“Salisbury Beach’s Original South End”

I wouldn’t be so foolish as to say that Salisbury, as Massachusetts’ northern-most coastal community, is too popular as a summer destination, but I would allow that the slower, calmer pace of the off-season can be equally appealing.  It’s a contrast that evokes sharper awareness of nature’s offerings; one is more attuned to the behaviors of wildlife, less so, social behaviors.  

Although it takes a bit of extra work to ready myself (and the pups) for nature’s side of my front door in the middle of winter, it’s worth it.  Walking in my neighborhood is pleasant; as the oldest established neighborhood in Salisbury, it has great history – lots of Buswells, Stevenses and Pikes settled on the “Circular Road”, and family drama – rife with Hatfield and McCoy-like feuds – ruled the day.  Several homes still exist that once were occupied by descendants of our town’s first division settlers; also to be appreciated is a handful of ancient and towering trees that allow me to imagine their spindly forms from earlier times when they optimistically stretched skyward in front of or beside those homes with intriguing histories.  (I’m always fascinated by trees, especially ones that have so obviously been around for a long time, and Massachusetts is still counted among the states with the oldest tree populations.)

 

Even more pleasant for walking in our town is Salisbury Beach State Reservation.  Massachusetts’ Department of Conservation and Recreation does a fine job of keeping the beach groomed in the summer, and an equally fine job of clearing snow in the winter.  As the years have rolled by, the “season” (by which I mean, that period of time when the Rez plays host to a diverse panoply of visitors) has become longer and longer and characterized by, well, even greater diversity.  It is especially evident this year that our Reservation’s charms can be fully appreciated in the cold months, too.  Of course you won’t see RV caravans, school busses, or back-to-back traffic on the road in; instead, you’ll see solitary figures walking on the beach or dog walkers on the river or a boat here and there bobbing along on Black Rock Creek.  For sure, you’ll see birders – alone, in pairs, or in small clusters (and lately, a good-sized cluster of Mass. Audubon birders).  

 

Over the years I’ve learned some bits and pieces about the Rez’s history.  To begin, one should embrace the idea that the area was long referred to more generally as Black Rocks.  Right now is a good moment to reflect on an aspect of Salisbury Beach’s history, or more broadly, our coast.  Long before access was thought of in terms of Beach Road from Salisbury Square, people arrived via the Merrimack River – by curraghs, sailing ships, ferry boats, and later by steamboats.  It takes some work of the imagination, moreover, to visualize a much earlier time when the area featured a broad expanse of tall pine trees nuzzling the water’s edge. Dare to go back even further – thousands of years to an era when glaciers characterized New England and before the dramatic alterations wrought by the Fundian Fault, which caused our region’s land surface to become a “drowned coastline”; back then – as hard as it is to imagine – our coastline was several miles east of where it now lies.  

 

We’re more interested, though, in the modern landscape.  Today’s topography presents beleaguered dunes and marsh surrounding a flat, methodically gridded one-mile square of sandy campground with sites that are perfectly spaced apart.  Each site is adorned with a precisely placed scrub pine, the most meager bit of shade or privacy that the camper can expect.  (Truth be told, campers who stay at Salisbury Beach State Reservation don’t come for a woodsy, frontier-like experience; they come for the unrivaled enjoyment of the alluring beaches that are mere steps away). When you’re able to observe the mostly-dormant campground in the winter, the little pines tell their own stories.  When taken as a whole, their comically irregular and contorted stems lend a dynamic quality to the campground. Many of the crouching trees lean westward as if succumbing to relentless east winds, while others incline in random directions in droll defiance. 

 

One would think that this original “South End” always played second fiddle to what we view as the heart of Salisbury Beach.  However, it was a true hub “back in the day”, by which I mean from the latter half of the 1800’s up until its twilight era from the late 1920’s to the early 1930’s. Ferry passenger service from Plum Island and Newburyport proper, as well as regular steamboat service from up-river livened both the waters and the landscape around Salisbury Point and Black Rocks.  To bridge the transportation gap between Black Rocks and what we know as the Beach Center, a horse-car line was installed, later replaced by a steam “dummy” line, called the Seaside Railway but just as often simply referred to as "the dummy", which itself was subsequently upgraded to the “electric”.  In contrast with the current state road that runs a straight course from Beach Road to the river, riding high above the marshes, it more closely hugged the shore, running from Salisbury Point, the tip of land from which the jetty extends, to Broadway.  Such knowledge explains why we have Railroad Avenue; no physical evidence remains, however, to signal that we once had rail service along the ocean between the beach center and the south end of the beach. The gradual waning in popularity of the electric in the 1920’s can be attributed, not immediately to private automobiles, but to bus (or “jitney”) service.  And, of course, automobiles supplanted all other modes of transportation.

