In the mid 1880's a woman in mid-state Vermont gave birth to twin boys. The labor was long and arduous and her bleeding was profuse. She died a short time later. The father was unable to care for the infants and they were seperately absorbed into two local families taking on their names. One of the twin boys was my grandfather. In his adulthood he moved to south central Massachusetts. He married and had four children. Three girls and my father. He suffered from severe melancholia and drank hard to find his way out. He was abusive and his wife often had to provide for the family. A few years before the great depression, a delivery man would come by and drop off groceries that my grandmother had ordered from the local market. He would always place a few extra items neatly tucked away which she would discover in the unpacking. They developed a relationship that soon had him moving to northern Vermont to prepare a place for them. The four kids were old enough to take care of themselves, they reasoned. Once settled, he wired her bus faire and she boarded for a new start at life. Once the plan was discovered, my father hitchhiked the 300 miles of backs roads and bi-ways to get her back. Once he arrived and located them, he roughed up her suitor and they took the long bus ride home together. Not long after they arrived home, she was back on the bus and returned to Northern Vermont where she lived out her life. Her suitor was the only grandfather I ever knew and my father loved him. There is so much more to this story. We all have interesting family histories, do we not?
Random thoughts
Recently I had my son install some foam board insulation under the flooring of my mudroom which has been at one time part of the porch outside of the kitchen door. You see, we expanded the kitchen by tearing out the partition that separated it from the small mud room and pantry making for one large entry way in which you could take off your boots and hang your coat. He tore this picture away from the poorly insulated wall. It is from a 1914 newspaper. It is Winston Churchill. The headlines tell of the allied victories taking place in France against the German war machine. Of course this made me think of my father's involvement and eventual p.o.w. status during the second world war. Do we ever stop killing each other and fighting for one cause or one country against another? The answer is, "No." Then I thought of this story from an old Taoist sage; It seems there was a man who came upon a "stinktree" on his property. Looking up to its tangle of leaves and branche...
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