Barbara Rogers - Chapter 4

 Looking back, stories of the elders and ancestors.

I'm trying to answer some of the questions I wish I'd asked my grandparents.

Years 1964-1969

Buying our first house. 

We lived in an apartment for the first year in Hartford CT. Then found a nice little house, almost new, in a suburb of Hartford, Thompsonville CT. Our parents both chipped in to help us have the down payment. My husband was happily employed by Traveler's Insurance and on the cutting edge of use of computers to do things. My parents had moved to be 1. closer to their grandson, and 2. to work for the Christian Science mother church in Boston MA. I think actually the latter was the highest factor, but having my sister move with them and not having completed college herself, I dare say she didn't want the move as much as they did. They lived in town in an apartment for a year, then bought a house in Framingham MA. My sister went to Boston University or maybe Boston College, for a year or maybe 2. She visited us once with a boyfriend who had actually been one of my heart throbs in highschool, and we had an interesting mix of emotions with our 2 relationships as adult women as well as my little one year old son.

Religion was not part of our early marriage, since we'd both left Christian Science when we left Principia College (located on the bluffs of the Mississippi in Elsah IL.)

If you've ever had a one year old, you know that your life revolves around his needs. I didn't make any friends, and even had a miscarriage before he was 2. Not really being myself at all, just a baby-mother, I think.

And my mother-in-law was alright, with her doting on her first grandson, and trying not to be too critical of my lack of housewifely skills. I was glad there were magazine articles telling how to deal with everything in the home. But I thought I was independent and could make my own decisions (a trait I've carried all my life I'm afraid) so I know I made mistakes...both as a wife and mother, and certainly in the housekeeping department!

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Having our second son, while my husband was out of town on the only "out of town trip" his work had ever sent him on. I was due to have this baby in mid-September.

So the day of Aug 15, 1967 a friend of my husband's drops in (after calling and finding out Doug was in New York on a "work out of town trip"). This male friend had lived in the same household as I had when I met Doug in college, thus he was an "old friend." He had been in the area as a marksman at some competition, (following his Army training) and hoped to see us all, the family of 3-1/2. I invited him for dinner, but he didn't have a place to stay, so I offered him the couch. We had never never had any interest in each other romantically (at least as far as I knew, and I figured my 8 months of pregnancy made me pretty unromantic anyway.)

The next morning with a little boy waking at dawn, we all took turns in the bathroom. I was wearing my nighty and a robe (in August it's hot in Connecticut). And the baby was kicking up a storm. So "Knades" which is his nickname, asked if he could feel the baby, so I let him put his palm on my big belly. He then left and later when Marty was napping, I was lying down in bed, and felt something very wet between my legs. It was gushes of blood.

So, I got on my bedside phone, after grabbing the biggest towel I had to put under me...called doctor, neighbor, mother-in-law, and husband's work to notify him I was going to hospital. Doctor's office said go to ER right away. Neighbor's husband drove me in his Cadillac with white leather seats, and his wife came over and got Marty to come to her house until mother-in-law could get him. 

So we ran a few lights, and when I arrived at St. Joseph's Catholic Hospital in Hartford, having sat on a towel to not damage the upholstery, my neighbor husband was asked if he was the father by the nurse. He beamed and said no. He was beaming because they had just adopted after not being able to have their own children.

Then I lay in a bed on a monitor for a while...maybe a few hours with nothing happening. No contractions, no more bleeding, until suddenly I passed a clot. They wheeled me into surgery to have a C-section. I remember with my naivete' I said to be sure that if there was a question of which one of us, me or the baby, were to be saved, I wanted it to be me. I must have read a novel where Catholics would save the baby over the choice of the mother's life. They assured me that all would be alright. I doubt that got in my chart however!

I think as I was wheeled into OR, my mother-in-law appeared and said Doug was on a train back right now and would be here soon. And I was delivered of a healthy little boy, named eventually Russell, who was about 5 pounds and some ounces. It had been a placenta previa, where the placenta had been near the mouth of the womb, and started to separate as the baby got into position to be born. He was able to nurse and had a bit of jaundice, but after 4 or 5 days I think, we were able to go home. 

Doug did see me maybe in recovery, but definitely in my room, and had seen our new little one in the nursery. Remember how great it was to have a big window and be able to see all the babies? We hadn't decided on a name at the time of his birth, and that was our big project the next day as they wanted it for the birth certificate. There was discussion of naming him after my doctor who had saved both our lives, Victor. But fortunately we had some others to consider, and his middle name went with his father, Douglas, since our first son included my maiden name Rogers as Roger Martin. Doug also had Martin as a family last name somewhere. I really don't recall that there was anyone named Russell. And sometimes the nickname for Russell is Rusty, but he was a curly blond as a kid, then just a regular brown haired young man...not at all Rusty in complexion, so liked to be called Russ.

    

Our little family in Thompsonville, CT.

Russ around 2 years

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What were couples activities in the 60s?

Around 1967-9 we joined a Presbyterian Church, since it was led by a bearded minister who gave more modern sermons than we would have expected, Doug and I started a couples club, to get together with other young couples and socialize. I joined the choir. And I remember making lots of crafts for the various bazaars. The church also had a social justice orientation working with other organizations to help blacks have housing integration in our mostly white community. This was a big thing around Hartford's suburbs. We joined Housing Now, and our branch was named for Enfield, the town where we met and we also met some blacks who wanted the housing. There were busses to various places for demonstrations in 67 and 68. I never did that part, but I was active in another way.

