life? If so, Master Sunshine I remained—to the outside viewer. Inside was a different story.
Meanwhile, while everyone cooed over me, they ignored the huge blue elephant lying about our household. No one wanted to express either hope or pessimism for the future.
As promised, my parents moved back to New York, into an apartment in a brownstone on Ninety-second Street on the East Side. There, the first year of my life was spent in relative ease. I was a fat little baby. There is a photograph of me sitting in a tiny sleigh—the equivalent of a stroller—dressed for winter, a fur throw on my legs, pudgy cheeks puffed out against the cold. My family finds it hilarious.
Then, in an about-face and a burst of enthusiasm for Dad’s growing law career, and for the money that he was making, and with a boost from the “manic” phase of our mother’s illness, my parents splurged and bought seven acres in White Plains, with a large white eighteenth-century house. It was here that Tony and I spent the next four and a half years.
This was the dream house that every American couple wants. Like all such dreams, it came at a cost. Since it was the Depression, the property cost only about $10,000, but that was already two and a half times the average cost of a house in those days. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average was only at 134, and the annual income of a wage earner was $1,800.)
Mother decided the house needed a lot of work. They put another $5,000 into fixing it up with appurtenances like large, curved windows in the dining room and living room, a screened-in porch for summer guests, and a screened-in bedroom for Tony. I have seen some of the correspondence between Dad and the contractor during the months it took to do the work: endless problems with the sump pump, with the supporting walls, with the special glass they’d ordered for the windows. Dad threatened to stop all payments. The contractor threatened to stop all work.
Eventually, it was finished, and I remember the result as being quite remarkable. Aside from the huge rooms, the gorgeous furnishings, and the ample space to play indoors, outside there were all sorts of delights. Huge apple and pear trees sheltered the ten-room house from the summer sun. They would have borne rich fruit if they’d been fertilized, but that fruit became rotten at once, attracting hundreds of bees. In the front, where the sun could reach them, roses were planted. Mason jars of poison were attached to green stakes to attract and kill Japanese beetles. I watched the jars fill up, then scurried to tell my mother.
Up a gravel driveway, which ran parallel to the front of the house and up a slight incline, there was a two-car garage. A beautiful cherry tree decorated the bottom of a hill that stretched back a hundred feet, with a rock garden full of fragrant herbs. I recall that I learned my ABCs on a little stone seat there, chanting them in time-honored fashion until I had committed them to memory many months before my peers would do so. Mother believed in preschool education long before
Sesame Street
arrived on the scene.
On one side, woods bordered the property. On the other, a picket fence ran along Rosedale Avenue. Missy contributed to the funds for the house. Sometimes she contributed trimmings that were neither expected nor wanted. My parents came back from one trip shortly before we moved in to discover that she had commissioned a small lake to be dug in the back two acres; steam shovels were driving across newly laid crocuses.
“It’s a present,” said my grandmother. Of course, whether they wanted it or not, my parents had to take it. There was no going back.
Decades later, I went to visit the house. Normally, adults think that the places they lived as children have shrunk in size, or at least diminished in grandeur and beauty. For me, it was the opposite. Even though the house itself was a little run-down (two of its black shutters were askew; paint was peeling on the upper
Meanwhile, while everyone cooed over me, they ignored the huge blue elephant lying about our household. No one wanted to express either hope or pessimism for the future.
As promised, my parents moved back to New York, into an apartment in a brownstone on Ninety-second Street on the East Side. There, the first year of my life was spent in relative ease. I was a fat little baby. There is a photograph of me sitting in a tiny sleigh—the equivalent of a stroller—dressed for winter, a fur throw on my legs, pudgy cheeks puffed out against the cold. My family finds it hilarious.
Then, in an about-face and a burst of enthusiasm for Dad’s growing law career, and for the money that he was making, and with a boost from the “manic” phase of our mother’s illness, my parents splurged and bought seven acres in White Plains, with a large white eighteenth-century house. It was here that Tony and I spent the next four and a half years.
This was the dream house that every American couple wants. Like all such dreams, it came at a cost. Since it was the Depression, the property cost only about $10,000, but that was already two and a half times the average cost of a house in those days. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average was only at 134, and the annual income of a wage earner was $1,800.)
Mother decided the house needed a lot of work. They put another $5,000 into fixing it up with appurtenances like large, curved windows in the dining room and living room, a screened-in porch for summer guests, and a screened-in bedroom for Tony. I have seen some of the correspondence between Dad and the contractor during the months it took to do the work: endless problems with the sump pump, with the supporting walls, with the special glass they’d ordered for the windows. Dad threatened to stop all payments. The contractor threatened to stop all work.
Eventually, it was finished, and I remember the result as being quite remarkable. Aside from the huge rooms, the gorgeous furnishings, and the ample space to play indoors, outside there were all sorts of delights. Huge apple and pear trees sheltered the ten-room house from the summer sun. They would have borne rich fruit if they’d been fertilized, but that fruit became rotten at once, attracting hundreds of bees. In the front, where the sun could reach them, roses were planted. Mason jars of poison were attached to green stakes to attract and kill Japanese beetles. I watched the jars fill up, then scurried to tell my mother.
Up a gravel driveway, which ran parallel to the front of the house and up a slight incline, there was a two-car garage. A beautiful cherry tree decorated the bottom of a hill that stretched back a hundred feet, with a rock garden full of fragrant herbs. I recall that I learned my ABCs on a little stone seat there, chanting them in time-honored fashion until I had committed them to memory many months before my peers would do so. Mother believed in preschool education long before
Sesame Street
arrived on the scene.
On one side, woods bordered the property. On the other, a picket fence ran along Rosedale Avenue. Missy contributed to the funds for the house. Sometimes she contributed trimmings that were neither expected nor wanted. My parents came back from one trip shortly before we moved in to discover that she had commissioned a small lake to be dug in the back two acres; steam shovels were driving across newly laid crocuses.
“It’s a present,” said my grandmother. Of course, whether they wanted it or not, my parents had to take it. There was no going back.
Decades later, I went to visit the house. Normally, adults think that the places they lived as children have shrunk in size, or at least diminished in grandeur and beauty. For me, it was the opposite. Even though the house itself was a little run-down (two of its black shutters were askew; paint was peeling on the upper
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