Post 17: Family, Part 2

Fate dictated that my parents were to have no children for the first seventeen years of their marriage. My mother remembers their early years together with fondness despite her siblings’ growing families, which made Mamma and Daddy’s household of two more conspicuous by sheer comparison. Mamma and Daddy were Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Brad to my cousins.

By what my mother referred to as their “miracles” for the rest of her life, she became pregnant with my sister Kathryn or “Kit” the year she turned thirty-seven. Against all medical advice and to the disbelief of her obstetrician, she delivered me three-and-a-half years later at the then-dangerous age of forty. We were reminded daily that we were wanted.

            My mother’s closest sister and, according to all family accounts, the source of both her glee and bedevilment was my aunt Camille. Camille claimed “street smarts” over academics, and freely admitted that my mother should have been awarded two high school diplomas: “Hers and mine,” referring to Mama’s dedication to Camille’s essays and homework. Beautiful in a way the camera loved, Camille met Uncle Leighton, or “Lee” as he was called, at the women’s fragrance counter at Grant’s department store at the height of the Great Depression.

“He pretended to need help finding perfume for—get this--his mother.” Camille liked telling the story and adored Uncle Lee. He and Camille married three months after my mother and father. Perhaps because she was never able to have children, Aunt Cam became “the fun aunt.”

Aunt Cam was the only one of her siblings to marry a “Yankee.” Yet, as much as his Bostonian heritage worked against him in the pseudo-progressive South, Uncle Lee was gregarious, handsome, funny, and generally impossible not to like. The cousins and adults alike were drawn to him. Uncle Lee’s greeting to a room full of cousins was always, “Hello, young America!” Comparing notes as adults, the cousins agreed that Cam and Lee would have made extraordinary parents.

            Mama’s youngest sister, Emily, was more reserved than her older siblings, perhaps because she grew tall as an adolescent, which made it difficult when it came to boys. According to Aunt Virginia, Emily tried to hide her height by stooping slightly when with her dates, until she met Hal Wharton.

Uncle Hal was an Army Corporal when he met Emily at a USO dance just after V-J Day. Hal was good dancer, handsome, and Emily didn’t have to stoop when Hal stood nearby, nearly an inch taller.  True to family progenitors, Emily and Hal had two children, Fisher and Natalie, in quick succession, followed by the last of the cousins, Hal, Jr., and his twin sister, Haley, seven years later.

            It is fair to say that, as our large, extended family grew, so did alliances and allegiances that survive to this day. These special bonds have grown across ages, genders, and disparate beliefs, habits, preferences, and incidents. As cousins, we formed the most unlikely and yet destined friendships. Over the years, many of us became separated by time and distance. We forged bonds, strained and broke them and, with the benefit of time, came together again, having grown stronger at the point of the break.

Time has claimed all the aunts and uncles, most recently Emily, who died in her eighties with her daughter Natalie at her side. I was drawn to Aunt Emily in her last years, as she was the last surviving connection to my mother and another part of my life long passed. In those intermittent conversations with Aunt Emily, I reconnected with Natalie, whom I found as funny, engaging, and loving as the little girl who figured so prominently in my growing-up years. It wasn’t that I loved Natalie more than the others; it was her status as “almost sister” that provided us with a trove of memories, especially of our childhood summers.

In those early days, summers at our house meant three things: no school, the onset of swim practice, and the arrival of Natalie. My own sister, Kit ,was born exactly a month after Natalie, and they became not only devoted cousins, but also inseparable summer friends. Aunt Emily, Uncle Hal, Natalie, her two brothers and little sister Haley lived several hours north in McLean, a suburb of Washington, D.C., which had gained notoriety as the home of several of the Kennedy clan and their large families.

            The summer itinerary rarely varied. School ended on or about June 6. Swim practice started five days later. Natalie arrived either with her parents or, when she was older, by train no later than June 15. My only frustration with her visits was that Kit got a pass on swim practice several days a week while Natalie was visiting. I remember feeling it was vaguely unfair, but the feeling usually passed quickly. I actually liked swimming and gladly started most summer days in the cold, chlorinated water of the country club pool. In off-practice hours, I was glad for Natalie’s company, as she was a buffer between Kit and me, and often took my side when Kit pulled big-sister rank.

