It’s Sebastian’s Turn

Today my grandson Sebastian is eleven. As his mother pointed out, as the third of three sons Sebastian has never had a bike that wasn’t a hand-me-down. That changed today and it looks like a pretty nice machine. Today was also his last day of school, so he’ll have some free time to scoot around the neighborhood—when he’s not at swim practice, because he is also the third of three swimming brothers.

I trust there will be some more photos of Sebastian with a cake, or celebrating with his family, but I choose to salute him as a boy with a new bike.

Happy birthday, Sebastian.

Lucy in Real Time

I’m caught up with forgotten birthdays just in time to observe a birthday which falls today.

Happy Birthday, Lucy. I took this photo at her daughter's second birthday. She looks pretty chipper for someone who also has a month old baby and a son five months short of three. After living for a while in France and working for a decade in Washington she came home and ended up living five miles away from where she grew up. She has never been happier. It took her earlier adventures to help her realize where she really belonged, and the children and Peter and Blake were what she had been looking for all along.

We’ll celebrate with a combined Memorial Day/visit from a favorite cousin/birthday party. The photo above is the “everyday” Lucy, who cooks, cleans, gardens and effortlessly visits the grocery store with three kids in a cart. Then there is the artistic Lucy, who tackles creative challenges, writes and graces the stage. We love them both.
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Sorry, Gigi; Sorry, Frederick

I was doing pretty well at the “post about family birth days on the day” resolution, but as with so many things I messed up once which gave me, with my twisted logic, good reason to mess up a second time. If there were a bunch of birthdays in early May I would have continued my sloppy ways, but I have a little time to make amends before I have to write about the Royal Wedding. Or at least about Marmite.

The first birthday I missed was little Gladys Grace who turned two on April 25. I suspect I was thinking ahead to the party on the 28th. In the end, she got left out altogether. She didn’t eat all this cake, but she looks like she is doing her best. She’s a great kid, but some how I couldn’t imagine her as a bridesmaid at a Royal Wedding (see the theme here, in case I don’t get round to that auspicious occasion?). If it ever gets sunny here, she and I are going to have fun in the splash pad.

The serious side of Frederick

Then there is Frederick, who became fourteen on April 30. I have countless photos of him kicking a soccer ball, and now he has switched to basketball and the photos of him and his team winning tournaments are adding up. But I love this photo of him on his Confirmation, taken just a few weeks ago. Gigi is too young to realize she got left out of the birthday roster, while you, Frederick are old enough to realize, and hopefully to understand.

Love you both.

This Year you Have to Share, Veronica

Veronica (l) with big sister Josephine

Today Veronica is seven. This little girl, born sixteen weeks early, weighing 1 lb. 4 oz. is celebrating another year in her dramatic life. It isn’t just that she has grown and thrived, it is that she has turned out to be such a funny, captivating little girl. I could’t find a good photo of her, because all the recent ones I have show her laughing and kidding around, happy to be around her siblings and cousins and enjoying life.  She visited us with one of her sisters in January, and I actually caught her sitting down. Love you, Veronica.

But this year, as she celebrates her birthday, her brother Theodore is celebrating his Confirmation, so there is much excitement in their house tonight. I wish I could be in Maryland tonight with you all. We are thinking of you.

Good Work

I am dividing up my books into five categories:

• those I really treasure
• those which are too dilapidated or unworthy to give away
• those which I will give to special people
• those which I will donate to the library
• ones I don’t know what to do with*

 I am hanging on to the first category and pitching the second. The library is getting a number of unused cookbooks, books on quilting (never quite got the hang of that), fifty years worth of gifts, novels and all the books you buy but are really only good for one read. It’s amounting to quite a lot. I don’t want to do it, but it is time. An advantage of having grandchildren grow older is that I know their interests. So last week I could give Ben a book on Shackleton and the Endurance. A few weeks ago I gave Patrick a book that looked like this:

It is one of several similar editions I lugged across the Atlantic and kept with pride. Or nostalgia? An end of year school prize which was awarded to two or three pupils in each class. If you were going to receive a prize on Speech Day, you were notified in advance so you could chose a book you wanted and it could be bound in blue leather and embossed with the school crest and its motto “Onward Ever.” I forgot to photograph the volume of “Nicholas Nickelby” I gave to Patrick, so I photographed the one I received the following year, “The Pilgrim's Progress.” (So impressed was I to be receiving an award that it never occurred to me I was supposed to read it. Never did manage PP.)

The bookplate inside looked just like this,  signed by the Head Mistress and annotated “Good Work”, but the form was IIL not IIIL. I was dreading how to answer if Patrick asked about the form designation.

Let me explain: after passing the 11+, we went on to Enfield County Grammar School where we were at the mercy of a streaming system. So for the first form we were democratically known as I A, I Alpha and (I think) I B. The cream began to rise to the top and at the end of the first form about a third of us were told we could learn Latin (shades of Winston Churchill.) Hence II L, leaving behind II A and II B. At the end of the second form, the two latter classes were divided into III S (Spanish) and III DS (Domestic Science.) One of my best friends was ignominiously put into III DS, and realizing quite correctly that she was destined for more than cooking cauliflower cheese, she went on later to the Open University and earned a degree.  So on to the end of the fifth form, when V L was split into VI B Arts and VI B Science, and passed on the following year to VI A Arts and VI A Science (the creme da la creme destined for university and teacher training college). And those poor souls who made it to V S and V DS has the chance to enter VI B Secretarial.

