
hospitalizeD him. I no longer had to
worry about my own husband, but now my sister’s was in danger, and he was
apparently much worse than Leon
had ever been. Poor Karyl. There she was raising five children and
expecting her sixth, and now Herb was deathly ill. I offered Karyl what few words of comfort I
could, reminding her that Leon
had recovered and reassuring her that Herb would as well.
When I hung up the phone, I saw it
was time to prepare lunch for Leon . Dr. Kaufman had warned me that Leon ’s appetite
would be slow to return and said I’d have to do everything possible to get him
to eat, that it was critical for his recovery.
Dave prescribed a steady diet of steak and potatoes, designed to
increase Leon ’s
strength as rapidly as possible. I put
up a card table next to the bed, set it as attractively as I could, and sat
down to eat with him, attempting to make our meal a festive occasion. At first, Leon could manage no more than a
few mouthfuls, but as time wore on, he ate more and more. It was wonderful to have Leon home,
though our troubles were far from over.
He was still weak, unable to get out of bed without my assistance. To make matters worse, friends and family
couldn’t visit because Leon
might still be contagious. No one but
Dr. Kaufman came to see us.
There was one exception. Aunt Essie’s daughter, Marilyn, was a student
at Boston University Leon
might still be contagious and wasn’t allowed to have guests, she said she
didn’t mind, but I was equally adamant that she shouldn’t come. One day, not bothering to call first, she
just showed up at the front door. When I
heard the bell, I looked out the window and saw her standing there. Unwilling to open the door, since we were
still quarantined, I opened the window to say hello. She said, “I know you can’t let me into the
house. But hand baby Philip out the window
to me and I can take care of him for a few hours.” Although I couldn’t take Marilyn up on her
offer, I’ve never forgotten what she tried to do. She was a seventeen-year-old with more
compassion than all the adults in the family combined.
Throughout Leon ’s illness,
Mother and Dad were on vacation and Dad would phone periodically from all over
the world. He’d tell me of their
adventures and ask how things were going.
The calls weren’t easy to place and frequently my phone would ring three
or four times before the ship-to-shore connection could be made, sometimes at
three in the morning. Since Mother and
Dad had been traveling the world for several years, Leon and I were accustomed to being
awakened by the calls, or having our meals interrupted. Although it was inconvenient, we never
complained. It was always good to hear
from my folks.
With Leon ’s illness, however, the calls
became an intrusion. Each time my
parents called, I longed to tell them how sick Leon was and how I needed them to
come home, but I didn’t want to ruin their vacation. So I made myself say, “Everything is fine,”
even though everything was far from fine.
For weeks, the actress in me succeeded, but eventually I could hold out
no longer. My father, with his keen ear,
sensed something amiss and called back three days in a row. My dramatic training had failed me and my
“Everything is fine” didn’t sound quite fine enough.
Dad was suspicious. He and Mother wished to extend their
three-month trip by two more weeks. They
were in Hawaii
and, rather than coming directly back to Boston ,
they wanted to sail home through the Panama Canal . They’d done this before traveling west, but
had been told it was a completely different adventure going from the Pacific to
the Atlantic, one they were eager to experience. As Dad told me this, I could hear in his
voice that he needed me to verify for him one more time that all was smooth
sailing at home. I couldn’t do it. I had to tell him the truth.
When he heard that Leon had been
hospitalized with hepatitis and was still bed-ridden and very ill, and that
Herb had come down with the same disease and was in the hospital and might not
live, Dad assured me he and Mom would change their plans and fly home from
Hawaii the next day. My relief was
palpable. I knew my parents could do
nothing to make Leon
and Herb heal faster, but their support for Karyl and me would be immeasurable.
I counted the hours until their
arrival, eager for them to put their arms around me and tell me everything
would be okay. I was hurt when Dad
instead chastised me for spoiling their vacation. When I protested that I had held off as long
as I could and that he had asked me repeatedly how things were going, he said,
“It doesn’t matter how many times I ask you how things are at home, I expect
you to tell me they’re fine. It’s a
rhetorical question. You should know
that.”
I didn’t know how to respond. My father’s words confused me. I’d been brought up to believe I could rely
on my parents to help whenever I needed them most, yet here was my father
saying not to ask. Never again did I
tell my parents, or anyone else for that matter, if things were troubling
me. I vowed to be more self-reliant from
that day forward. As I look back on that
decision now, I recognize that while it gave me strength in difficult times, it
prevented me from seeking assistance from others when it may have been better
to do so.
Few times have been as difficult
for me as that spring of 1955. What had
happened to my Utopian world? Leon was still
terribly ill. Herb was in the hospital
and might not make it. Yet I had no
choice but to continue running my household and taking care of my father’s
restaurant business. Pollyanna was
having difficulty coping.
I wanted to delay the move to our
new home on Grafton Street
until Leon
regained his health and Connie finished first grade. As reasonable as this desire may have been, I
couldn’t make it work. I felt like
Hamlet when he complained, “How all occasions do inform against me.” The family that had bought our old home was
anxious to move in and refused my request for extra time. In the meantime, construction at our new
house was completed and there were no longer workers there all day. The empty house proved to be an invitation to
vandals, who threw paint all over the downstairs walls. Our insurance company paid for the damage, but
warned us they would not continue to insure a vacant house. If we didn’t move in, they would have to stop
our coverage.
Realizing we had no choice but to
move, I called the Mason-Rice
Elementary School
To say I was annoyed is an
understatement. Instead of feeling
welcomed, Connie felt unwanted, as if her presence there was a major
inconvenience. Seeing the hurt look on
her face, I told the secretary we’d been promised Connie could begin school
there and she would have to figure out how to make it work. I was adamant.
Seeing I had no intention of
leaving, the secretary took us to a first grade classroom and told the teacher
that Connie would be in her class. The
teacher, who had been given no advance warning, was annoyed with the situation
and took it out on Connie, speaking sharply to my little girl as she pointed to
an empty seat in the back. Looking about
the room and, seeing all the children staring at her, Connie began to cry. I knelt down to comfort her and the teacher
reprimanded me. “Mrs. Kruger, don’t
coddle her. She’ll be fine as soon as
you’re gone. You must leave now.” This was not an auspicious beginning to our
new life.
Having settled Connie in school, I
returned home to meet up with the moving company. Everything was packed and ready to go, with
the exception of our bedroom. The first
thing the movers did was transfer Leon from our bed to a chair, and then they
loaded the truck, putting the bed in last.
Next, they helped Leon
to my car and we drove together to Grafton
Street . As
soon as we got there, the movers set up our bed and half-carried Leon up the
stairs. He fell asleep the moment he was
ensconced in his new surroundings.
My dear friend Maggie arrived and
stayed with me for a couple of days to help.
All through the years, Maggie was there for me, a rock when I needed one
most. While I unpacked, Maggie took care
of Philip. I can still picture her
pushing him about on a teacart while I put everything away in the kitchen. She pushed him from room to room, chattering
away to keep him occupied. When Philip
napped, Maggie took care of me, as she had done when I was a child, seeing that
I rested when I grew exhausted.
I found that caring for Leon was harder
in our new home than on Cloverdale
Road , because now I had to go up the stairs every
time he needed me, which was often. I
still had to bring him his meals in bed.
He slept much of the time, but was bored and lonely when awake, restless
if not entertained. Whenever Maggie and
I needed a break from housework, we’d go upstairs and sit with Leon to help
him pass the long hours more pleasantly.
Each day at four o’clock , Maggie made me stop for a cup of
tea, a long-standing tradition in her Irish home. She said that after working hard since early
morning, a late afternoon tea break allowed one to replenish resources to get
through the remainder of the day more easily.
I agreed with her wholeheartedly.
During those first few days in our new home, it helped
tremendously. I began to look forward to
our afternoon tea, eager for the chance to sit back and contemplate all we’d
accomplished. Much as I enjoyed those
times, however, I found that once Maggie was gone, I fell back into my American
ways and no longer stopped for tea.
Years later, I revived the tradition when I sat at the kitchen table
with my children upon their arrival home from school. They would drink milk or hot chocolate while
I sipped a cup of tea.
As the days passed and I began to
get the house in order, Leon
grew steadily stronger. It was truly a
celebration when he was able to go up and down the stairs without
assistance. A week later, Leon announced
that he felt strong enough to begin getting his office ready and Dad said he
wanted the privilege of furnishing it.
Pleased with the unexpected financial support, Leon accepted
the generous offer and the two of them went off together to shop. There was a bounce in Leon ’s step
that hadn’t been there for months.
The furniture and equipment began
to arrive and Leon
spent many happy hours preparing for his first patient. At the end of each afternoon, he’d take me on
a tour of the office, showing me all he had done. It wasn’t long before everything looked
ready. It was warm, yet
professional-looking – just the balance he’d hoped to achieve.
When they learned of Leon ’s
progress, my dad’s five sisters decided their office-warming gift would be to
plant five evergreens outside the office front windows. Although the trees were somewhat scrawny at
first, they quickly filled out and added considerably to the beauty of our
home-office, and served the practical role of providing a privacy screen for
families inside waiting to be seen. When
all was ready, we held two housewarming parties, one for our home and one to
celebrate the opening of Leon ’s
pediatric office.
Unfortunately, few patients
appeared to have heard the news. Hours
would go by without a soul entering the office.