            On the weekday mornings when Kit was given a reprieve from swimming, she and Natalie often walked up the hill to the Hamp house, where Celia Hamp, Kit’s good friend since grade one, lived with her rapidly expanding family. It seemed there were children everywhere.

In a paddock a short walk from the Hamps’ house they kept a horse named “Dot.” The Hamps were generally a lenient and good-natured bunch, a little loose with discipline for my mother’s liking. Nonetheless, their house was a hub for the neighborhood kids. Despite Mama’s concern for adequate supervision, as I recall, the only near-disaster happened early one spring morning when the Hamps, as well as my sister who was Celia’s sleepover guest, awoke to a house in flames. Everyone escaped unsinged, but the house lost its second floor. Though never proven, the theory everyone settled on was that Mrs. Hamp had fallen asleep while smoking in bed.

The Easter weekend following the fire, Natalie, Aunt Emily, Uncle Hal, Fisher “Fish” Hal, Jr., and Haley all arrived for the yearly Easter egg hunt at our aunt Virginia’s, and a visit with GranMag. As usual, Natalie stayed with us.

This particular Easter, the year I turned nine, I remember an unsettling tension between Uncle Hal and his oldest son. Fish was what our Aunt Cam called “uncontrollable,” and at fifteen, Fish was pushing limits the rest of us were too scared to even consider. He smoked behind Aunt Virginia’s garage and caught fire to the straw bales in her chicken coops. He took delight in teaching Aunt Virginia’s two sons, David and Denton (and me) how to flush cherry bombs down the upstairs toilet. Uncle Hal paid that plumbing bill. In a related explosive incident, Fish, Natalie, and I took my father’s prized collection of old seventy-eight records across the street into the neighbors’ fenced pony field, stuck firecrackers in the center holes, lit and then flung them, Frisbee-style, sailing, until they exploded like well-targeted clay pigeons. By the time we were discovered, my father’s collection had, quite literally, been blown to bits, save a few Skitch Henderson selections. There seemed to be no trouble that Fish could not find himself in.

Natalie was tamer, but still effortlessly manufactured her own brand of mischief. She was, and still is, the cleverest of the cousins, which is probably why I gravitated toward her. Hers was the kind of trouble that I could follow but never quite conjure up on my own. I wasn’t afraid to ride on her coattails, but I was terrified of being caught and labeled the irresponsible one, a moniker that Natalie seemed to shrug off without any real angst or visible guilt.

If Natalie reached sister status with me, then my cousins Denton and David filled the roles of the brothers I never had. Until I reached the age of understanding siblings and how they got here, I intermittently pestered my mother for an older brother. Since the answer was always a bemused but definite “No,” David and Denton would have to do.

                                                                    *

John, are they still here? Are you listening, David? Denton? It must be really boring coming to visit someone in my state. I can hear you some of the time. I’m having all these warm thoughts about you that I don’t think I ever told you. Worst of all, I can’t tell you now. Did you ever know how much it meant to be mentored, taught? Yes, I know Aunt Virginia made you do it some of the time. But it was my only chance. You two were my only chance. Kids are so cruel. If they sense a weakness—mine was sports—they grab on and tease. It could have been awful—worse--without your help. John, you’ll tell them that, won’t you?

                                                                    *

Cousin David, my sister Kit, Cousin Denton, and I were born in succession over the course of thirty-six months. David was the more affable of the two brothers: good-natured, slow to anger, and a quick study of almost any sport. David was a solid student, but not particularly motivated to excel academically. In a twist of irony, David would embrace academics in college, later becoming a tenured mathematics professor at a small private college in nearby Salem.

  Denton, by contrast, turned out to be the cleverer wise-ass of our lot, who learned early how to make both children and adults laugh. Denton had a knack for impressions, remembering and inventing jokes and generally engaging family and friends. However, in sports, Denton was not the natural like his older brother David, or his much older brother, Charlton, who was twelve and fourteen years older than his younger brothers. Denton had to work harder at sports than David, and harder than Charlton academically. When Aunt Virginia lost their father to a sudden heart attack on a sweltering July day, Denton had just turned five.

Charlton was nineteen at the time and already in college. David and Denton looked up to Charlton, who truly was the golden child of the family. Good-looking, athletic, and academically gifted, he carried the life credentials that his younger brothers craved, but age and distance made it difficult to engage their older sibling. By default and proximity, David and Denton took me under their wing.

I marvel at their patience.