 

In the same way that evolving needs and desires - and nature’s forces – will re-shape the appearance and designs of a landscape, Black Rocks underwent its own metamorphosis.  Its transformation has at times been gradual and subtle; the River’s ever-shifting channel, for example, reminds one of the fickleness of nature. Likewise, the first wave of cottagers who craved the closeness of the water were – cyclically, it seemed – urged to move their structures back from the edge, especially after the most powerful storms.  Years would pass, complacency would set in, and the cottages would once again be lifted off their pilings and moved closer to water’s edge.  And so it went, at least until the ominous arrival of the Salisbury Beach Associates (SBA), aka “The Three Associates”.

 

Transformation of the Black Rocks section of the Beach at other times has been – arguably – more consequential.  Thus, as the Beach Center drew ever-growing numbers of day-trippers, weekenders, and other folks who craved the shinier enticements that imaginative business entrepreneurs were dreaming up at a staggering rate, Black Rocks gradually lost its appeal as the nucleus of seaside escape and revelry. The1930’s marked its grimmest period of deterioration, and the local citizenry recognized the peril that sustained neglect would occasion.  It was a very difficult moment of reckoning for the Salisbury community, and it was precisely at that historical juncture when it ceased to be just a local concern or a source of worry for Salisbury’s self-styled benefactors, the Salisbury Beach Associates, who still held the lion’s share of deeds for much of the beach area.  In reaching out to the Commonwealth, local politicians framed their arguments as messianic proposals to “clean up Salisbury Beach”.  The tactic of couching their appeals for appropriations and labor in a way that made transparent what was wrong with our beach had the predictable yet unfortunate effect of causing immense shame.

 

The event that would, in my opinion, most dramatically transform the space in both appearance and purpose was born out of this perceived crisis.  First, in 1933, the state acquired the 4.5 mile stretch of beachfront (a steal at under $30,000!); a mere 2 years later, the town ceded (according to a Boston Globe article dated 23, April, 1950) an additional “520 barren treeless acres” to the state.  (Fifteen years later, in 1950, people still bemoaned the absence of trees.) With this new and enduring arrangement, the town was able to benefit, if indirectly, from the grand designs of the state.  And this is the part of the Rez’s story that will have the ring of familiarity, for the state proposed a park that would draw visitors, not just from the customary upriver places such as Lowell, Lawrence and Haverhill, but from the western part of the state, as well as from bordering states.  (It was everyone’s good fortune that, through chance timing, much of the labor was funded through Works Progress Administration ((WPA)), Civil Conservation Corps ((CCC)), and Federal Emergency Relief Administration funds made available as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sweeping New Deal programs, and in each case administered by the state.)

 

Throughout Salisbury’s history there has been strong evidence to show our community’s sense of team play and good will.  It was true in 1812, 1863, and 1942 when the federal government established military installations at Black Rocks.  It has been true, also, whenever common interests summon cooperation – such as concerns, for example, the welfare of our shared Merrimack River.  In many ways, as hard as it sometimes is to reconcile that so much of Salisbury’s cherished beach was surrendered to the Commonwealth, the symbiotic nature of the relationship really does work in the favor of Salisbury’s citizens.  Each year (with perhaps the exception of 2020) the Reservation employs local people, as well as attracts countless visitors happy to spend in our stores, restaurants, etc. We still are able, too, – at any time of the year – to frolic in the ferocious surf (but only if one is insane), do some beachcombing, launch a boat for a day’s or just a morning’s fishing, marvel at the beautiful scenery, raise a pricey monocular to site the perennial snowy owl or the harbor seals that have hauled out on Badger’s Rocks, enjoy a picnic, cast a line from the river’s edge, fly a kite. . . need I go on?  