Leon
was terribly frustrated, unable to do anything to make his practice grow. He couldn’t advertise, for it was
illegal. All he could do was to wait
until friends told friends and gradually word of mouth filled his waiting
room. He maintained his sanity by building
a boat in the backyard, washing up quickly when he had to switch from carpenter
to doctor.
From the beginning, Leon was on the
lookout for ways in which he could better serve his patients. He liked an idea we learned about from our
own pediatrician. Dr. Ganz held a “call
hour” from seven to eight each morning, during which parents could have their
questions answered by phone. Leon did the
same and we had an office phone hooked up in our kitchen so he could field
calls while we ate breakfast. We waited
and waited those first few weeks, willing the phone to ring, but it remained
silent. You could feel the tension in
the air. It didn’t help when one morning
seven-year-old Connie said, “I thought seven to eight was call hour. How come nobody ever calls?”
Several years went by before Leon had enough
patients to cover his costs. During that
time, we lived as frugally as we could.
I remember using recipes from a cookbook called 100 Ways to Make Hamburger.
I thought the children were unaware of our efforts to pinch pennies
until one day when Connie said, “I know Daddy’s office is doing better because
we don’t eat hamburger as often.”
Connie never seemed to mind our
lack of funds. Like most children, she
took her cue from her parents’ outlook.
Because Leon and I were aware of our good fortune despite our tight
budget, we spoke often of how well off we were.
As far as Connie was concerned, we were rich. What she did mind, however, was our lack of a
dog. So one Sunday afternoon, Leon , the
children and I drove to a pet store, determined to come home with a new
dog. When we found a beautiful
forty-five pound border collie brimming with affection, we were hooked. Biscuit looked just like Lassie from the
year-old television series. The similarity
in size and coloring was so remarkable that people would stop us on the street
to ask, “Did you know your dog looks exactly like Lassie?”
Her personality resembled Lassie’s
as well. She was wonderful with the
children, herding them away from the street.
I’d sit on our front steps chatting with other moms in the neighborhood
while the little ones ran about in the yard.
Biscuit would play with them, grabbing them gently by the wrist and
bringing them back to the grown-ups if any of them strayed too close to the
cars.
At first, Biscuit spent the nights
in our kitchen. Unlike homes built
today, our kitchen had doors so it could be closed off from the rest of the
house. Until we were sure Biscuit was
housebroken, we didn’t want her to have the run of the house at night. That first morning, we all trooped into the
kitchen together. Biscuit was happy to
see us, barking eagerly and wagging her tail.
In her excitement, she jumped all over us, which wasn’t a problem for
Leon, Connie and me. But when she jumped
on little Philip, she knocked him over and he cried. By the third morning, Biscuit figured out
what was happening and, when she got to Philip, she sat down and offered him a
paw.
Biscuit’s instincts to care for her
young charges did not end with the children.
When Leon and Connie brought home a kitten a couple of months later,
Biscuit took care of her, carrying Princess around in her mouth as she would a
new puppy. On cold winter nights,
Princess curled up against Biscuit’s belly, finding protection and warmth
there.
We loved watching the two animals
together and they soon became an integral part of our lives. When it came time to go to Hyannis to spend the summer with my folks, we
couldn’t leave our pets behind. They
adjusted quickly to their new environment and, if they could talk, I believe
they would have told us they looked forward to those summers at the beach as
much as the rest of us.
It was a special summer at the Cape , the first since Leon and Herb regained their health
after their struggles with hepatitis. Without
the weight of shoes, for he was allowed to go barefoot all the time, Philip was
able to master walking and the sight of him toddling about the yard with the
animals and his cousins warmed my heart.
It was a happy time and the children flourished.
When the children and I came home
in the fall, Leon ’s
office was running smoothly. He finally
had a full schedule and it was obvious to everyone that he was successful. His young patients loved him and their
parents were appreciative. He felt as if
he were making a real difference in their lives and that made him happy. With everything going so well, we started to
consider the possibility of a third child.
We called our fertility specialist,
Dr. Simmons, and asked if it was feasible for us to try again. He saw no reason that we couldn’t at least
investigate the possibilities and he scheduled us both for tests. Leon ’s condition was unchanged and
my tubes had become blocked again.
Despite that, the doctor was optimistic, saying he could clear my tubes
and we could once again use artificial insemination. We didn’t have to try nearly as long this
time and by October, I was pregnant, and our baby was due early the following
summer.
The year flew by. I was in seventh heaven, caring for my two children
and knowing we had a third on the way. I
thought often of Plumfield and felt as if Leon and I were truly achieving our
dreams. I worked in Leon ’s office
for several hours each day, surrounded by young families, Philip sitting
contentedly on the floor at my feet.
When not in the office, I enjoyed our new friends from the
neighborhood. Leon and I would socialize
with the parents, and Connie would play with the children. And there were many children, close to twenty
on our block alone. Some days I would
sit under a tree in the front yard and read to nine or ten little
children. They were all intrigued by my
growing mid-section and I would let them place their hands on my belly to see
if they could feel the baby move. Life
was good.
At the beginning of July, Mom took
Connie and Philip to the Cape . Leon and I stayed in Newton waiting for the baby. It was hot and humid, 103 degrees on Boston
Common. I was just thinking about how I
couldn’t stand another minute of the heat when Dad called to invite Leon and me
to join him for dinner at the air-conditioned Pinebrook Country Club. Knowing the baby had already dropped, I was
nervous about going. I was afraid my
water would break right there in the restaurant and could picture my
embarrassment as everyone rushed around dealing with an expecting mother. It would be shades of I Love Lucy all over again.
When I told Dad my concerns, he said not to worry, that he’d arrange for
us to eat in the informal dining room near the exit. If my water broke or I felt tired, we could
make a quick escape without causing a commotion.
As we walked into the Club, I felt
a blast of cool air and breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time in days I felt strong and
full of energy. My appetite returned and
I ordered my favorites…shrimp cocktail and Maine lobster. When I finished, I still had room for dessert
and got another favorite, mince chiffon pie.
By the time we got home, it was
around eight o’clock . As we got out of the car, our neighbors,
Yetta and Sid Brass, walked across the street to remind us that, although it
was still only the third of July, fireworks were scheduled in the park down the
block, in honor of Independence Day.
Although it was tempting, it was more than I could handle and I told Leon to go without
me. At first he was hesitant, not
wanting to leave me alone, but I assured him I felt fine and he should go enjoy
himself. He took me at my word and I was
perfectly content to watch television alone until he returned a couple of hours
later. By eleven o’clock , we were both sound asleep.
Four hours later, my water
broke. This time, Leon woke up
immediately and rushed me to the car. As
with Philip, I was unaware of any contractions and was feeling no pain. The musical, My Fair Lady had opened on Broadway earlier that year and I already
knew all the songs. In my euphoria at
the impending birth, I began singing away, repeating On the Street Where You Live over and over again until we pulled up
at the hospital.
When Leon told the staff how short my first
labor had been, they wasted no time getting me to a room. The interns teased me, saying they expected
me to deliver this baby just as quickly as the first so they could go celebrate
the 4th of July. I
obliged. At five in the morning another
son was born. When it came time to write
a name on the birth certificate, Leon said our new little boy would
be Charles Kern. I was moved as I
realized that Leon
had chosen to honor my father by using his surname as Charles’s middle
name. When Leon telephoned Dad a few minutes
later to tell him of the birth and the name, my father thought Leon was
joking. He said, “Aura can’t have had
the baby. She ate a whole lobster last
night!”
I had an easier delivery than I’d
had with Philip and my recovery was thus quicker. I was sent home very soon after the birth and
Mrs. Selwyn was waiting for me when I arrived.
She stayed for a week, helping me with baby Charles. Her last task was to help me pack the car for
our annual trip to Hyannis . As Leon, Charles, and I drove away, I
couldn’t have been happier. The summer
was heavenly. Between watching my three
young children and regaining my strength, I found myself totally revitalized. When Labor Day rolled around, I was ready to
go home to Grafton Street ,
eager to renew my idyllic existence there.
Six weeks later, Leon
accompanied me to see my obstetrician for my three-month check-up. I knew I felt wonderful, so I wasn’t at all
surprised when Dr. Mullaney pronounced me to be in excellent health. What did surprise me, however, was when he
casually added, “By the way Aura, I assume you know you’re pregnant.” Pregnant!
That was impossible. With Leon ’s sickly
sperm and my tubes that were always blocked, there was no way we could conceive
without returning to the fertility specialist.
I said, “Dr. Mullaney, you must be mistaken. Dr. Simmons told us it couldn’t happen.”
He laughed and said, “Aura, I’ve
been practicing obstetrics for many, many years. I think I know a pregnant woman when I see
one.” Leon and I were flabbergasted. I was so happy I felt as if I would
burst. Pregnant! I hadn’t let myself even think about a fourth
child, and here we were going to have one without even trying. I thanked Dr. Mullaney over and over,
practically jumping for joy. As we turned
to leave, Dr. Mullaney said to Leon
with a big grin, “You know, Leon ,
most of my patients are Irish Catholic.
They almost always come in for their three-month check-up pregnant. This is the first time I’ve seen one of them
walk out of my office three feet above the ground.”