I was dreading explaining all this to Patrick, but he didn't ask. I always used to justify this dreadful way of damning all but the brightest to a self-defeating streaming system by claiming it was part of a plan to make up quickly and efficiently for all the educated men and women lost in the war. It was, I believe, the result of the Education Act of 1944. Children were ruthlessly streamed. We paid a nominal sum for milk and the infamous “school dinner.” The blessing for me was that my university fees were paid, so I suppose it was good legislation, but these days I feel a little awkward explaining it. I do feel guilty, but at least I had a great education.

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* As for the books in this category, the ones with gripping titles like “From the Gracchae to Nero” and “The Latin Subjunctive”, they will join the much greater collection owned by this house’s librarian, and a decision will be made at a later date.

Henry Raises an Eyebrow

This has always been my favorite photo of Grand son Henry. Taken (I think) at his third birthday party after a hectic game playing in the garden with his siblings and cousins. It would have been even more perfect if it had been taken before his mother finally had the mop of curls sheared. Who knows what the first course was, but the dessert was this impressive cake—and he couldn’t stay awake for it.



Now Henry has put away childish things and entered the teen years. In Liz’s words, "This young man is an absolute joy (albeit an exhausting one :) ) to parent: he's a smart, active, loving, FUNNY, wild, faith-filled tornado and EVERYDAY he makes me laugh!" Basketball season is over and we are looking forward to seeing Henry take the mound for his baseball team. Happy Thirteenth Birthday, Henry.

Maybe this will become a favorite photo. I was reading an article the other day on the effect of one raised eyebrow, illustrated by photos of Nicole Kidman, Jack Nicolson and Vivien Leigh. I think Henry could join the club.

An Easter Like No Other

I already knew this Easter would be different. Not only was it so early, but two of the three daughters who usually share the day with us were leaving town. And the third? Read on.

Click to enlarge.

I was happy that Kate and her family decided to visit Patrick in St. Louis. She is coming to the realization that before long it will not be possible for her entire family to be together for some of the major holidays. Remember in my last post I said that Patrick is developing great skill as a writer? Look at this and the name in the bottom left hand corner. He was also the recipient of a handsome check. Perhaps the birthplace of T.S. Eliot is wearing off on him.

Liz and her family decided to go East to visit the boys in Maryland and Virginia. Bizarre as it sounds, it is usually impossible for them to make this trip in the summer, due to conflicting sports obligations for the fifteen grandchildren involved. Easter is usually out of the question too because some of the families are students or teachers in schools that get their Easter holidays before Easter while others get them after Easter. But it worked out this year.

Not to worry, there would still be the solemn pageant of the Easter services and a brunch with Lucy and family on Easter Sunday. However, 10 a.m. on Easter Sunday, the time when normally everyone would be arriving, when glasses would be clanking, and the aroma of Ernie’s traditional ham breakfast would be filling the air, found me alone in the kitchen chopping up fruit for a fruit salad. Ernie was in bed, where he had been since Friday, leaving me to go to church alone, though two of the girls and their families had been at church on Holy Thursday evening, before everyone took off, and Lucy and Peter were at Good Friday services. He was coughing to beat the band and was too lethargic to eat or to watch more than a few token minutes of basketball. And that’s the NCAA semis and finals!


BUT, and here’s the good part, I was not unhappy to go alone to Lucy and Peter’s house (and it is even more extraordinary that they made it to church those two times) because there was this—
Ronan Gabriel, born on March 23rd. Things are so different these days. Even though he was born by Caesarian section (for many reasons, not the least being that he weighed 9 and a half pounds) Lucy was released from the hospital after less than forty-eight hours. It was a stroke of good luck that Peter’s company had instituted a two week paid paternity leave just a few months ago. Gladys will be two this month and Joe is three and a half, so their house is a monument to diapers. A very happy monument.

Click to enlarge

And the name? This photo hangs on our dining room wall. There is a better copy of the original photograph, and I will insert it when it is found. Sigh. The gnome-like gentleman seated to the right is Ernie’s great-grandfather, James Murray. Seated on the left is his wife, the former Mary Ann Ronan. Note how she is hiding her left hand: family lore tells that she mutilated it in some way on the ship coming over from Ireland. Her brother, Charles Ronan, married Elizabeth Fox and they had a son, Edward, who died in infancy in 1862.

Click to enlarge.

 Little Edward’s headstone found its final resting
place in our living room. How it made the trip from the graveyard in Iowa to a living room in Michigan is a long story, and perhaps destined to be another part of family lore, but I am assured that no laws, civil or ecclesiastical, were broken. So Lucy grew up with little Edward Ronan, who is now commemorated in our family one hundred and sixty years after his birth.

And me? I came down with the coughing curse and spent two restful days in bed, listening to the rain rattling against the windows.