 

As someone whose formative years were (relatively) far from the ocean, I regard Salisbury Beach State Reservation as a blessing. . . a gift.  In my mind, to really appreciate its charms, you have to be able to measure it against places that don’t have a long stretch of beautiful ocean (and, of course, river).  Sure, I still consider myself a bit of a rookie even though my husband and I moved here with our 2 young daughters “way back” in 1985.  I’m trying to fit together all the historical moments that have shaped its present character.  One day I imagine I’ll be able to declare, aHA!  It all makes perfect sense now.  I have still so much to learn.

Bark-Bark-Bark

 Signing up for a Master Class on writing is a great idea.  That is, until your dogs start galloping around the house because they heard a tiny something irregular outside.  Maybe it was one of my neighbors driving up our private street.  Maybe it was a dog barking three miles away.  I didn’t hear it.  It was that faint.  But the natural response – if you’re a dog – is to go ballistic and bark-bark-bark your way from the family room, through the kitchen, on to the living room, reverse, through the kitchen, on to the family room, to the kitchen, back to the family room, back to the kitchen.  Bark-bark-bark.  So, Neil Gaiman’s thoughtful words about “subvert the familiar” don’t reach me the first time through; I see his mouth moving, his splayed hands reaching forward to add meaningful punctuation to something he was imparting.  I’m forced to replay that particular recommendation.  Bark-bark-bark.

How did I end up signing up for a Master Class on writing?  It began yesterday morning when I decided I wanted to enroll in a masters degree program on writing.  I googled “best online degree programs writing”.  I navigated over to bestdegreeprograms.org, because everyone knows that .org is the stamp of legitimacy.  I didn’t recognize the first in a list of 30-best, so I clicked on the second one, Southern New Hampshire University, because I did.  Of course I was fully aware that for the next who knows how long, I would be seeing sidebar ads for anything to do with academia.  In short order, I had “requested information”; no sooner had I clicked that button, and my phone rang.  Literally, it was “no sooner”, which I found vexing because my eyes had just begun to read what I could/should be doing in preparation for my call from an admissions person.  

“Hi, this is Tam.  How are you today?  Have you had a chance to think of questions for us?”  

“Well, Tam, no, as I just clicked the ‘request information’ button 7 seconds ago.”  

“Ha-ha-ha.  So, do you?  Have questions?”   

I had questions. . . plenty, not the least of which was, “Can I transfer credits for some classes I took a few years ago when I was first contemplating a writing program?” 

 “Well, how long ago?  

“1989”.  

“Oooooohh, we usually only accept up to five years.” 

“Is that because our brains decline and we don’t remember anything beyond five years?”  

“Ha-ha-ha.  It’s. . .uh. . . just our policy, but you can make your case for it if you feel strongly.”  (Of course I feel strongly. . . now. . . 32 years later.)

Before I hung up, I had promises of “We’ll send you the program description and the application link. We’ll send you the instructions to set up your student portal, also a link to our newsletter. And, oh(!) an authentic ‘Petey the Penman’ quill and inkstand, also an autographed glossy of Petey.” 

“Wait, what?”  This last rejoinder was you, and I inserted it just to see if you were still with me.  (But, honestly, their mascot is a strapping, colonial dude with muscular thighs and shoulders, powdered wig, dancing eyes and impossibly straight, white teeth.  (That last part needs to be read twice for dramatic historical anachronism.)

Tam then delivered as promised.  She sent about 200 email messages with all relevant information and links.  She sure was efficient.  But, here’s where up became down, and down up. Tam wasn’t Tam.  Tam was Tim, and not – obviously – a middle-aged woman whose smoking habit had imparted her with a deep, sultry voice.  So, I sat perfectly still for about five minutes, while my brain ratcheted up its synaptic function in a panicked effort at recall; I had a desperate need to reconstruct the conversation.  How did I not know that Tam was a man?  And, did I have a different kind of conversation because I thought I was talking with a middle-aged woman?  Would I have said things differently?  Would my off-hand comments have been more geared towards a young man?  Would I have even resorted to my usual quips about age and spent brain cells and, gosh, timessurehavechanged?  (It did seem as if my jokiness was not landing as deftly as I am accustomed to, although I may be casting it all in a different light given my “new knowledge”.)   It was a very revealing moment for me, for I realized how much we must tailor our speech depending on the presumed gender and age of the other person, even if the objective remains constant on both sides.  