As we drove home with our heads
spinning from the wonderful news, we laughed about the irony of the
situation. Just a week earlier we had
gone to Hartford
for Karyl’s birthday. Karyl and I were
chatting as we sat in the kitchen, each of us feeding our youngest and talking
about how happy we were with our families, she with her six children and I with
my three. What neither of us knew was
that we were both pregnant. We laughed
about that for years.
My parents, however, did not find
the humor in our situation. My father
made it clear he believed we’d behaved irresponsibly by having another baby so
soon. Leon saw how hurt I was by my
father’s criticism and decided it was important for my parents to
understand exactly what had happened. We
had kept our fertility problems a secret from everyone, concerned that
artificial insemination was not well accepted.
So one afternoon, the two of us
went to visit my folks, and Leon
gave them the medical description of what had happened, how my tubes had been
blocked and had to be cleared, how his sperm weren’t viable and a sperm donor
had been needed. He quoted our fertility
specialist, Dr. Simmons, regarding his comments that we could never get
pregnant naturally and if we wanted another child, we should return to him to
repeat the procedure. Given that
history, there was no reason to use birth control and we were amazed to find
out at my three-month check-up that I was pregnant.
When Mother and Dad heard the whole
story, they went from being disappointed in us for our supposed
irresponsibility to being delighted at our good fortune. But Leon and I didn’t stop there. We went on to explain how expensive the procedures
had been and how we had scrimped and saved every penny so we could pay all the
medical costs without coming to them for help.
I said, “Dad, it bothered me that you thought we were always broke
because we were being extravagant. I
wanted to tell you the real reason and for you to be proud of me for managing
so well instead of being disappointed in me for being a spendthrift.” His answer was to hug me and say, “Aura, I’ve
always been proud of you.”
We drove home pleased with how the
afternoon had gone. Now my parents could
share in our joy, yet we were confident they would keep our secret. We still didn’t feel ready to share with the
rest of the world how our two boys had been conceived. Polite Bostonian society was not yet ready to
deal with artificial insemination or in
vitro fertilization. Thank goodness
times have changed.
Our next call was to Dr. Simmons,
to tell him the good news. After
congratulating us, he asked Leon
to come in for further tests. His
scientific curiosity was aroused and he wanted to figure out how this could
possibly have happened. What he discovered
was that Leon ’s
sperm count was up and the sperm were healthy.
Perhaps time had healed him, or perhaps it happened because he switched
from jockey shorts to boxers. We’ll
never know.
What a happy winter that was for
me! My days were satisfyingly packed
taking care of two-year-old Philip and baby Charles, sometimes at home and
sometimes while working in Leon’s office.
In the meantime, eight-year-old Connie was developing a social life all
her own. With so many children in the
neighborhood, she was never at a loss for something to do. She played basketball, football and baseball
with the O’Malley boys, Grady and Gene, and jumped rope, rode bikes, and played
hopscotch with Debbie Fineberg and Diane Brass.
When the snow arrived, all the children together would build snow forts
in the front yard and throw snowballs at one another for hours on end. When they tired of that, they would drag
their Flexible Flyer sleds to the park across the street and spend hours zipping
down the hill until their fingers and toes were frozen and their lips were
blue. Then they’d race back to our
house, throw their wet mittens, snow pants, and overcoats on the benches by our
front door, and sit around our kitchen table waiting patiently for hot cocoa.
By the time spring rolled around, I
had begun waddling, my big belly swaying with each step. That didn’t stop me from carrying Charles and
Philip everywhere we went. One day, as I
was walking down the stairs with Charles under one arm, Philip under the other,
and the new baby in my belly, Dave Kaufman came in the front door looking for Leon . In those days, nobody ever rang the bell;
friends and neighbors, adults and children, all just walked in and hollered,
“Hello. Anybody home?” In any case, Dave took one look at me and
said, “I never want to see you doing that again. With one misstep you could hurt four of you
at once. Let Philip walk so you can hold
onto the banister. And try to have
someone else carry Charles.”
With three young children to watch
and one on the way, it was difficult to follow Dr. Kaufman’s advice. Connie was a tremendous help, entertaining
Philip and Charles whenever she could, picking things up off the floor so I
wouldn’t have to bend over, rubbing my back and telling me to rest. Despite all her assistance, however, it was a
welcome respite when July arrived and Mother took Connie and Philip to Hyannis for their summer
at the beach, leaving me with only baby Charles to watch.
A couple of days after they all
left, it was July 4th, Charles’s first birthday. Yetta and Sid Brass, our neighbors across the
street, hosted a cookout, throwing a joint party for Charles and their son who
shared the same birthday. It was one of
those hot, sultry New England nights without
the least hint of a breeze. It was
wonderful. All the neighbors who hadn’t
fled town for the weekend were there, and every one of them catered to my
needs, bringing me water so I wouldn’t have to stand up, offering to help out
with Charles. Yetta placed Charles in a
swing where he sat contentedly for hours on end, fussing only when the motion
stopped and the swing needed winding.
When it was time to walk to the
park to watch the fireworks, I decided to call it a night. Unlike the previous year, Leon skipped
the excitement and opted instead to join me for some quiet time at home. He carried a sleepy Charles into the house
and put him to bed, saying he’d close up the house for the night and I should
just take care of myself. When he joined
me a few minutes later, we snuggled together and talked of the impending birth. We both were still amazed at our good
fortune, at my unexpected pregnancy. Leon placed his
hand gently on my belly to feel the baby kick, saying how happy he was to once
again be waiting for a new baby. Then he
said, “You know I’ll love whatever we get, but is it all right for me to want
another girl?”
When I smiled and reassured him
that there was nothing wrong with his wish, we began discussing names. His mother had recently said, “If you have a
little girl, would you consider giving her the middle name Ann?” I was surprised by her request. In the Jewish tradition, it was unusual to
name a child for a living relative.
Perhaps because we had already broken with tradition when we named
Connie for Grandma Lena, Nannie Annie thought it would be acceptable to do so
again. We decided it didn’t really
matter why his mother had asked us to do this, and we honored her request.
A week later when Mrs. Selwyn
arrived to help out until it was time to go to the hospital, and then to take
care of Charles while Leon and I were gone.
It was good to see her again. She’d
taught me much with my earlier children and it was with a sense of relief that
I turned over my one-year-old little boy to her.
My water broke at five o’clock in the morning of July
17th, and Leon
had me in the car and on the road in less than three minutes. Not only had he rushed me out the door, he
drove at breakneck speed. When he ran
two red lights, I became concerned. I
stopped singing long enough to ask him why he was hurrying and he said, “Aura,
your contractions are so close together that I’m afraid you’re going to have
this baby in the car.” He told me later
he could tell when my contractions were occurring by the way I’d pause to grunt
in the middle of my song.
When we pulled up at the hospital,
I expected Leon
to help me out of the car. Instead, he
was so disconcerted he left me on my own and ran in by himself. What had gotten into him? I grunted as I opened my door, all the time
thinking, “How unlike Leon ! He’s usually the image of chivalry.” As I dragged myself up each step, I kept
expecting him to reappear, hoping he’d realize that in his excitement, he’d
left me behind.
Exhausted, I walked into the
hospital and was greeted by a nurse running up to me with a wheelchair. Leon hadn’t forgotten me at
all. He’d dashed into the hospital
hollering, “If you don’t want a baby born in the lobby, get outside with a
wheelchair immediately and get my wife to obstetrics!” It never occurred to him that I wouldn’t know
what he was doing. He assumed I’d wait
in the car for help to arrive.
Once I was safely settled in the
wheelchair, Leon and the nurse raced with me to the elevator and into the
delivery room. We barely made it. Within minutes of our arrival, Jo was
born. Our obstetrician, knowing how much
Leon
had hoped for another daughter, stepped out into the hall and said,
“Congratulations, Dr. Kruger. You’re a
mother.” Leon knew immediately what he meant
and rushed in to see his new little girl.
In the year since Charles’s birth,
procedures had changed at the hospital and no protective mask was put on me
when I was handed my baby. Delighted
with this new freedom, I kissed Jo over and over, inhaling her fresh baby scent
with every breath. All too soon the
nurse took her away to the hospital nursery.
Apparently, it was too soon for Leon as well, for after making sure
I was resting comfortably, he donned his hospital attire and went to the
nursery. He asked for Baby Kruger,
appearing to the nurse to be there as the baby’s pediatrician. She said, “Yes, Doctor,” retrieved Jo from
her hospital crib, and began to undress her for examination. Leon interrupted her efforts,
taking Jo and wrapping his arms around his little baby. Then he kissed her all over, just as I had
done. The surprised nurse said, “What
are you doing, Doctor? Aren’t you going
to examine her?” Leon answered
gleefully, “I’m not the doctor. I’m the
daddy. This one is mine.”
I recovered quickly from the birth
and since Jo was a healthy baby, the hospital sent me home the next day. Within a week, I was strong enough to make
the trip to Cape Cod . My mother and Grandma Lena couldn’t wait to
see their newest grandchild. Minutes
after we arrived, Grandma Lena gently placed baby Jo at one end of the carriage
and one-year-old Charles at the other, and she went for a stroll with my four
children. Connie and Philip walked on
each side holding the edges of the carriage, staring down at their new little
sister with a look of wonder on their faces.
I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful sight. When they returned, Connie and Philip ran
into the house to give me a large bouquet of wildflowers they’d picked for me,
and I placed it in a vase for all to enjoy.
