Staying True
doting father. He called his family and mine to brag of this fine baby boy and to tell them all how healthy and handsome he was. Mark’s mother, Peg, came to stay with us for a few days and I was thankful for the help since I was not all that nimble after the delivery.
    Mark’s enthusiasm for Marshall was wonderful to witness, but I could see changing diapers would not be his strong suit. He had planned a trip to climb Mt. Rainier with a few friends and, as the baby had been late in coming, his trip would begin when Marshall was only two weeks old. Marshall took to nursing right away, and he usually slept well between feedings. I was comfortable and confident in my mothering instincts. I didn’t really see any reason for Mark not to go off and enjoy his adventure.
    Actually, taking care of a newborn alone while Mark traveled turned out to be much easier in many ways than assimilating to life at Coosaw with Mark and his siblings while raising Marshall.
    I remember waking up with Marshall as the sun rose one morning on a family-filled holiday weekend and having a difficult time keeping him safe in the kitchen while I heated his bottle. He was crawling around the floor, which was, as usual, littered with farm dirt and dead cockroaches, and I saw scattered shotgun shells too. If that wasn’t enough, that morning there were also beer bottles left by Mark’s younger siblings who had likely gone to bed just hours before. I happen to love the abandon with which the Sanfords look at cleanliness at Coosaw, but throwing a baby into the mix and then adding his siblings and their habits made it all quite a challenge at times.
    Pulling a shotgun shell from my baby’s tight grasp was all the more ironic given my mother’s involvement in gun control. Mom has long had a can-do attitude, and when I was about eight, she became particularly frustrated reading about so many shooting deaths in Chicago. She decided to do something about it and worked with a few fellow moms to create an organization that soon became one of the first national efforts toward handgun control. They started a campaign to “Ban the Bullet” with slogans like “We need guns like we need a hole in the head!”
    This brought her all sorts of good attention and some unwelcome as well. We had to unlist our home phone number due to the many threats we received from outraged gun owners, and a national hardware store chain even refused to do business with Skil as a result of mom’s gun-control lobby. She was invited to appear on the Today show in the early 1970s, and my sister Gier and I were lucky enough to travel with her to New York. I remember being excited about flying to the big city for the first time, staying in a hotel, and eating at a fancy restaurant, not the important work our mother was doing there.
    I now fully understand the many people—in South Carolina and elsewhere—who take seriously the right to bear arms, but remain amazed that my mom’s gun-control efforts were not brought to light and used against Mark in our campaigns. I also remain amazed that our babies survived those early days pioneering at Coosaw.

FOUR

    B Y FALL OF 1992 I WAS ENCHANTED WITH THE NEWFOUND JOYS of motherhood and enjoying every minute of life in this historic, eclectic, and sophisticated little town. We had a beautiful baby, were building a dream house, and shared an exquisite farm nearby. Also, I had developed many new and dear friendships with such women as Virginia Lane, an architect down the street, and Sally Coen, then my across-the-street neighbor, who had recently had her first son, too. I had also become close with Lalla Lee Campsen, who wasn’t anything like my traditionally Irish Catholic New York and Chicago friends. Lalla Lee is sweet and very Southern, and she is a great shot, drives a boat well, and doesn’t drink. Lalla Lee’s family has a hunting spot near Coosaw, and she and her husband Chip met through Mark. Together she and I shared time outdoors with

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