So, I’ve naturally concluded that SNHU is not the school for me.  I couldn’t bear the thought of running into Tim.  

But, before I struck SNHU from my one-item list, I texted my niece, Michaela.  She is my reliable go-to when I want an enthusiastic yes, do it!  Michaela said, Yes, do it!

For comparison’s sake, I investigated University of Iowa’s program, too.  I’d like to say that when I added up all the dollars for the total number of credits, that that was the reason for abandoning the idea of another master’s program.  It’s much more likely that I considered how big a commitment it would be, and, as my closest family members and friends know, I am averse to commitment.  Even making weekend plans or - worse - deciding what to thaw for dinner causes me to squirm.  And I always have to have an exit or escape strategy.  For this reason, I’m called “Bolt” by my most observant siblings, because that’s often what I end up doing.  They’re very funny people.

The logical conclusion to this story is that I signed up for a Master Class.  I’m thoroughly enjoying Neil Gaiman’s – when I can hear his words between the bark-bark-bark of my dogs.

 

An Angry Liberal

 Dear Trump disciples,

I understand your distressed feelings as you witness your messiah being held to account for the lawless and treasonous behavior of some within your cohort.  It hurts, I’m sure.  It makes you angry, even.  He was your savior, the first person – of means (and unrestrained power, we must not forget) – to listen to, and give voice to, your grievances, your frustrations (I’m a hardworking American. . . a patriot; I pay my dues, and all I want to do is provide for my family.  I don’t want to be ignored.  I don’t want to be replaced by foreigners who speak American with funny accents and don’t know our customs and our ways).  When he said he’d bring back your America, show the world that you’d not been put on the sidelines; you put every ounce of your fragile trust in him.  Now those radical liberals, the superintendents of the swamp, are trying to permanently silence and castrate him.

 

So, while you might not have contemplated for a moment your own participation in a violent insurrection at our Nation’s Capitol (because, yes, that would be treason and very unpatriotic), you don’t blame the lawless hordes who charged the nerve center of our Democracy, armed with all manner of weapon, inflated and misguided purpose, and rage.  They were only acting on your commander’s entreaties to “stop the steal”.

 

But here’s the thing: Your man lost the election.  He didn’t have as many votes – electoral or popular – as Joe Biden.  That’s 74,222,960 vs. 81,283,361.  Do you see how that works?  Election officials and staff were not engaged in acts of subterfuge, there were no systemic irregularities, and there were no voting system software manipulations of tallies.  As one of the voters for the winning side, I want to say that, fragile egos aside, you need to accept the results, even if your man refuses to do so. 

 

It frightens me that so many of you are susceptible to conspiracies that prop up your wished-for goals.  It’s not that I naturally have greater insight into the truths that in one way or another may impact my life or the lives of those closest to me.  It’s that I approach statements of “fact” with just a modicum of skepticism; one is wise to prove any new facts before accepting them as truth.  So, stop accepting cockamamie conspiracy theories, stop propagating lies, pay attention to the science behind claims.  

 

And here’s another thing:  your “boss” is a master manipulator.  He says all the things that you want to hear, and soothes your wounded egos.  He knows how dangerous those illegal immigrants are, the rapists and murderers crossing our southern border.  He knows, too, that anything his predecessor achieved while in office is bad for the country.  He knows, too, that the tax re-structuring he implemented with his “Tax Cut and Jobs Act” favored the little guy; his sharp instincts foresaw that when corporations reaped the rewards of a 14% rate reduction, their innate generosity would translate into hefty wage increases for their employees.  Only his genius could imagine a better way for all of you.

