With no other identity but wife and mother to sustain her, she lost her will to live. She was hospitalized for months, jolted with electroshock therapy, and sent home with many bottles of different-coloured pills.
When my mother, Marion Alma McGrath, came of age in 1940s rural Nova Scotia, men grew up to become farmers, salt miners or lobster fishermen, and women grew up to become their wives. Alma wanted to be a teacher. Until a summer Saturday evening in 1946 at the Malagash Union dance hall. Sweet-sixteen in her dirndl skirt, white bobby socks and saddle shoes, she fox-trotted with Clifford Murray. Twenty-four years old, he had just returned from the war overseas and was working at the Malagash salt mine. He had a prominent Kirk Douglas–like dimple in his chin and an irresistible grin. They courted for a year while Alma completed grade ten; then they married on a sunny afternoon in June at the United Church manse. She was just seventeen, a willowy raven-haired beauty in her brown wool-crepe suit, pink silk blouse, pink felt hat and a corsage of pink sweetheart roses.
Amid a shower of confetti at Malagash Station, they boarded the train to embark on their honeymoon. As itchugged out of the station, iron wheels click-clanging over steel rails, Alma watched the familiar landscape recede through the window, and the adolescent schoolgirl and obedient daughter slip away. She was Mrs. Clifford Murray, en route to becoming the mother of three baby girls, born within three years, her three Ms—each with “Clifford’s trademark” dimple in her chin. When the salt mine closed in the mid-fifties, my father re-enlisted in the military. He served his country—often in faraway places—while my mother remained home, serving her family.
Our kitchen always smelled of something baking: bread, biscuits, gingersnaps, pies. The living room was fragrant with lemon oil burnishing the walnut tables and hardwood floor. Our clothes, sheets and towels smelled of fresh air and sunshine. Every Monday she washed them in her wringer washer and hung them out on the line to dry. On Tuesdays she ironed—everything (sheets, towels, dishcloths, underwear)—and starched and pressed all our dresses and blouses. Even in the evenings when she relaxed to watch TV, her hands kept busy, knitting sweaters, hats and mittens for us. She kept our home as spotless and orderly as the soldiers kept their barracks, ready for inspection every six months.
Those were “the tranquilized fifties,” as Betty Friedan called them; women made careers of domestic perfection and lived lives of quiet desperation. Military wives, like my mother, endured the loneliness and alienation of living in PMQs (permanent married quarters) while their husbands were absent for extended periods on military exercises or overseas deployment. Just a few months into 1962, the yearmy father served in Egypt, my mother was so despondent that we went to live with relatives in Nova Scotia until he came home. When he was in Cyprus in the fall of 1967, I would come home from school at noon to find her still in bed. After that six-month tour of duty, he promised my mother he wouldn’t ever go away again. In the spring of ′68, just before his illness, they bought a small travel trailer, anticipating their dawning freedom now that their children were grown. But Clifford went away again—for good this time.
Two years later, the birth of Jefferson Clifford was a beam of light that lifted our family from the shadow of my father’s death. He was like the magical child of the myths, the boy my mother had always longed for but never had—a saviour.
Every woman knows that the remedy for grief / is being needed
, writes Rita Dove in “Mother Love.” My mother was certainly needed. Marion was working full time while Russ was completing his third year at university. And so began the extraordinary bonding of Jeff and his beloved Granny.
M ARION AND R USS bring their five-day-old son home from the
When my mother, Marion Alma McGrath, came of age in 1940s rural Nova Scotia, men grew up to become farmers, salt miners or lobster fishermen, and women grew up to become their wives. Alma wanted to be a teacher. Until a summer Saturday evening in 1946 at the Malagash Union dance hall. Sweet-sixteen in her dirndl skirt, white bobby socks and saddle shoes, she fox-trotted with Clifford Murray. Twenty-four years old, he had just returned from the war overseas and was working at the Malagash salt mine. He had a prominent Kirk Douglas–like dimple in his chin and an irresistible grin. They courted for a year while Alma completed grade ten; then they married on a sunny afternoon in June at the United Church manse. She was just seventeen, a willowy raven-haired beauty in her brown wool-crepe suit, pink silk blouse, pink felt hat and a corsage of pink sweetheart roses.
Amid a shower of confetti at Malagash Station, they boarded the train to embark on their honeymoon. As itchugged out of the station, iron wheels click-clanging over steel rails, Alma watched the familiar landscape recede through the window, and the adolescent schoolgirl and obedient daughter slip away. She was Mrs. Clifford Murray, en route to becoming the mother of three baby girls, born within three years, her three Ms—each with “Clifford’s trademark” dimple in her chin. When the salt mine closed in the mid-fifties, my father re-enlisted in the military. He served his country—often in faraway places—while my mother remained home, serving her family.
Our kitchen always smelled of something baking: bread, biscuits, gingersnaps, pies. The living room was fragrant with lemon oil burnishing the walnut tables and hardwood floor. Our clothes, sheets and towels smelled of fresh air and sunshine. Every Monday she washed them in her wringer washer and hung them out on the line to dry. On Tuesdays she ironed—everything (sheets, towels, dishcloths, underwear)—and starched and pressed all our dresses and blouses. Even in the evenings when she relaxed to watch TV, her hands kept busy, knitting sweaters, hats and mittens for us. She kept our home as spotless and orderly as the soldiers kept their barracks, ready for inspection every six months.
Those were “the tranquilized fifties,” as Betty Friedan called them; women made careers of domestic perfection and lived lives of quiet desperation. Military wives, like my mother, endured the loneliness and alienation of living in PMQs (permanent married quarters) while their husbands were absent for extended periods on military exercises or overseas deployment. Just a few months into 1962, the yearmy father served in Egypt, my mother was so despondent that we went to live with relatives in Nova Scotia until he came home. When he was in Cyprus in the fall of 1967, I would come home from school at noon to find her still in bed. After that six-month tour of duty, he promised my mother he wouldn’t ever go away again. In the spring of ′68, just before his illness, they bought a small travel trailer, anticipating their dawning freedom now that their children were grown. But Clifford went away again—for good this time.
Two years later, the birth of Jefferson Clifford was a beam of light that lifted our family from the shadow of my father’s death. He was like the magical child of the myths, the boy my mother had always longed for but never had—a saviour.
Every woman knows that the remedy for grief / is being needed
, writes Rita Dove in “Mother Love.” My mother was certainly needed. Marion was working full time while Russ was completing his third year at university. And so began the extraordinary bonding of Jeff and his beloved Granny.
M ARION AND R USS bring their five-day-old son home from the
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