Grandma Lena sat on a bench in the yard with the stroller beside
her. Biscuit lay beneath them,
protecting the newest family member from any who might approach.
As I looked out the kitchen window
at my dear grandmother watching my two younger children, I reflected on how
fortunate I was to spend my summers at the Cape . It was those two months of relaxation each
year that allowed me to toil hard the rest of the time. I worked in Hyannis as well, helping to run the
household, but it was different, for it was shared and I wasn’t in charge. And I always had time to go to the beach
where I could watch my children frolic in the sand and surf.
All too soon, Labor Day approached and it was time
to return to Newton . Connie was entering the fourth grade and,
with the return of all the families to the city, Leon ’s schedule became hectic once
again and he needed me to help run his office.
Summer vacation was over. The
first day of school was exciting, with the children eager to see what their new
classrooms would be like, who their new classmates would be. Everyone dressed in their Sunday best and
we’d take pictures on the front porch, documenting for all time how the
children had grown since the previous fall.
One by one, each of the children – not just ours but the neighbors’ as
well – would stand back-to-back with me, eager for the day they passed me
by. Since I was only four-foot-ten
inches tall, they all managed it before they finished elementary school; it was
their special rite of passage.
With everyone back in town after
summer vacations, the neighborhood buzzed with activity and our home was the
hub. There were always young ones
running in and out. Our front yard was a
football field, a baseball diamond, and in winter, a snow fort. One day, as Leon and I stood on the porch
looking out over the yard, we counted over a dozen children rushing about,
chasing after a ball. Leon hugged me
and said, “You have your Plumfield.”
And, indeed, I truly felt like Jo in Little
Men.
As happy as Leon and I were when we looked out over our yard, my mother
was frustrated. Instead of happy
children, she saw scrawny grass and large patches of dirt. After several weeks of telling us we should
do something about it, she took matters into her own hands and called the
gardener for she’d used for almost thirty years, Mr. Cedrone. It was his cows that had wandered our
schoolyard when I was a small child. His
children were among my first friends when my family moved to Newton from Hartford .
His farm always looked tidy and well kept, and he had done wonders with
my parents’ yard over the years. With
that in mind, my mother asked him to perform his miracles for our home on Grafton Street ,
saying she and my father would pay the bill.
For a long time, Mr. Cedrone and I stood on the front porch watching
the neighborhood children, our dog, and our cat, all running back and forth,
laughing gleefully, chasing each other all about in a frantic game of tag. Finally, Mr. Cedrone turned to me and said,
“Grow children now – grass later.” He
said he couldn’t take my parents’ money, that anything he planted would never
survive with all the activity, and that it was far more important for the
children to enjoy the yard than for it to look pretty. I hugged him, thanking him for his
understanding.
As happy as I was in those days, I was in a constant
state of fatigue, like so many mothers torn between raising their young
children, running a household, and working at a job. I usually managed to maintain my good spirits,
but every once in a while, I became so exhausted that my patience grew
thin. I will never forget time during
the fall of 1957 when my temper got the best of me. The events are indelibly etched in my mind.
It was Thanksgiving and Philip was three years
old. I was preparing a feast for
eighteen of us, for the six Krugers were joined by the nine Kramers, Mother and
Dad, and Grandma Lena . While it was hard work, everybody pitched
in. Despite all the help, however, I was
stressed out as I tried to get all the last minute things done before serving.
In the midst of the chaos, Philip kept pestering me
about something he wanted. I can’t
remember now what it was, nor does it matter.
I told him repeatedly that I was busy and he’d have to wait, but his three-year-old
mind had trouble with the concept of delayed gratification, and he continued to
pull on my skirt and beg for attention.
Finally, in desperation, I slapped him across the face, something I’d
never done before.
I’m not sure which of us was more shocked. I couldn’t believe I’d hit my little boy in a
moment of anger. How could I have done
such a terrible thing? As Philip’s lip
began to quiver and tears welled up in his eyes, I sat down on the floor and
wrapped my arms around him, telling him over and over how sorry I was. I looked up to see my brother-in-law, Herb,
watching the whole thing. All I could
think of was what a horrible mother he must think me.
Many years later when I was in my fifties, I shared
this story with a close friend, telling her I’d never forgiven myself. With her amazing common sense, she said,
“Don’t you think Philip forgave you long ago?
Perhaps it’s time you should do the same.” Her words made me laugh and took a tremendous
load from my shoulders and from my heart. Ever since then, I’ve tried to avoid dwelling
on my mistakes, no matter how onerous I believe them to be. I do my best, learn from my experience, and
then move on, though I find that especially hard to do if I’ve hurt someone
else.
A few months after the incident
with Philip, Leon and I began to talk about how busy I was, running non-stop,
fifteen hours a day. During this time of
babies, dishes and diapers, laundry and cooking, of working each day in Leon’s
pediatric office, and doing the paperwork for Dad’s restaurant business at
night, I never had a moment to think about how exhausted I was. Instead, I was as happy as I’d ever been and
saw myself as the most fortunate woman in the world. Despite that, my remorse at having lost my
temper with Philip made me realize I was doing too much. Either Leon would have to hire someone to
handle the support work in his office, or we would need to find help for me at
home.
It didn’t take long for me to
decide. I loved caring for the children
and the career woman in me thrived on running Leon ’s office and working as Dad’s
accountant. The household chores were
another matter. While I didn’t mind
doing them, I was more than happy to have someone else take over. We looked for a young woman to move in,
someone who would run the household while I was next door in Leon ’s office,
and who could watch the children whenever they weren’t playing in the waiting
room with me.
We advertised and found
nineteen-year-old Bridie. At first we
thought things were going to work out perfectly. She was sweet and the children seemed to love
having her around, but we soon discovered it was almost like having another
child instead of a helper. I was
crestfallen to come home from the office and find her lounging in her bedroom
watching television while Jo napped and Charles and Philip entertained
themselves nearby on the floor. I’d had
visions of her playing games with them, going for walks in the park, reading
stories aloud, and rolling a ball about in the yard, and here she was ignoring
them. I knew she wouldn’t focus on them
every minute, expecting her to let them fend for themselves a little bit while
she was doing the housework, but not just while relaxing in her room. To make matters worse, she seemed to have
completely forgotten that cleaning house was part of her job.
When I expressed my frustration to
Leon, he said I had to be more firm with Bridie and make her do a better job,
but I found that difficult to do. It’s
always been easier for me to give direction to children than to adults, and I
just couldn’t bring myself to reprimand Bridie.
I kept thinking, “In just a few weeks, we’ll all go to the Cape and then my mother will train her to be a proper
nanny and housekeeper.”
Before I could be rescued by my
mother, however, I was forced to take matters into my own hand. Out of the blue, Charles had begun screaming
hysterically whenever he saw a large, stuffed monkey he’d been given for
Christmas. Prior to that, it was one of
his favorite toys, almost as big as he was.
He cuddled the monkey and dragged it about the house with him. Leon and I were discussing the strange change
in his behavior when Connie overheard us and shed some light on the
matter. “Bridie’s been waving the monkey
in Charles’s face until he cries. I told
her to stop but she won’t listen to me.”
I obviously couldn’t allow her to continue terrorizing Charles. I overcame my shyness of criticizing adults
and spoke to Bridie immediately. I
should have recognized at the time that she shouldn’t be taking care of children,
but I still had hopes that Mother would teach her.
During that same period, Charles
began to wake up crying around eleven each night. He appeared to be scared and we assumed he
was having nightmares. Whether they were
started by Bridie’s cruel behavior or just happened to begin at the same time,
we’ll never know, for at almost two years old, he was too young to tell
us. It took me almost an hour each night
to calm him down. I’d sit and rock him,
holding him close so he could feel my heart beating. I’d rub his back gently and whisper softly to
him that everything would be okay. It
broke my heart to see him so upset.
With the added stress of Charles no
longer sleeping through the night, I became even more eager to get to Cape Cod and the willing assistance of my mother and
grandmother. I wasn’t disappointed. On the day we arrived, Mother declared she
would take care of Charles at night.
When I thanked her and said she didn’t have to do that, she said, “I’m a
night owl and will be up anyway reading.
When I hear him cry, I’ll hold him until he falls back to sleep.”
True to her word, when Charles
began to cry, Mother moved a chair into the hall right outside my bedroom. She rocked him for an hour, just as I would
have done, holding him tightly and caressing his cheek. I could hear her murmuring to him to look
over at me in the bed. Because he could
see me and knew I was close by, he was content to be held by his Grandma Bert,
and I was content to let her do so. She
held him like that every night through the summer and, by the time autumn came,
he was once more sleeping through the night.
My mother did something else for me that
summer. Within days of our arrival at
the Cape , she realized that no matter how much
effort she put into training Bridie to properly care for the children and help
with the housework, it wasn’t going to make enough of a difference. She fired the young woman and advised me to
call Leon
and suggest he look for help in his office instead. As a result, when I returned home to Newton , life was
easier. No longer did I have to split my
time between running the office and the house.
Not only that, as Connie grew older I found I could depend more on
her. She never complained about helping
with her younger siblings and appeared to be quite proud of the trust we placed
in her.
