remarkable, he was also going to suffer from the fact that my mother could not relate to him.
When they brought Tony to see her she wept bitterly, only because she felt nothing for it. When Edwin came to tell her that her father had died she could not weep. She felt nothing and was agonized that she could not feel. She had ceased to care for the first time in her life what people felt about her, and faced the horrible fact that she herself was devoid of feeling for most of these people.
By the first week in April, Mother was writing letters about normal activities, urging Dad to find a place in New York City so he could be near his work. At the end, she returned to the hidden theme in both of their minds: “Please, dear boy, remember and believe that you are
the only man
whom I love. Go to sleep knowing it and wake up knowing it, too.”
On April 11, she was talking about how much freedom they were giving her at Stony Lodge, and then, “It’s all very odd, this thing called the human being. I don’t know yet what’s caused all this but I guess I’m destined to find out.”
Her final letter from the sanitarium, written on the day before her birthday:
April 16, 1934
Edwin, Darling—
The knowledge that we love each other and have years of joy and sorrow, struggle and achievement ahead of us together makes me overlook the bad weather. Both of us have much to learn and I know we can do it . . . as always I thank the powers that be for you.
Ever yours.
And so Mother came home.
It is hard to remember—all these years later—that I am writing here not about two mature human beings, in their middle age. Not the stern and distant father I remember when I was growing up. These are young, struggling people. Mother was twenty-six at this point; Dad was thirty-two. I can only imagine the horror my father would have felt at having a suicidal twenty-six-year-old return to our home, and how fragile a time period it would be for
any
young mother, much less one with a mental illness.
Within two months of her return home, Mother was again pregnant. It was me. I was born on March 6, 1935. Given what had happened after my brother’s birth—the postpartum depression, the attempted suicide—why did my parents decide to have another child? Perhaps it was an accident; perhaps they didn’t know the cause and effect between pregnancy and some depressions; or perhaps it was an example of hope triumphing over reality.
Whichever, it was a difficult pregnancy, and a difficult birth. There is a very testy letter from my mother to Dad in January 1935, berating him for not paying enough attention to what the obstetrician had determined was a medical abnormality in her, as her due date approached. Whether this was anemia or some unknown disorder is not clear, but she says that my father was not concerned enough. Perhaps Dad thought it was an overdramatic reaction on her part. Or maybe—and I have done this myself—it was one of those male denials that anything could go wrong, that there might be another disastrous turn of events.
As it turns out, I was born cyanotic, what’s called “blue baby syndrome”—either a genetic glitch or too much deoxygenated blood being taken into the lungs. Lips and tongue turn blue. Dad gave a pint or two of blood to bring me up to par. After that, I thrived, putting on weight as if I were eating seven meals a day.
OVER THE FIREPLACE in my present home is a large portrait of my brother and myself, painted when we still lived in the old colonial house in White Plains. I am four, and Tony is six, though the artist—good as she was—has put a much older face on my brother. I wear green corduroys with a bib and straps and a red long-sleeved shirt. Tony is in a saturated royal blue shirt and dark red corduroys. The straps of his trousers are crossed, shortened, in deference to the fact that he was beginning to shoot up. Mother wanted him to have room to grow into them.
I remember posing for that
When they brought Tony to see her she wept bitterly, only because she felt nothing for it. When Edwin came to tell her that her father had died she could not weep. She felt nothing and was agonized that she could not feel. She had ceased to care for the first time in her life what people felt about her, and faced the horrible fact that she herself was devoid of feeling for most of these people.
By the first week in April, Mother was writing letters about normal activities, urging Dad to find a place in New York City so he could be near his work. At the end, she returned to the hidden theme in both of their minds: “Please, dear boy, remember and believe that you are
the only man
whom I love. Go to sleep knowing it and wake up knowing it, too.”
On April 11, she was talking about how much freedom they were giving her at Stony Lodge, and then, “It’s all very odd, this thing called the human being. I don’t know yet what’s caused all this but I guess I’m destined to find out.”
Her final letter from the sanitarium, written on the day before her birthday:
April 16, 1934
Edwin, Darling—
The knowledge that we love each other and have years of joy and sorrow, struggle and achievement ahead of us together makes me overlook the bad weather. Both of us have much to learn and I know we can do it . . . as always I thank the powers that be for you.
Ever yours.
And so Mother came home.
It is hard to remember—all these years later—that I am writing here not about two mature human beings, in their middle age. Not the stern and distant father I remember when I was growing up. These are young, struggling people. Mother was twenty-six at this point; Dad was thirty-two. I can only imagine the horror my father would have felt at having a suicidal twenty-six-year-old return to our home, and how fragile a time period it would be for
any
young mother, much less one with a mental illness.
Within two months of her return home, Mother was again pregnant. It was me. I was born on March 6, 1935. Given what had happened after my brother’s birth—the postpartum depression, the attempted suicide—why did my parents decide to have another child? Perhaps it was an accident; perhaps they didn’t know the cause and effect between pregnancy and some depressions; or perhaps it was an example of hope triumphing over reality.
Whichever, it was a difficult pregnancy, and a difficult birth. There is a very testy letter from my mother to Dad in January 1935, berating him for not paying enough attention to what the obstetrician had determined was a medical abnormality in her, as her due date approached. Whether this was anemia or some unknown disorder is not clear, but she says that my father was not concerned enough. Perhaps Dad thought it was an overdramatic reaction on her part. Or maybe—and I have done this myself—it was one of those male denials that anything could go wrong, that there might be another disastrous turn of events.
As it turns out, I was born cyanotic, what’s called “blue baby syndrome”—either a genetic glitch or too much deoxygenated blood being taken into the lungs. Lips and tongue turn blue. Dad gave a pint or two of blood to bring me up to par. After that, I thrived, putting on weight as if I were eating seven meals a day.
OVER THE FIREPLACE in my present home is a large portrait of my brother and myself, painted when we still lived in the old colonial house in White Plains. I am four, and Tony is six, though the artist—good as she was—has put a much older face on my brother. I wear green corduroys with a bib and straps and a red long-sleeved shirt. Tony is in a saturated royal blue shirt and dark red corduroys. The straps of his trousers are crossed, shortened, in deference to the fact that he was beginning to shoot up. Mother wanted him to have room to grow into them.
I remember posing for that
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