 

And here’s the final thing:  our 45^th president fomented an insurrection.  His words propelled an angry mob to perpetrate barbarous acts in order to overthrow the results of a fair election.  The inescapable issue is his deeply flawed and reprehensible personality.  He came into office with it, and without doubt he’ll carry it with him throughout the rest of his life.  His insecurities, it must be pointed out, are dangerous to our country’s security.  If he is not held to account, his pernicious behaviors will continue, our nation will not heal, and an ominous precedent will have been set.  Willful ignorance where it involves that man is inexcusable.  You need to open your eyes to the truth.  Trump’s only agenda had been whatever aligned with his own selfish interests and succeeded in inflating his autocratic image, as well as stroking his narcissism just the right way.  In fact, it still is his agenda, and always has been, always will be.  Moreover, he didn’t lose because the election was stolen; he lost because the numbers were greater on the side of people who are sick of his incompetence and toxicity.  I was one of those voters, and make no mistake, while I accept your disappointment that your man lost, it enrages me that 1) you call yourselves American patriots, and 2) you think that my vote is somehow expendable, somehow less legitimate than yours.

 

One Angry Liberal

The Perennial Neophyte

 I. The McKennas Arrive in Salisbury, the Year is 1985

When my husband George and I first moved to Salisbury, Massachusetts in October of 1985, from the moment of arrival I felt we’d made a mistake.  No, that’s not quite true.  My doubts had already been growing during all the negotiations leading up to that day.  The homeowners selling the house made the process impossibly unpleasant, and as there was no broker in between us, hence no voice of reason nor any way to blunt all their miserableness, we endured a steady barrage of sheer meanness right through the closing. 

 

The skeptics among you are probably right now thinking, it takes two to tango.  Fair point.  The only thing that might have contributed to the sellers’ looniness was my husband’s plodding pace.  George was a shrewd consumer, and no one, absolutely NO ONE, was going to rush his first home purchase.

 

Perhaps, too, you’re not getting the most honest assessment from me regarding their behavior.  Were they really that unpleasant, really that mean?  I’ll allow that, being in my final trimester of pregnancy with my second daughter, some of my actions weren’t characterized by reasonableness.  And we were already running out the clock on our eviction.  Ok, I realize that that last statement in no way casts a more favorable light on me (or us, because George was in that bucket with me).  Disclaimer: the eviction was a planned one; the landlords were selling the house, and the new owners were doing a complete renovation.  Hopefully, I’ve cleared that up so there are no lingering reservations.

 

As I began to say (and then proceeded to dig myself into a good-size hole), I was thinking that we’d made a mistake in moving to Salisbury.   The day we moved in, George arrived in the rental truck with most of our possessions just ahead of me.  I was following a couple minutes behind in our pick-up truck.  We didn’t have a ton of stuff, primarily infant and toddler toys and accessories.  When I pulled up the long serpentine driveway and put the truck in park, my older daughter, just four years old, leaped from the passenger side and began to run toward the truck.  As she was running, I saw the rental truck’s back-up lights go on, and George began, inexplicably, to back the truck.  I think I blared my horn.  To this day I’m not even sure.  I can’t hear it in my mind’s recollection of that terrifying moment.  I have no trouble envisioning my tiny daughter right behind the truck, with raised arms; to each side of her, a frighteningly ominous round white glow.  Was she suddenly aware that the truck was backing up and, therefore, trying to signal, STOP!  Or had she raised her arms to be scooped up by her daddy?  The truck bobbed as George put it back in park, and hopped out.  He hadn’t heard or seen anything.  He had simply changed his mind about backing up.  The scene replayed in my head for months.  I still get slightly nauseous thinking about that day and what if.  So, yes, I was convinced we’d made a mistake moving to Salisbury.

II.  A Blank, Asphalt-Surfaced Canvas

 

Neither of us had a point of reference for our new community.  Salisbury, Massachusetts.  I’d never so much as passed through the town.  George had only a hazy recollection of having visited the beach in his early days as a student at North Shore Community College.  It wasn’t even clear to us what or where the Merrimack Valley was.  Whatever it was, it had to be better than the affordable neighborhoods we had been looking at for several months on the North Shore; who wants to live beside a river made toxic by a long history of tannery dumping?  Or a house that sits simultaneously at the edge of a good neighborhood and the edge of a bad neighborhood with the highest robbery rate in the city?  These were houses we could afford.  