Often on Saturdays she’d take the three little ones
to the park or to the stores on Center
Street to buy their shoes and clothes. I would watch out the window as she pushed
the carriage with Charles and Jo snugly within and four-year-old Philip holding
tightly to the side. I was amazed at how
grown up and mature Connie could be at only ten years old. The four of them were such an unusual sight
that many of the store clerks knew them and took care to see that Connie got
all the help she needed. After running
their errands, the children would end up at Brigham’s for ice cream.
Connie
wasn’t the only one making my life easier.
Leon
often helped out at home, even though it was unusual in our generation for men
to do housework. One day when some
neighbors and I were chatting on my front steps toward the end of the
afternoon, Leon
walked over from the office, greeted everyone, and then asked if I’d started
dinner yet. When I said I hadn’t, he
said, “You just relax. Tonight’s my
turn.”
My friends were dumbfounded. None of their husbands ever cooked a
meal. One of them said, “You go on in
and help him get started. We’ll wait out
here for you.” I laughed and said, “Leon doesn’t
need any help from me. He likes to cook
and the kids always love it when he takes over the kitchen. He’ll check the pantry and refrigerator to
see what we have and then figure out what to cook. He meant it when he said I should stay out
here.”
Cooking was never a big deal in my
house. With so many more important
things making demands on my time, I looked for ways to get in and out of the
kitchen as fast as I could. Leon used to
call me the champion of the twenty-minute meal.
I could walk in the door at the end of the day, scrounge about in the
kitchen, and have dinner on the table before everyone else finished putting
their coats away.
Of course, this expedient approach
to mealtime did have its down side. One
day at the dinner table, Philip said, “Who’s the best cook in the world?” There was no question. They all decided it was Grandma Lena, and I
couldn’t disagree. I’d loved my
grandmother’s cooking since I was a little girl. After further discussion they came up with
Auntie Karyl, their father, and Grandma Bert.
While they were arguing over whether Nannie or Auntie Helen came in
fifth, Leon
leaned over and whispered to me, “You’re not going to make the top ten.” We laughed for years about it.
It was a
good thing that I was efficient in the kitchen because in addition to breakfast,
dinner and the afternoon snack that most parents provide routinely, I had to
serve lunch as well. Not only did I have
to make lunch for myself and the three younger children who had not yet started
school, I also had to plan for Connie because in our school district, the
children were given a one hour break to go home for a mid-day meal. Leon tried to schedule his patients
so he could join us as well, so I had six people for lunch every day of the
week and I tried hard to provide a healthy variety.
One of the
few dishes I really worked over was tuna salad.
It was one of my favorites and I’d always look for the freshest
ingredients at the grocery store, my mouth watering as I pictured digging in to
my delicious meal. Everyone else in the
family loved it too, except Philip. One
day, he said, “Mom, can’t you please make the tuna like Aunt Ceci?” She was Mary Louise O’Malley’s sister who
lived with them, and all the children in the neighborhood adored her.
After
Philip had voiced his preference for Ceci’s tuna over mine, I called to ask
what she did. She said, “I don’t do
anything. With that huge clan of mine to
feed I just open a can and put the tuna on a plate.” I thanked her and said I’d try it and see
what happened. Philip was thrilled. “Oh, thank you, Mommy, for making tuna fish
like Aunt Ceci.” For that day, at least,
I was the number one cook as far as Philip was concerned.
A few
months later, Philip turned five and the elementary school allowed me to place
him in kindergarten even though the year was half over. He loved going to school each day and his
teacher loved having him. He was by far
the youngest and smallest child there and became something of a class pet. He was oblivious to his special status and
proudly led a parade on the day his elementary school was moved from one
building to another, four blocks closer to our home.
The parade
was the principal’s idea. Knowing that
switching buildings might be traumatic for some of the students, she decided to
make it a big celebration, culminating in a parade in which each student
carried a few books from the old library to the new one. It was a community event with all the
families standing along the parade route, cheering the children as they walked
past. I took Charles and Jo in the
stroller to the park to watch, Biscuit on a leash close by my side. Philip wore a huge grin as he marched hugging
his books, waving to everyone. His smile
grew even bigger when his eye caught mine, and he walked a little taller. The newspaper sent a photographer and the next
day there was a picture on the front page of the local section showing all the
students and little Philip in the front row leading the way.
After the parade, I took the little
ones home and waited for the end of the school day. We had told Philip to stand at the door to
his new kindergarten classroom and wait there until Connie came to pick him
up. She would show him the way home from
his new school. What we didn’t know was
that Connie’s fifth-grade class was dismissed several minutes after the
kindergarten one. By the time she
arrived to get Philip, he was no longer there and the teacher told her that
everyone had gone home. Not waiting to
ask for help from the kindergarten teacher, Connie ran home as fast as she
could and rushed into the house with tears streaming down her face. “Philip’s lost!” she cried over and
over. After reassuring her that this
wasn’t her fault, I left her with Charles and Jo and ran back to the school as
fast as I could, trying not to think about how frightened and scared Philip
must be.
When I arrived, the principal and a
police officer were standing in front of the school by the crosswalk, having
just helped the last of the children safely across the street. I told them what had happened and they both
recalled seeing Philip leave about twenty minutes earlier, all by himself. Because he was so young, they had stopped him
to ask if he knew how to get home. He
responded with confidence that he would be just fine. They took him at his word and let him go. Before I had a chance to ask how they could
have trusted such a little child, the officer suggested I get in his car and we
could drive around the area. When twenty
minutes of circling the vicinity failed to produce any sign of Philip, the policeman
said we should go home and see if Connie had heard anything.
As we turned onto Grafton Street , I
saw another police car pull up in front of our house and Philip climbed
out. What a joyous reunion we had! Even Biscuit participated, jumping all over
Philip and knocking him over, as she hadn’t done since her first few days with
us. I hugged Philip and couldn’t let go
of him as we made our way up the front walk, onto the porch, and into the
house.
Connie and I asked him what
happened. He said, “I waited outside the
kindergarten for Connie just the way you told me to do, but when all the other
kids were gone and she hadn’t gotten there yet, some adult told me to move
on. I knew I could find my way home so I
started walking. After a while, though,
I couldn’t recognize anything.”
Connie said, “Were you scared,
Philip, when you realized you were lost?”
“Of course not. I found a policeman and told him what had
happened. He said I’d have to wait a bit
until he finished helping all the other children at the crosswalk. He let me stand in the middle of the street
with him when he stopped traffic. When
everyone was gone, I got to ride in the police car and he turned on his lights!”
Once safely in the car, Philip gave
the officer his address, but the policeman had never heard of Grafton Street . So Philip said, “Do you know the O’Malley
family, the one with five boys?” When
the officer said he did, Philip said, “I live right behind them.”
I asked Philip whatever made him
think the officer might know the O’Malleys.
He said, “I figured that all the police in Boston are Irish Catholic, and the O’Malleys
are Irish Catholic, so they probably knew each other.” He was right.
Because of Philip’s experience,
when Charles started kindergarten two years later, Jo and I walked him home
each day for a while until I was certain he knew the way. Charles was convinced he could find his way
home right from the start, confident that what happened to Philip could never
happen to him. I, however, wanted to be
positive. When I thought he was ready, I
told him he’d be on his own after school that day. But about twenty minutes before school let
out, I walked with Jo to the school and we hid in the bushes. When Charles came out of school, he at first
seemed fine, but then looked around frightened, unsure of what to do next. Jo and I popped out of the bushes and he ran
to us with relief, saying, “I could have gotten home alone.” For a few days after that, we hid and then
followed behind Charles until he got home.
That same fall, Leon began to
have trouble with a hiatal hernia. It
had gotten so bad that he asked his old mentor, Dr. Gross at Children’s
Hospital, to perform the needed surgery.
After examining him, Dr. Gross advised Leon to lose some weight and become
physically fit first. With the long
hours Leon
was devoting to his practice, he’d gotten out of shape and that was making the
hernia worse. Dr. Gross assured him that
if thinning down didn’t get rid of the pain, he would operate.
Leon and I talked about the situation
and wondered when he could find time to exercise. We were already busy every hour of every day
and at first didn’t see how he was going to do it. Then, one morning he sat up in bed and said,
“I’ve figured it out. We’ve always joked
that our only free time is between four and six in the morning. That’s when I can exercise. I’ll sleep a little less and use that time to
run.” He got up that very morning and
ran his first mile.
He arrived home sweaty and
exhausted, but excited by his experience, confident it would work. He ran on Commonwealth Avenue in good weather and
at the YMCA in bad. Each day he could
run a little bit further and, after a couple of months, he came into the house
all excited, saying, “By next spring I should be able to do the Boston
Marathon” and his training began in earnest.
Our home was right by the twenty mile point of the race. Leon asked me to drive him five
miles back along the route and then he’d run home. He found that easier than going out for
two-and-a-half miles and turning around.
Eventually it became ten miles, fifteen, and finally twenty miles all
the way out to the official starting line in Hopkington.
As the race drew nearer, he said he’d
hit a mental barrier. He’d successfully
run the twenty miles from the starting point to our house, but found it
difficult to push himself to keep going when it was so inviting to give up and
come home for a shower. He thought that
perhaps if I stood on the corner and cheered him on, he could keep
running. So I’d stand on our corner in
the bitter cold, sometimes in the snow, sometimes in the rain, hopping from one
foot to the other trying to stay warm, waiting for Leon to run by. It worked.
