July 1, 1950
My mother–to us, “Mom”–was and is that mom all the other kids in the neighborhoods we lived in wanted to be their mom. In Grand Rapids, Detroit, Chicago and finally Cincinnati. Before that, way before, she and her ancestors were part of one of the most romantic stories ever told. I imagine first thousands, and then tens of thousands, and then even more, of people out of Suffolk via Ipswich to Groton and other towns and slowly invading America, Massachusetts, Canada, and Three Oaks, Michigan.
But she never let on as we grew up that her family–and therefore mine–had been in America so long. We’d only heard about Hulls or Holles–German Protestant minsters and farmer stock in the Palatine who come over on a ship from Rotterdam in the just-yesterday mid-1700s. I had to piece it together myself with some colonial organization records prepared in the late 1940s (at the request of a patron great aunt in Jacksonville, Florida who threw my parents’ wedding in 1950) she had kept from everyone and finally gave me; it’s actually typed before my birth and condensed to 6 pages. And a little help from Google on the part of Suffolk they came from via Ipswich. It turns out Mom all along was a Colonial Dame.
Her family came from the still-tiny village of Lindsey, England, to Massachusetts in 1634. This is mainstream early Yank history. (I visit Lindsey, in Suffolk, in 2003. Her family’s name is still on some of the stones in the churchyard, and in recent records of weddings still kept in the church.)
Exactly three centuries later, a photogenic only child is growing up in Chicago. It’s the Depression. She starts working as a model when she is quite young. She’s a bit quiet and sweet. And tall. Her own mother is strong, “well-raised”, and with an Auntie Mame/stage mother quality she had until her death in 1970. In the late 1930s and 40s, the agencies love Mom’s “all-American” girl next door face and smile. In photos, commercial or not, they jump off a page at you. Without makeup, she comes by a young yet “all grown-up” look at a very young age.
I am looking at one of them hung in my home right now.
Her face: Strength. Spirit. Fun. Femininity. A real but completely natural Charisma. In this one agency photo, that she’s classically beautiful is nearly besides the point. At thirteen, she’s an experienced model. Looks aren’t everything–but in the 1940s they are still the pinnacle for a girl or woman. Times are hard. You’re female? You’re an off-the-charts pretty girl from Evanston? You’ve a natural figure? Well, use it, honey. She has some other breaks. She’s good at language–and college bound. A pretty good athlete. A relative in the American South offers to pays for much of her education.
And then there’s this one: she actually spends much of her teen and early adult years trying to gain weight. Milkshakes and candy bars. Anything is okay–and that continued. Here’s someone put on earth to compensate for some of the rest of us: she has brains, smarts and charm. And an enviable–no maddening–metabolism. She can’t gain weight. She even tries. I have the same gift/problem as a kid. I drink milkshakes with her. But I am 11 and she is 35.