Happy birthday to my little
sister, Rosie, born Rosemary, who added Theresa on the occasion of her
Confirmation, and now goes by "Rose," the only way I can see that she
has actually turned into our mother. Rosie turns 55 today. What? 55??
How can that be?
Oddly enough, I don't have a recent picture of her, but I do have one
from long ago:
Here she is on the occasion of her First Holy Communion
in May of 1958. The ring visible on her right hand is a turquoise stone
set in sterling silver, a recent acquisition. I had one as well. Our
grandmother had died only a few weeks before this event, and for some
reason our mother had taken us not long after that to Fitch's Trading
Post on Third Street downtown for the purchase of turquoise rings that
in my mind had something to do with money from my grandmother's
certainly modest estate. (Why turquoise and why jewelry for two little
girls – I was 11 – has escaped my memory, if I ever knew.)
Rosie lives near Paoli, Pennsylvania, an easy ninety minutes with only
two turns from where I live, although we don't see each other often (or
enough). She's been married for twenty-eight years to a man she met in
college, although they were not a couple until several years later. (I
met him for the first time their sophomore year in college, when I
stopped by my parents' house on the Saturday night after New Year's Day
to pick up some items I needed because my luggage had not accompanied
me home from Denver. My parents were in Florida. Rosie and her
boyfriend and the man she would marry and his girlfriend were ranged in
my parents' bed like Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, watching a movie
on broadcast TV. (It had to have been, since VCRs had not yet been
invented.)
She has two grown children, a son who works in the entertainment
business in New York City and a daughter who is a recent college grad
serving with
AmeriCorps
in California. Rosie is a reading specialist, now working almost
exclusively with teachers and children in the primary grades. She is an
authority
on using the writing process with very young children, and even has a
book
contract to produce a set of lesson plans to elicit meaningful
personal expression from children whose grasp of the written language
is still in its
earliest stage of development.
Our culture makes a big deal about turning 50 and older, treating it
like a tragedy. In fact I had to search the card racks diligently this
weekend for a birthday card for a friend turning 50 that did not
portray the event as an occasion for sighing and stupid jokes. My
friend, like my sister, is strong, fit, and confident, has accomplished
much, and has more yet to do.
At right you see our two grandmothers on the occasion of
our parents' wedding on June 22, 1946. Our paternal grandmother, on the
left, is 55 years old here. She would die just three years later (at
the age I am now), when I was just a toddler and my sister not yet
born. Our maternal grandmother, 68 on this occasion, lived 12 more
years. She had worked only briefly before her marriage in 1901 and,
like our other grandmother, spent the rest of her life caring for her
family and keeping house.
That's what mothers and grandmothers did then, and it was noble and
necessary work, done with love. I don't know if either of them ever
dreamed of being a teacher, or a writer, an activist or a music
producer or an optometrist. But they helped make it possible for their
grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be and do anything they want.
And I think they would be pleased with us.