While I was driving him to his
starting point or waiting out on the corner for him, thirteen-year-old Connie
was in charge of everything at home.
Most of the time she just slept, but every once in a while one of the
younger children needed her or an emergency call came through on the office
phone in the house. When that happened,
I’d drive along the race route, watching for Leon , having already placed his
medical bag and a change of clothes in the car so he could tend to the
emergency without having to go home first.
That spring Leon ran his
first marathon. The year was 1962 and
the Boston Marathon attracted only 230 runners, just barely over one percent of
the athletes who typically run the race today, forty years later. It was April 19th, Patriot’s Day,
a holiday marking the start of the Revolutionary War, celebrated at the time in
only two states, Massachusetts
and Maine . Every schoolchild in Boston knew the holiday story of Paul
Revere’s famous midnight
ride “on the 18th of April in ’75.”
It took Leon over four hours to complete
the race, a time which today wouldn’t qualify him to run, but finish he
did. The local newspaper carried an
article about the popular pediatrician who’d started to run when already in his
forties. Friends, family, and patients
all stood on our corner to cheer him on, just as I had done many mornings
before daybreak while he was in training.
We would yell for all the runners, and the children would hand out paper
cups filled with water, long before official water stations were established.
It was more than an hour after the
front runners crossed the finish line by the time Leon reached our corner, but
everybody waited for him. We were all
there to watch Leon
and didn’t care that the race had already been won. As Leon drew near, one of our local
police officers drove by and announced, “Dr. Kruger is on Walnut Street near the hospital, and
running nicely.” Ten minutes later, he
came by again and said, “Dr. Kruger just turned onto Commonwealth Avenue and is running
nicely.” As we all stared up the street,
straining our eyes to pick him out in the distance, the officer came by one
last time and told us, “Dr. Kruger will be the next runner over the hill.”
As Leon appeared over the crest, a
roar went up from our corner as almost a hundred people showed their
support. Tears rolled down my cheeks as
I watched him run by. He’d worked so
hard for this moment and deserved every cheer he received. The noise of the crowd didn’t die away until Leon was
completely out of sight again, off on his way to the finish line six miles
beyond.
Afterwards, everyone walked over to
our house to party while awaiting our hero.
Henry drove downtown to pick Leon up at the end of the race and
bring him home. As soon as they walked
in, Leon
was greeted with accolades from all.
Then he grabbed a bite to eat, dragged himself upstairs to bed, and
slept until morning. This became our
annual ritual.
A few days later I was in a local
store when the saleslady started telling me about seeing Leon ’s name in
the newspaper. Another customer
overheard us and asked if he was written up because he was such a famous
physician. I said, “No, he was written
up because he’s a famous nut.” The woman
turned to the saleslady and said, “I was just curious because I know him. He’s my pediatrician and he’s
wonderful.” The saleslady smiled and
introduced me. “This is his wife.” We shook hands as I said, “I think he’s
wonderful, too.”
He was an excellent pediatrician,
although like many physicians, he sometimes had difficulty doctoring his own
family. There was the time when Jo broke
her wrist falling down our back stairs. Leon looked at
it, gave it a kiss, and sent her off to school.
It wasn’t until the school nurse sent her home that he examined it more
carefully and realized it was broken.
Then there was the day Jo slipped on a rug and split
her chin open. Leon bandaged
her up and tried to call the emergency room of Newton-Wellesley Hospital
After he got through to the hospital, we drove over
with Jo. As he removed the sloppy
bandage on Jo’s chin, the intern in attendance jokingly chided Leon with,
“What kind of a bandage is that, Doctor?”
Without hesitation, Leon
answered, “That’s not a doctor bandage, that’s a daddy bandage.”
Everybody knew that Leon preferred
to separate his friends and family from his medical practice. He’d always balk at giving medical advice in
social situations and this irked his mother.
If she didn’t feel well, she expected her physician-son to take care of
her and was quite annoyed when he wouldn’t.
One day, I had picked up Grandma Lena and my mother-in-law for lunch
with Leon and the children, and afterwards the two of them were talking on the
back porch while I cleaned up the kitchen.
This was our routine a couple of times each week.
On this particular day, they were
discussing medical problems and Grandma Lena raved about how wonderful Leon had been
to her when she was ill recently. I
could hear the irritation in Nannie Annie’s voice when she responded by asking
what it was that Leon
had done. I glanced out and could see
from the expression on her face that she was furious that Leon took care
of my grandmother, but not his own mother.
I laughed to myself when Grandma Lena said, “Leon was such a dear. He gave me the name of an excellent
physician.” That’s exactly what Leon would have
done for Nannie had she asked, but whereas she saw it as an insult, Grandma
Lena viewed it as special treatment.
Perhaps my Pollyanna way of looking
at things came from Grandma Lena. Her
philosophy of life was a positive one.
Once, as I was feeling sorry for myself after dragging eight barrels of
trash up our long driveway, she told me how fortunate I was to have the
strength to do it. When her friends
would comment on how hard she worked at the Cape
helping to watch her great-grandchildren, she said, “It’s a lucky woman who has
a reason to get out of bed at my age.”
Grandma Lena was never one to
indulge in self-pity. She’d worked hard
her entire life and enjoyed every minute of it, never seeming to care whether
others knew of her efforts. I didn’t
have her self-confidence. It bothered me
that Leon’s mother never acknowledged how much effort it had been for me to
support our household through all his years of medical school and the early
days of his practice. I’d often heard
Nannie Annie say, “My poor Helen” and wished that – just once – she’d say it
about me. After all, my sister-in-law
was well-to-do, had live-in help, and enjoyed a great deal of free time. I was struggling to make ends meet, did all
the household chores, and had almost no time to rest. I longed to hear my mother-in-law say, “Poor
Aura.”
Then, one afternoon, it finally
happened. Lena
and Annie were on the back porch chatting after one of our lunches together,
and I overheard my mother-in-law say, “Poor Aura, she works so hard.” I was so happy I almost laughed out
loud. Later, after I had dropped off
Nannie at home and was alone in the car with Grandma Lena, she started to talk.
“Aura, you know how much I love
you.”
“Yes, Grandma.”
“More than life itself.”
“Yes, Grandma.”
“So you know I say this because I
care about you…Don’t ever let me hear
anyone say, ‘Poor Aura’ again! If you’re
tired and working too hard, you don’t let anyone know. You put on makeup, dress well, and hold your head
up high.” As I listened to her advice
and knew she’d always lived by it herself, I was too embarrassed to admit how
much I’d craved hearing those words from Nannie Annie. Somehow, my desire to be pitied evaporated. I saw the difference between wanting
recognition, which is healthy, and pity, which is not. Believe me, no one ever said “poor Aura” again!
I’d been guided by my grandmother’s
wisdom ever since I was a small child.
There were many times that she helped me through hard times, sharing her
strength with me during occasions I was unable to find it in myself. At over eighty years old, she was still a
strong, vibrant woman and I think I viewed her as invincible. As a result, I took it hard when her status
changed in an instant.
Grandma Lena had been riding in a
taxicab and there was an accident. She
was thrown through the windshield and suffered a major stroke, and then lay in
the hospital in a coma for many weeks.
At least we knew she was getting the best care possible with our good
friend, Dave Kaufman. I visited as often
as I could and Dave kept me up to speed on Grandma’s progress. After six weeks, he said, “We’ve done all we
can for your grandmother. It’s time for
her to leave the hospital. She’s no
longer in a coma, but she’ll never walk again.
She’s completely paralyzed except for the use of her left hand. She can’t speak, but I believe she
understands everything we say.”
My thoughts strayed to the
character of Monsieur de Villefort in Alexandre Dumas’s book, The Count of Monte Cristo. When M. de Villefort described his father to
the Count, he said, “…he can neither move nor speak, nevertheless he thinks,
acts, and wills…” When I first read that
description as a teenager, I was deeply disturbed by the image and had
nightmares about it for weeks. Now my
grandma was in the same position.
Leon and I investigated the nursing
homes in the area and couldn’t find anything we liked. This was twenty-five years before our
legislators recognized the need to regulate nursing homes and the conditions
were deplorable. It was clear that the
places we visited were understaffed.
Residents were routinely ignored and, in the worst of cases, abused. I was heartbroken at the thought of placing
my grandmother in one of these homes. Leon shared my
feelings and, after a few days of fruitless searching, he suggested we move
Grandma Lena into one of our front bedrooms and hire a live-in aide. I loved him so much for his generosity, his
willingness to open our home to her.
The children grew excited at the
prospect of having Grandma with us.
Charles and Jo, who shared the room next to ours, thought nothing of
giving up their room and moving to the playroom on the third floor. When the ambulance arrived and the orderlies
put the stretcher down in the front hall before carrying it upstairs, the two
of them ran down the stairs calling out, “Grandma Lena’s here! Grandma Lena’s here!” and jumped on top of
her. The orderlies smiled at me and
said, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Kruger. They
don’t have to get off. We can carry them
up too.” The two clung tightly to her as
the orderlies carried the three of them up the stairs.