 

Based on a brief introduction to the house in Salisbury and the lot it sat on, we enthusiastically shook hands with the sellers, I’ll call them Cheswick and Betty Finch, and began a new chapter.  And even though they were moving to a shiny new house (the second one that Cheswick had built) a couple of miles away, they radiated signs of unspoken regret.  As we gradually came to know our house, I couldn’t help but feel that we had taken over their “dream” house, the house where early on they had constructed their dreams, and much later on dismantled them.  Cheswick and Betty had moved into their new little ranch home at the same age as we were when we moved in.  One difference, one that I often wondered about over the years, was:  had they not wanted children; was that a choice?  Of course, before my heart had had a chance to soften toward them, I thought, thank goodness they never had kids; can you imagine having them as parents?  It was an unkind thought, I know.

 

Located in the Plains section of Salisbury, the northern "uplands" sector of the town, our house was amusingly referred to as “The Backwards House”, which we knew before we signed, and while that particular didn’t concern us – in fact, we ourselves found it quite humorous and endearing – the sellers were indignant about the moniker. The Finches had finished construction of the 4-room ranch house in 1950, right before crews for the Massachusetts Department of Public Works leaned into their shovels in the final construction project of the “Relocated Route 1”, (a 21-mile stretch of expressway, later renamed Route I-95 to better align with the naming conventions for the entire eastern continental network).  It would result in the taking of the homeowners’ front yard for Massachusetts’ last exit ramps onto and off of the Northeast Expressway, just shy of the connection with the New Hampshire Turnpike.  As George and I saw it, the prickliness that we observed throughout the real estate negotiations must have had its beginnings when they were forced to hand over their front yard.  (Think about it, not an insignificant back corner of their 1+ acre lot, but their front yard).  They mentioned this detail more than once.    The forced taking of land was not the only source of their discontent. . . as we would soon learn.

 

George and I happily set about making the little ranch our home.  We weren’t guilty of too many first-home ownership mistakes, but we did go a little nuts with paint and wallpaper.  We didn’t, however, throw up a line of trees or a fence to make clear to everyone where our boundaries were, as people sometimes do, as if their new proprietary role were in some way a tenuous one, and they need defining lines to announce, here to here; that’s the McKennas’ property.  There were enough trees already sprinkled about the lot, with denser vegetation at the borders, and well-established shrubbery and flowers.  Both my city-boy husband and I were satisfied with the country feel of the place.  

 

Where our lot lines began and ended was of significance at the outset.  George and I quickly learned that a couple who owned property further down the street had discovered that they had no access to some of their acreage.  Roy and Alice Cheney had used the courts to adjudicate the matter, but lost, even after appeal.  This had all happened before we came on the scene.

 

With neither delay nor a welcoming floral arrangement in hand, Roy and Alice approached us about deeding them a right-of-way.  Politely we refused.  We were happy with our new property, and a bit skeptical of this brusque, bossy couple.  It was with a few misgivings, then, that George agreed to have a sit-down with them in our kitchen; I was at work, and, anyway, had no interest in listening to their carefully scripted argument as to why we should part with a small segment of our lot.  Let me just say – yes, even overstate – that I WASN’T THERE while my husband recorded the meeting; I cannot be held responsible for violating the two-party consent law.  And this is what you need to appreciate:  two very large human beings entered our miniscule “dining room” (which is what the Finches had called the 5’ x 5’ corner of our kitchen when they had defended their ad for a “5-room ranch-style home” that was no more than a 4-room ranch-style home), and laid out their reasons why we should grant them – thuggish bullies used to getting their way – a right of way, one that would give us a modest clutch of tens and twenties, and virtually nothing else.  How I knew – innocently – about the proceedings is because. . . I called in the middle of them.  At this point George was in a sweat because it had occurred to him that his camcorder, a device no smaller than a dairy cow – it was, after all, 1986 – hidden in a house plant, which also would have been massive in size to adequately camouflage the dairy cow, would soon begin emitting a beep-beep-beep to signal a dying battery.  At this point you might be wondering to what end were we recording a discovery-type conversation, to which I can only say we were naïve real estate newbies and, as such, uncertain about our homeowner status.

 

George held his ground; he was, after all, a man with an unparalleled sense of reason.  And while we dodged something early on that will always remain a little bit undefined, what we quickly came to understand within the walls of the backwards house was that the Cheneys and the Finches were locked in a bitter, never-ending feud.  For our part, we simply wanted to prune the rhododendrons, plant new things like azaleas (and then transplant when we realized that placing them underneath a basketball hoop was ill-advised), and re-surface – together – the only asphalt-surfaced driveway in the neighborhood.  

