Sidney was a delicate child. Through no fault of their own, he and his two brothers were placed in an orphanage even though their parents were alive. It was a hard life and each fought for themselves. There was enough to eat, but most of it was boiled chicken and soup. By his mid teens Sidney was living out on the street trying to survive the Depression. In later years we would ask him where he went to college and he would always say, "The school of hard knocks." I am not sure where he met my mother, Fay, but they worked together in the Baltimore shipyards during most of WWII. They were married seven years before having my brother, and waited five years before I was born and nearly another five before having my sister.
Like many children of chaos, order was very important in his life and my mother took care of the details and made his life go. Fay treated him like a prince. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when my sister was about a year old. She died within the next year leaving Sidney with a two, six and eleven year old.
Harriet says she can remember being in the womb and her birth. Her mother was terribly ill and they told her to nurse the baby to get the poisons out. She says she remembers darkness. Both survived, three younger sisters came after. They lived behind her father's tailor shop and Harriet taught herself to knit using her mother's hairpins before she ever went to school. She memorized the reader the first graders used and the teachers did not know she could not read. She was and is not stupid, but had a learning disability.
Harriet developed early, was extremely pretty and hated school where she was taunted and called dummy. Her parents apprenticed her to a hairdresser when she was fifteen. She became an excellent beautician and her wages kept the family going through the Depression. All her sisters married before she did and she continued to live at home until she was swept off her feet at thirty-one. They married one month after they met. She and Jesse could not have children and he took care of all the details of daily life. He treated her like a princess. She worked three days a week in a beauty shop and went shopping and saw her sisters and their families on the other days. One day, as the saying goes, he wrapped his car around a tree. She was not equipped to be a widow and her in-laws stole Jesse's business. (The laws of inheritance have been changed since.)
After WWII there was a housing crisis all over the country. In the mid fifties the City of New York Housing Authority built Bayview Houses in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Working class people flocked to the new middle income development. Sidney and Fay lived there and so did Harriet's three sisters. My mother's best friend lived in the same building as Harriet's sister Sally. Each had suffered a loss and got to talking.
Sidney brought his two year old along on his first date with Harriet. She thought he was too young for her but really liked the baby. He proved to be just a year younger and they started dating. She was very pretty with curly platinum blonde hair and lovely clothes. She started staying over, "on the couch" every weekend and her mother told her that people were talking. I guess they really tore up the sheets! Against all advice from her family, she agreed to marry Sidney.
The first I, at seven years old, knew of the wedding plans was when they came home one afternoon and my father said, "This is your new mother." We hadn't even been invited. That night, I puked all over the hallway to the bathroom. What an introduction to motherhood.
It wasn't an easy alliance. The Prince was used to my mother rising at 5:00 AM to make his breakfast before he went to work as a sheet metal worker. The Princess was used to sleeping as late as she wanted and a husband who took her out to dinner several days a week. Neither of them were well suited to their particular marriage. Harriet had never taken care of children, nor was she prepared for our particular problems. Sidney had never put a woman's needs above his own. Someone had to give and it was Harriet. But she made him pay.
As children, we needed a mother and Harriet tried. She sometimes would ask me in despair what I wanted from her. I would only be able to articulate that I wanted her to "be the mother." I wanted my mommy, the one who knew me. I wanted to be able to talk about her. I wanted the one who knew to ask me for papers from school, who was able to drive, who took me to the library. I didn't learn until 2005 that my father was the one who hid the pictures and wouldn't allow us to talk about Fay. He couldn't handle it. Harriet wanted to be able to talk about her dead husband but Sidney was jealous.
I do not remember Sidney being violent while Fay was alive. She dealt with things so his life ran smoothly. He had no coping skills and survived the year after her loss by the skin of his teeth. He expected a six year old to bathe and put herself to bed. He had to take care of a sad, neglected baby. He had a pre-pubescent son getting into all sorts of trouble. Having been in the orphanage he had only one goal. He was going to keep his family together. No, different cousins could not have this or that child. We were a family and he would not break us up.
Meanwhile Harriet was trying to get pregnant. She was in her mid forties and knew she was married to a potent man. I think that sex is what kept them together. She says it was the children. I remember her talking about leaving and my brother and I saying we would go with her, not to leave us with our father. And she loved having a little girl who clung to her the way my sister did.
Everyday we would dread Sidney's arrival home from work. We weren't sure why, but we knew we would be hit for something. My mother never bothered him with daily concerns and Harriet was overwhelmed with cleaning and cooking and childcare and absolutely no help. She would tell him what we had done and we would be beaten.
The years went by and one by one all three children left within months of graduating high school. We all looked for love wherever we could find it. My brother tragically died at age twenty-one in a terrible accident. My father retired in 1975. Sidney and Harriet joined many senior groups, they traveled, they continued to fight and make each other pay. But through it all they had a very strong connection and still do. He needs her and she needs him.
They hold hands and miss each other when one goes somewhere. They had an active sex life well into their eighties and he really misses it. She ties his shoes and he wants her to have nice things. She has to put on makeup everyday and although she would like to let her hair go white, he wants her to stay strawberry blonde. He says white hair makes her look old. I say dad she is ninety-five years old. He doesn't want her to look old. He looks great.
Although there have been periods of estrangement over the years, I rescued them from Brooklyn where she was stuck in the apartment and he could not get out of a nursing home. I brought them to Minnesota where they live in an assisted living apartment. Here they have thrived. They are nearly ninety-six and ninety-five and although frail, still enjoy life. For love of my mother Fay, I have learned to put up with a sometimes very nasty man. Harriet and I have made great strides in our relationship and I accept her more.
It has been fifty years since they married in City Hall on a snowy December afternoon. They don't want a big celebration. Today I am making a small reception in their apartment for my children and several other people.
Happy Fiftieth Anniversary Mom and Dad.
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