Every day after school, the two
little ones ran straight to Grandma Lena to tell her about their day. They’d race up the stairs, for the first to
arrive got to sit on her left side, holding the hand that could squeeze
back. I’d stand in the doorway, watching
them chatter away. I could tell Grandma
enjoyed the hustle and bustle. She’d
always loved being with children and teenagers, often saying, “They are the
future. It’s better to be around the
future than the past.” As the months
went by, that time with Grandma Lena became very important to the children. It didn’t matter to them that she couldn’t
speak. She could answer their questions,
showing her response with her left hand, one squeeze for yes, two for no. I couldn’t help but think how fortunate my
children were to have their great-grandmother in their lives. Inter-generational family relationships had
been an important part of my childhood, and it was reassuring to see the
tradition continue.
My children grew up knowing the
value of family. It’s not surprising
that this had two very different impacts on Connie. She knew she was loved and accepted by her
extended family. Despite this, she
worried that as an adopted child, she wasn’t truly part of it. I became more aware of her insecurities one
day when she asked me not to tell her siblings that she was adopted. She was afraid she hadn’t been the greatest
big sister and wanted to improve her relationships with each of them before
they were told. Although I reassured her
that she was a wonderful big sister and the other three loved her very much, I
couldn’t allay her fears.
The question of when Philip,
Charles, and Jo should learn of Connie’s adoption was a difficult one. I wanted them never to remember a time when
they didn’t know, seeing that as the avenue to greatest acceptance. Yet, I believed it was her story to tell or
not as she saw fit. I had thus delayed
saying anything until she was old enough to be part of the decision. Perhaps that was a mistake on my part, but
there were no support groups in those days to help me work through the many
issues surrounding an adoption, and I did what I thought best at the time. When Connie raised the issue herself, I
promised I would honor her wishes and not say anything, but advised her to tell
them as soon as she could, pointing out it was better for them to learn it from
her than from somebody else.
A few months later, the four
children and I were sitting at the kitchen table having lunch when Philip said,
“Connie, the O’Malley kids say you were adopted. Were you?”
Connie and I looked at each
other. I said nothing, but tried with my
smile to convey to Connie to go ahead and tell him, that it would be okay. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Yes, Philip,
I was adopted. Does it make any
difference?”
Philip asked, “Does it mean you’re
going away?”
When Connie said no, he shrugged
his shoulders as if to say, “As long as it doesn’t mean you’re going away, then
it doesn’t matter.”
I was pleased with the
conversation. I knew my children valued
family as much as I did, and it was wonderful to get that sweet confirmation
from Philip that he knew his big sister was family, whether or not she was
adopted.
So much of our focus in those years
was on our extended family. One day Leon ’s maternal
aunt called to say that his mother had collapsed and was in an ambulance on the
way to the Newton-Wellesley
Hospital Leon was seeing patients and
couldn’t get away immediately, but I jumped in the car and drove to the
hospital as quickly as I could. I ran
into Dave Kaufman at the hospital entrance and he gave me an update. Nannie had suffered a major stroke just like
Grandma Lena’s, and the prognosis was not good.
A couple of weeks later, my
mother-in-law was still in a coma. Leon
and I were sitting in her room when his sister Helen walked in. I left for a short time to give brother and sister
some privacy and when I returned, they were discussing what should be done,
both appearing highly uncomfortable with the prospect of making any
decisions. At first, I felt as if it
were not my place to offer suggestions.
Eventually, however, recognizing that I was in a unique position to
comment because of my experience working so closely with Grandma Lena, I
thought I owed it to them to speak up.
I shared with them that over the
past year I had discussed my grandmother’s condition often with David Kaufman,
wondering if we had done the right thing in saving her after the car
accident. I asked him why the hospital
had performed heroics on my grandmother, knowing that if she survived, her
quality of life would be greatly diminished, that she would be paralyzed,
unable to speak. David had answered that
the hospital was legally required to do everything possible. Only in a nursing home could she have been
allowed to die peacefully in her sleep.
Knowing how difficult it is to
evaluate the situation and determine the right course of action when the person
involved is an immediate family member, I offered to take responsibility,
saying that if Leon and Helen would authorize me to do so, I would work with
David to transfer their mother as quickly as possible to a nursing home. They sighed audibly, thanked me profusely,
and put everything in my hands. David
said I could move Nannie after three weeks and recommended I look into a new
nursing facility he knew about only four blocks from my home.
It was a brick house with five
bedrooms owned and run by a dedicated registered nurse, Mrs. Muller. I was impressed with her when we talked and was
pleased when she said she had a vacant room for my mother-in-law. We brought her from the hospital the next
morning and she passed away five days later, never having wakened from her coma. Soon after, we made the decision to bring
Grandma Lena there as well. She lived
there for two more years, during which time I visited her almost daily.
Facing the deaths of my grandmother
and Leon ’s
mother helped us deal with the question of our own mortality. Leon invited a friend of his who
sold life insurance to come to the house to discuss our options. The three of us were sitting in the living
room when Bob suggested we should consider taking out insurance on me as well as
on Leon . This was an unusual idea in those days and Leon questioned
its validity. Bob answered by asking a
question in return. “What would you do, Leon , if you
lost Aura? How would you manage?” Without missing a beat, Leon replied,
“I’d have to hire fourteen people to take her place.” Point made.
We bought life insurance on both of us.
One reason I was so busy was that
we constantly had company. We hosted
large dinner parties three or four times a month. The neighborhood children ate often at our
home and my parents often joined us for Sunday dinner. Karyl and Herb would come for the weekend
and, although they’d sleep at my folks’ house, they left their seven children
with us.
One time, Leon invited
the father of one of his patients to spend the night in our home. The mother had called Leon ’s office
number in desperation when she and her husband began fighting physically and
she felt as if she had nowhere else to turn.
Leon
got there as quickly as he could and separated the couple. After spending a long time trying to get them
to talk calmly, he realized it was hopeless for the moment and suggested the
man come to our house until the morning.
Leon
hoped the cool down period might help the couple to communicate better.
When they arrived, I told our guest
to take the bedroom on the third floor.
The following morning, when the children went up to the playroom, they
saw that the bedroom door was shut and assumed it was their uncle. They rushed into the room yelling, “Uncle
Everett! Uncle Everett!” and proceeded
to jump all over our poor guest. When
they realized it wasn’t their uncle at all but a perfect stranger, they fled to
the playroom. A few minutes later, our
guest walked into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, saying, “Who the hell is Uncle
Everett?”
I said, “I need God so I can thank
Him.”
“Whatever for?” Everett asked in surprise, “with the hard
life you have?” I tried to explain to Everett that although I
worked hard, I was blissfully happy.
He’d never thought about it that way, but found the philosophy
appealing. Perhaps that’s why he was
drawn to visit us so frequently.
One Christmas, Everett brought his fiancée, Carolyn, to stay through the New Year. Since Everett
had been married unsuccessfully three times before, Everett wanted our opinion as to whether he
and Carolyn were right for each other. Leon
and I loved her immediately, although we realized there were a number of major
problems to surmount. He was a Jewish
atheist; she was Catholic. He was almost
fifty; she was in her twenties. He had a
college education; she had never finished high school.
Each night after the children were
in bed, we sat in the dining room for hours sipping coffee and discussing their
situation, with the room lit only by candles.
Years earlier Mother had labeled such talks “midnight conversations,” saying they were
productive because people lowered their defenses when they were tired and thus
spoke more openly. Through our talks
that week, it became apparent to Leon and me that the two of them made a
wonderful couple and we gave them our blessing.
On New Year’s Eve, we threw a party
and after observing Everett and Carolyn throughout the evening, one of our
friends – a lawyer named Lou Callas – kept saying, “Let’s have a wedding
tonight!” When the couple agreed, Lou
called the Assistant Mayor, a personal friend of his, and asked him to perform
the ceremony. Everyone at the party
drove to the Assistant Mayor’s home close to midnight and witnessed the marriage.
The holidays ended and the
newlyweds returned home. A few weeks
later, Philip turned ten and announced that he wanted to deliver papers. He’d been eager for a route for over a year, but
the newspaper had a policy saying that boys weren’t eligible until they were at
least ten years old. I told Philip he’d
have to wait a few days before I’d have time to take him to the Boston Herald’s
distribution office, but he didn’t want to wait. He walked over to apply for work and was
given a route in our neighborhood. He
came home excited, having been told that thirty papers would be dropped off at
our house early the next morning. All he
had to do was fold them neatly, place them in a delivery bag he’d been given,
and take them to all the addresses on his route. He spent the rest of the afternoon practicing
and making sure he knew where all of his customers lived.
He was awake by five o’clock in the morning, eager to get started. He looked out on the porch, where I had told
him he’d find his papers, but no papers appeared. He’d pace about for a few minutes and then
look again, only to be disappointed once again, frustrated that he’d been
forgotten. After an hour, he woke me and
said, “Mom, the papers aren’t here yet.
What should I do?”
I went downstairs, opened the door, and looked for
the papers. There they were, piled
neatly at the end of our driveway.
Because I had told Philip they’d be on the porch, he’d never looked any
further. Such is the trust of a
ten-year-old. He ran outside and brought
them in to the front hall. I untwisted
the wire that bound the stack and he began to fold the papers neatly, just as
he’d practiced. In the meantime, Jo had wakened
and when she heard us getting ready, came downstairs to help.