 

The hard-surface driveway was our means to meet all the kids in the neighborhood.  There’s always heightened curiosity when someone new moves into the neighborhood.  Do they have kids?  Are they friendly?  Will they let us use their driveway to skateboard on or ride our bikes on?  The Finches had never allowed anyone on their driveway – especially if you were a human being under the age of, say, 21.  Josh was the first kid we met on our street; he was cheerful, adept at handling adults, and very direct; he wanted to know, would we be okay if kids used our driveway.  (Why wouldn’t we be?)  And, that, of course, altered the course of history.  Within hours, our driveway became the nexus of all manner of kid-centered activities.  You have no idea how imaginative a brigade of 10-year olds (or so) can be in the context of an asphalt-surfaced driveway, on a dirt road, no less.  Of a sudden, our driveway thrummed with bicycles, big-wheels, jump-ropes, skip-its, pogo-balls, and colored chalk.  

 

And I smiled.  This is exactly the kind of dream I had imagined.

III.  I Quit!

It hadn’t been part of the plan that George and I would move to a new home, fill all the rooms with our old, featureless furniture, and then begin negotiations.  Life wasn’t getting simpler (does it ever?), now that we had a new home, new baby, and a more challenging commute.  (The commute wasn’t really all that more challenging).  Imagine the couple who sinks all their savings into a down payment for their first home purchase, and then the wife says, “Honey, I’m quitting my job.”  But here’s the thing: with the birth of each of my girls, it was obvious - to me and everyone I worked closely with - that I had in both cases returned to work way too soon.  My older daughter had been 8 weeks old when I began the daily hand-off; not ideal, but not too impossible; my second daughter was 4 weeks old, and that nearly put me around the bend.  In neither case did I have daycare that met my expectations.  Even now, when one or the other of my girls exhibits anything but the most well-adjusted behavior, I secretly attribute it to an imagined trauma inflicted by a care provider that we should have vetted more carefully.  Is anyone really good enough for that job?  Nope, not unless it’s the child’s own parent, right?  Thus, within weeks of the move, I would give my notice at the insurance company where I worked in Salem.

                    *          *          *

 

For parents of young children, the 1980’s were, in some ways, “in-between” years; according to the Bureau of Labor & Statistics, by 1980 the percentage of families with both parents working had tipped into the majority, yet the constructs and support systems that young families were desperate for in order to sustain that type of lifestyle were still years away from being fixed or reliable features of family life.  Without any dependable mechanisms designed specifically to alleviate the stresses that accompanied the dual roles of parenting and full-time work, it’s no wonder, then, that at that same point in time more women were choosing to delay pregnancy, even repudiate the whole thing.  For our generation, the two words “working” and “mother” were conjoined, and that became the norm.   Regrettably, it was left to these babes in the wood to figure out how to make it all work.  

 

Forty years later, our country still lags in accommodating young families.  For example, as of 2021, we’re the only industrialized nation that has no permanent paid family leave policy.  Having navigated those troublesome waters long ago, I still would maintain that it is a pretty sizable omission.  We do have an unpaid family leave policy, one that provides an out for companies with fewer than 50 employees.  It is at least somewhat heartening to know, however, that of late, businesses have been relaxing their oppositional stance; an overwhelming majority now are in favor of a government leave plan.  It has perhaps taken a pandemic for employers to concede that, apart from ethical reasons, offering paid family leave makes practical business sense.

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It may be that under more forgiving circumstances, I would have stayed on at the insurance company.  As it was, however, I was performing a menial job with rigid work hours and low pay, and I had yet to make any meaningful and lasting connections with any of the people with whom I was working (even after six years).  (What that in itself says about me is a topic best covered in sessions with a therapist, which I currently don’t have, so I can’t say “my therapist”).  While it was easy for me to walk away from my claims rep job, the decision to become a stay-at-home mom was one that George and I arrived at together, of course.  

 

It must be said that from the moment we met, George and I enjoyed great conversations.  It was really the first time that I was in a relationship with someone who cared what I thought and believed, who (like my mother, but unlike me) thought I was smart and could do anything I set my mind to. Moreover, my guy was refreshingly “in touch with his own feelings”.  We had such deep conversations.  It was intoxicating.  This city boy, whose ambitions far exceeded the expectations of a father who dropped out of school in the tenth grade and a mother who regularly - and happily - kept us in the loop about her marriages by means of informally scrawled postcards, had fierce survival instincts.  Be that as it may, inner doubts sometimes kept him silent.  