I would get the ads and start calling owners about low cost apartments, saying what I wanted, based on a real black person's identified needs. I'd make an appointment to see the apartments, pick up the black lady, and we'd go see if it was what she wanted. Usually it wasn't, being a upstairs small unit in an old warehouse building. These days they probably are premium places, if the buildings haven't been torn down. I never had any confrontations with whoever was trying to rent these places, but neither did I ever find anything that would meet my "client's" needs. She needed to have transportation to work, which suburbs just made difficult. We moved before I felt I'd made a difference for anyone, which was disappointing.

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Buying our second house.

Well, there are always going to be geographical attempts to solve my problems (throughout my life.) But I tend to think of them as leaps into an unknown which Might Have been the Answer. (Right!)

We moved to be closer to town, a nice little house in Windsor. After my first son had been born, I worked some year or another in a department store. Another time I worked as a temporary employee in a new credit card department. The Connecticut Bank was sending out complete credit cards to a list of customers. It included someone making the actual plastic cards, collating, envelope stuffing etc. I became the supervisor of the temporary women, and liaison with the male computer programmers who had the lists of customers.  But since I was already pregnant at the time, I only stayed there a couple of months.

In Windsor we no longer went to church. We were kind of friends with our next door neighbors, one of their kids was about the age of one of ours, and the man of whom was a car salesman, so he helped us get a few almost new cars. I then worked on the staff of the Hartford Art School, which had just opened as part of the Hartford University. I wished I could have been a student actually, but did enjoy the atmosphere. I had another miscarriage when Russ was 2-1/2 so I quit working again. 

We painted the outside of the house a blue with white shutters. It had been tan and that reminded us of how we'd painted our first house dark brown with tan shutters. I don't know if that was the reason, but about the time we finished, I'd miscarried, and as a couple we were having a lot of problems together. I remember just taking a bus to another town one day, after the children were in childcare of course, and just checking into a hotel. I called my sister and said to tell my husband if he calls that I'm with her, but don't want to speak to him. I went home the next day, after walking around a new town and just feeling so "unencumbered" by responsibilities. And I continued the charade that I'd visited my sister in Boston.

Doug was the one who could certainly take responsibility and shrug off the irritations, at least it seemed that way to me. But he was seldom emotionally expressive (except good in bed obviously). We just didn't fit in the way married people were supposed to fit. I don't know if we tried couples therapy, which was a new thing in the late 60s, but maybe we did. See, how it impressed me?

Russ and Marty at our second house (in Windsor CT)

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So the next thing to happen was my mother-in-law having cancer. It was still whispered and used the initial "C" to talk if at all. After her mastectomy I visited her a few times, and of course she loved seeing her grandchildren. But I was asked to give her a bedpan, and that was the second time in my life a medical condition in an elder gave me a challenge and I failed completely. Well I did as she directed. But much as I wished her a good recovery, I was very afraid of her maybe dying soon. Time to move on!

I asked Doug to find a place where there wasn't snow. I'd had a skidding accident hitting head on into another car on ice before the second miscarriage. Since it was a few days later, I never put it together that it might have actually caused it. Anyway, Doug and I perused maps and Triple A stuff about Arizona, Florida and New Mexico (remember this was way before the internet!) He was pretty sure he could get a job in most places with his skills.

So Doug put out some feelers for various jobs that were in those areas of sunshine. When he was interviewed in Tampa, they hired him, and we took a month to sell the house, then live a week in his parent's basement before the papers were all signed, and then take a week to travel with the boys along the east coast on our way to the sunshine state in October 1969.

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I need to let you know the first time I was confronted by elder's disease was with my paternal grandmother in Houston, while I was visiting her from Corpus Christi with baby son Marty. Doug was on one of his Coast Guard trips, so my neighbor and her baby girl, and myself and Marty drove to Houston together, and then to Port Arthur where my friend had a relative she wanted to visit. My grandmother and I shared Thanksgiving together.

 And then the next night she groaned all night, and I couldn't figure out how to help this Christian Scientist. She would accept glasses of water, and spent a lot of time in the bathroom, but I never heard any vomiting. Anyway once the daytime came I had my son to care for (remember babies under 1 year?) Nearby wife of my Uncle Chauncey came over and worked with my grandmother in the bathroom. But the next day was horrible, as I'd barely slept, neither had my grandmother and her moans continued. I finally called my cousins who also had children and asked if I could come stay with them. They helped me rest a little, and I was able to drive to Port Arthur to get my friend and then back to my grandmother's to say farewell. She had had a practical nurse hired by then to help her (which was ok for Christian Scientists I guess.) I held my baby and said good-bye from the doorway. I was so afraid of her looking like she was about to die. I was not equipped at 22 to deal with death yet!

We drove back to Corpus Christi, our husbands returned home, and a few days later I got the call that my grandmother had died. 

So my parents drove down from St. Louis (they had done so in May when Marty was born, and now it was December.) Doug and I and Marty returned to Houston for the funeral. That was the only time I've been to a viewing, and the body just looked plastic, so I've avoided that ever since. The children were all being baby-sat at one of my cousin's houses, so the cousins could also be at the funeral. I felt like a failure to my grandmother, but she had one belief for physical care and I'd just moved into finding medical treatments but didn't know much yet. I hadn't been around anyone to give supportive care, since I was raised without much myself. Whatever problems my parents had, I never knew. There was a big DENIAL of anything physically wrong in their existence. And Doug didn't give much emotional support, just good responsible reliability!

There certainly were some good times in our life together, and I am focused perhaps on the challenges today. Once we took a spontaneous trip with newborn Russ and Marty to the Pennsylvania Dutch area and visit Delaware Water Gap. We went on at least one camping trip with a rented trailer to Sandwich MA. And we visited the newly opened Old Sturbridge Village, which I loved. We went to many movies that were indicative of the times, less romantic musicals and more thought provoking.

More about the next chapter of my life in Florida.