When all the papers were neatly tucked into the bag,
I hugged Philip goodbye and he brought his bike out from the back yard, excited
finally to be on his way. There was one
problem. The delivery bag was now so
heavy that Philip had trouble getting on his bike. After trying unsuccessfully a couple of
times, he cleverly pulled the bike up next to the curb to give himself a few
extra inches. He threw his leg over and
tried to sit down, but the momentum of the bag made him fall over. Jo and I watched from the window and she
could feel my tension as I tried to decide whether to go help Philip or let him
work it out on his own, which he finally did.
Trying hard to sound grown up, seven-year-old Jo said, “Mommy, there
goes your boy.”
Later that week, we had Philip’s bicycle fitted with
baskets, which made his job much easier.
Jo continued to help fold papers most mornings and sometimes, if he was
walking, kept him company. If Philip was
sick, or just didn’t want to deliver the papers for some reason, seven-year-old
Jo handled the route instead, thoroughly enjoying herself. Several months later, Philip was given the
opportunity to expand his route to three times its size, which he did. He quickly discovered, however, that he
didn’t like having the larger route as much as he thought he would and asked Jo
if she would deliver the papers to his original customers while he took care of
the new ones. Jo accepted his offer and
he became her unofficial supervisor, paying her from the money he received.
Each morning, Jo and Philip would set off together,
clearly having fun, and Charles decided he wanted to join the party. He went to the office and introduced himself
as Philip’s little brother. Although he
wasn’t yet ten years old, the distributor agreed to start him out with a small
afternoon route, given the family history of doing a good job. The distributor was astute enough to
recognize that Philip’s success was due at least in part to the support of his
parents, who helped out by driving on those days when Philip couldn’t manage on
his own.
Charles lasted less than a week before he gave
up. Jo, however, loved her new
responsibilities and eventually decided she wanted them to be official. Having seen the newspaper break its own rule
and let Charles have a route when he wasn’t yet ten, she was convinced they
would break the rules for her as well.
When she got to the office, she was told they’d been able to stretch the
age requirement for Charles, but she was just too young. Besides, they didn’t hire girls.
Jo was outraged.
The women’s liberation movement hadn’t yet taken hold, but Jo wasn’t about
to wait for it. She wrote a petition
saying she’d been delivering the papers for some time already, and should be
allowed to do so officially. She then
walked her route knocking on doors and asking each of her customers to
sign. When she brought her petition back
to the distribution office with several signatures, the supervisor, worn down
by her persistence, gave in and Jo became the first female newspaper deliverer
in Boston .
Jo took her job seriously, just like her older
brother before her. Not satisfied with
throwing the papers from her bike, she walked up to every house so she could
place the paper under the front door mat.
If there was a screen door, she’d open it and leave the paper between
the screen and main door. If the mail
slot in the door was big enough, she pushed the paper through. She continued delivering papers through the
rest of the year, but as winter approached, her health began to suffer. She was so dedicated to her job that she’d
never call in sick, resulting in an inability to get over even a minor
cold. After we’d put her on antibiotics
for over a month with no result, we made her give up her route and she improved
dramatically.
Soon after that, we had more to
worry about than Jo’s health. Helen and
Henry’s youngest child, Susan, was a troubled teenager. They confided to us that she’d been seeing a
psychiatrist since she was eight years old and had recently been admitted to a
private, psychiatric hospital, where she was being held in a high security ward
to prevent her from hurting herself.
I’d known that Susan was going
through a difficult time. When the
Lerners last visited, she’d followed me into the bathroom where I was sorting
laundry, and she began to sob, saying she didn’t want to go home. We sat on the bathroom floor for over an hour
as she shared her problems with me, focusing on her strained relationship with
her mother. Having had my own ups and
downs in my dealings with Helen, I understood perfectly how Susan felt, but
didn’t see what I could do other than be supportive. When I heard she’d been committed to McLean Hospital
I began to visit Susan as often as possible, and the
family authorized the social worker to discuss case details with me. Within a few months, Susan was well enough to
be released from the hospital, but the psychiatrist and social worker didn’t
want to send her home, believing her problems would return. When I heard this, I offered to have Susan
live with us – if it was okay with my husband and her parents. Susan’s psychiatrist objected to the idea. He said that Susan was both suicidal and
homicidal and it would be irresponsible of him to place her in a home with four
younger children. Suicidal Susan might
be, but I knew in my heart she’d never hurt me or mine, and I convinced the
doctor to let us try.
Helen and Henry were grateful. They offered to pay us for our efforts, but
we refused, saying this wasn’t about money.
In response, Helen asked us to think of something we truly wanted, and
perhaps she and Henry could give it to us.
Leon and I knew we wouldn’t accept anything, but it was fun thinking
about it for a few days. After much
discussion, we agreed that what we wanted more than anything else was something
the Lerners could never give us – two more hours in every day.
Susan quickly became an integral part of our
household. The younger children adored
her and Charles, who was beginning to display emotional problems of his own,
found her to be wonderfully supportive, someone with whom he could share his
thoughts with no fear of being judged. What
I remember most are the many serious discussions Susan and I had while everyone
else was away at school or work. She
often asked me questions about the choices Leon and I had made regarding how to
raise our children, and compared my answers to what she had seen in her own
family. One day, she seemed particularly
disturbed as she said, “Auntie Aura, I know you believe in being honest with
the children. Why do you lie to them
about money?”
Initially, I was quite confused, for I didn’t recall
saying anything untrue regarding our finances.
When I asked her to explain, she said, “I heard you tell them today at
lunch that you’re rich.”
“But, Darling, we are rich. We have a
beautiful home in a nice neighborhood and food on our table every day. We’re better off than ninety percent of the
world’s population.”
Her answer made me laugh. “Then why do my parents always refer to you
as ‘the poor relations?’”
We talked for a long time about how people often
have different attitudes about money.
Compared to her parents, we were, indeed, poor. We had no extra funds for elaborate vacations
and our children often had only two sets of clothes, one on their backs and one
in the laundry. But we had everything we
needed, and we were happy with what we had.
Perhaps it was that sense of satisfaction that made
our home a haven to troubled teens. A
few months after Susan came to live with us, Karyl’s oldest son began having
difficulties as well. He, like Susan,
spent some time in a mental health hospital.
When he was released, he decided to try going to college and came to Boston to talk with the
Admissions Director at his mother’s alma
mater, Boston
University Hartford .
When he arrived, he was excited. Not only had he been allowed to begin school
halfway through the year, something that was very unusual in those days, he had
auditioned for and been accepted into the orchestra. The day couldn’t have gone better. He did, however, have one concern. Stephen told me he didn’t feel ready for
dormitory life and asked if he could live with us for the spring semester. Leon and I discussed the possibility that
evening. There were already seven of us
living in the house, but we could make room for one more. It was a great big house that cried out to be
filled with children and teenagers. It
was my Plumfield.
We called Karyl to tell her the
news and she said Stephen would arrive the following morning. When he did, he had two heavy suitcases. One had books and the other had records. No clothes.
I called Karyl and she put them in the mail to us. That was our first indication of the difficulties
we would have with Stephen. He lived in
his own world, driven by his music. He
monopolized the piano, playing several hours each day, oblivious to anybody
else who might want a turn. Jo said she
didn’t mind. She loved to sit on the
bench next to Stephen and turn the pages of his music, pleased she could follow
along even though the music was quite complex.
Charles, a talented pianist himself, said he didn’t mind either. He said, “It’s okay, Mom, I’ll practice when
Stephen’s at school.” I, however, found
it a little more difficult to accept Stephen’s behavior, not comfortable seeing
my children chased away from their own piano.
And it irked me when I’d call Stephen to join us for dinner and he’d ignore
me.
Susan presented a different set of
problems. One day when I was helping in Leon ’s office,
Susan came running in to tell me an electric cord on the third floor was
sparking. I dashed into the house,
grabbed a wooden salad fork from the kitchen and flew upstairs to unplug the
cord. As I looked at the cord later and
saw what looked like knife marks on it, I realized Susan had probably been
trying to start a fire and I wondered if the fire that destroyed the Lerner
home was set by Susan. I thought about
the psychiatrist’s warning that Susan was both suicidal and homicidal, and felt
grateful that something made her change her mind this time, and she ran to warn
me.
As the months wore on, I began
feeling as if the situation were out of control. Neither Stephen nor Susan respected the
limits set for the household, acting as if the rules didn’t apply to them. I called Susan’s social worker at McLean to seek her advice. I’d always been impressed with her when we’d
talk at the hospital, and thought she might have some good ideas. She told me of an old Bedouin saying. “If you let the camel put his nose in your
tent, it won’t be long before the whole camel is inside.”
She said I had invited not one, but
two camels to put there noses inside my tent.
Now they’d pushed themselves all the way in and I was overwhelmed. She said, “They’re teenagers and need to
understand their limits. Tell them the
rules and make it clear they must be followed or they’ll have to leave.” That gave me the freedom to do what I’d
already known I must. I told Susan and
Stephen about my conversation with the social worker, and they were responsive,
promising they would be more cooperative.
Not long after that, the school
year came to an end and Stephen returned home to his family for the
summer. Susan was feeling much stronger
and decided to strike out on her own by attending college in England . What had seemed like a crowded house was suddenly
spacious. Between my grandmother, my
mother-in-law, my niece, and my nephew, I’d spent several years taking care of
my extended family. Now, with only my
immediate family to worry about, life seemed easy once again…but not for long.
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