 

For my part, in the early years I wasn’t an empowered, confident woman; I very much took my cues from George.  And while I’d like to think that I simply presented the most compelling reasons as to why I should quit my job, there very well could have been an undisclosed variable, a secret reason why George was open to my impassioned appeal.  (If so, it was just one among many private thoughts that he would take to the grave with him.)  Thus, I broke ranks with my generation, an entire cohort that was eschewing the traditional family dynamic.  Put another way, at the very moment in history when the traditional family became a minority class, when even the term “traditional family” became obsolete, I was re-creating that construct for my own little family.  I reveled in my new role as stay-at-home mom; it scarcely mattered - at least at first - that I lived in a working-class neighborhood where nearly every adult worked full time.  In my compact world life was simple and tidy.  I’ve never been one who thrives on complexity and fast-paced activity; I’m not even a quick thinker.   Viewed now from a distance of 35 years and a lifetime of gathering experience and wisdom, I can confidently say that I was my happiest version in the four years (between 1985 and 1989) that I orchestrated and led the McKenna Family Experiment.  

The Things I'm Wondering About

When I try to make sense of the world around me, I maybe sometimes overthink the situation.  Other times I’m just trying to do the right thing (or trying to get away with minimal – but acceptable – effort), absent a thorough working knowledge of the context in question.  And sometimes, my imagination hijacks me and there’s no leaping from that train once it’s left the station.  In that case, I invite you along for the ride.  Here’s a brief study in how my brain processes information. 

 

1.    Do the cellophane windows on the spaghetti and tissue boxes that I sometimes am too lazy to remove, mess up the recyclers at the sorting center; will they have to halt their sorting in order to peel them off?  Or, does it merely interrupt their flow as their brains wrangle with, “is it cardboard or is it plastic?”  And, how picky must I be about how clean the cat food cans should be?

2.    Do those different strains of coronavirus have smart brains that allow them to understand what we’re doing to try to eradicate them.  That they mutate so quickly has me worried.  It brings to mind the mosquito, which I detest (almost as much as the tick).  Scientists these days can’t possibly be getting any quality sleep, since every time they have a sure-fire recipe to wipe out the population, the community mosquito leaders are already a step ahead.  Those liver-spotted, august capos of the disease-carrying, flying insect world have, hidden from human view, two or three uniquely qualified member-representatives that are safely bunkered somewhere in Middle Earth.  These mosquito designees, the finest specimens of strength and vitality, pass their days, alternatively working out, playing cards, and making fun of each other, all the while awaiting “The Call” from their FEMA-like headquarters.  It goes something like this: “It’s happening. . . (gasp). . . They’ve begun. . . (gasp). . . the Extermination.  (Gasp). Prepare to. . . (gasp). . . enter. . . (gasp). . . the battlefield. . . (unintelligible). . . samples. . . (choke). . . analyze.  (Final burst of animation) BEGIN ANEW!  MAKE MOSQUITOS GREAT AGAIN!”

3.    If it were based entirely on advertising, what will future generations conclude about us, say, in 100 years?  Will they think us quaint for dressing our dogs in cute jackets, ones that match our own?  Will they shake their heads with impatience over our absorption with clothing labels?  When I browse newspapers from one hundred years ago, I’m amazed at how much advertising space is taken up with promises to cure all the mundane as well as embarrassing ailments.  This one invites comment: “People Constipated and Don’t Know it”.  The ad for Dr. True’s Elixir explains for the simple-minded target audience that your bowels get full of waste matter, and then expel only about the same amount that goes into it in the form of food.”  Ok, so my comment would be redundant here, don’t you think?  The wildly successful inventor, Lydia Pinkham, had “proven” cures for women’s ailments, as if everything that happened uniquely – and naturally – to women were considered a disorder; for example, to treat “hysteria”, her vegetable-based elixir brought about a sense of calm.  But, isn’t it just possible that Pinkham had over-tweaked the percentage of alcohol in her formula?

 

Surely, you all have similar thought trajectories, yes?