Tag Archives: #Pearl Cleage

Ready for a Christmas Party?

Advent Calendar, Cleages,

We didn’t have Christmas parties.  We didn’t have any parties of the kind where you invite people over to socialize. We did gather on holidays and for birthdays but those were family affairs.  However, I did come up with this photograph of my sister Pearl all dressed up for some sort of formal party. We can see it’s Christmas because of the card display on the mantel.  It was the winter of 1966. I wonder what my mother is talking to her about. She looks rather dressed up too. I still have that chair and it’s mate. Today is Pearl’s birthday so I thought it was appropriate to post this photo on several levels. Perhaps Pearl will see this and remember what party she was going to.

My sister wrote this to me about the picture:
“I think this was actually my prom dress. I bought it at Christmas to catch a sale cuz I don’t think the prom was until later. but I do remember this was a pink dress and I LOVED it.”

Politics – Earliest Memories

Biography, Cleages, Detroit, ,

Week 46. Politics. What are your childhood memories of politics? Were your parents active in politics? What political events and elections do you remember from your youth?

My sister  and I – 1952
 

My first memory of politics is the 1952 presidential campaign.  My parents supported Adlai Stevenson and I remember waking up the day after the election and asking who won.  I was quite disappointed when I found it was not Stevenson.  

For more about my family and politics, click on these – 1965 Cleage for Congress and Elections Past.

Dinner Time

52 weeks of personal history, Cleages, memories, ,

I remember being three years old. My parents and I ate dinner together while my younger sister, Pearl, played in her playpen, wearing her favorite fuzzy blue hat.  The dinner table was in the living room/dining room of the parsonage of St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield, Massachusetts where my father was the minister.  I used to hide my food under my chicken wing bones because I was never very hungry.  I thought nobody noticed.

Pearl in her tam. 1949, Springfield, Mass.

When my sister was older, the four of us ate meals together.   We moved to Detroit when I was 4 and lived in two other parsonages. The first was on Atkinson we had a small dining room and ate there for all meals.  My father’s parents lived down the street and he was often there for dinner leaving my mother, my sister and me eating alone.

The dining room on Atkinson. My mother is standing. You can see the back of my father’s head. His brother Louis is on the left. His brother Hugh is on the right and you can just see his sister Anna’s curl and chin. I guess Henry took the photo because he isn’t in it.  I wonder why they are all at our table and where Pearl and I are.  I remember those little fat turquoise salt and pepper shakers and the glass sugar and creamer.  About 1952.

 The next house, which was on Chicago Blvd, was huge and shared with the church. We always ate in the kitchen.  My father teased me about being so skinny and told me I needed to eat more before I went down the bathtub drain or stuck in the chair because my bottom was so thin. When I was 8 years old I had my tonsils removed. I told my mother my fork wasn’t heavy any more.  I started eating.  There was roast beef and sliced tomatoes, chicken pot pies and oatmeal.  I only remember eating one meal in the dining room.  It was the Thanksgiving dinner right before my parents separated and we moved.   My mother started teaching at the same elementary school I attended.

My mother, my sister and I moved to an upper  flat on Calvert. What was supposed to be the dining room, was made into the television room and we ate our meals in the breakfast room while watching the pigeons nesting near the roof next door.  We named one of them Bridie Murphy.  We ate family style with bowls of food on the table that we served ourselves from.  There was no free for all.  “Please.” and “Thank you.” and “You’re welcome.” were expected and used.  My mother cooked but my sister and I set the table and took turns washing the dishes and clearing the rack and table, usually with much whispering about who’s turn it was to do what. We whispered because my mother said she didn’t want to hear any arguing about it.  I took cooking in junior high school and learned to make pineapple muffins which I made often. I remember fried chicken, mashed potatoes, jello salad and green beans.

When I was in 7th grade we moved to our own house on Oregon St.  The kitchen was too small to eat in and we ate in the dining room which was pretty crowded with a piano, the dining room table and chairs and my mother’s desk (See photo below).  My sister and I soon added cooking one meal a week to our dinner chores.  I don’t remember what I cooked, aside from biscuits. I remember Pearl cooked a lot of hot dogs and corn bread.

My mother remarried when I was in high school and we all ate dinner together unless Henry was working late.  He and my uncle Hugh had a printing shop at that time and often worked through the night.  I remember Henry saying how important it was for a family to sit down to dinner together because it might be the only time of the day they spent together.  As we got older there were interesting dinner table conversations about politics, what happened that day and more politics.  Dinner continued to be a meal shared by all who were home as long as I lived there.

Not dinner, but this is the dining room of the house on Oregon Street about 1962. From left, my mother with the braid, sister Pearl, aunt Gladys, Me, my father.

When I was raising my own 6 children we ate together, although my husband was often working and did not get to eat with us. We continued to have meal time discussions and to serve family style. Now that my children are grown with their own families and dinner tables, my husband and I eat still eat our meals together at the table.  Television has never been a part of our mealtimes.

My husband Jim eating at our present table in the dining/kitchen/living room. 2010.

The prompt: Week 32: Dinner Time. On a typical childhood evening, who was around the dinner table? Was the meal served by one person, or was it a free-for-all? What is dinner time like in your family today?

Airports and Answers: Some Thoughts on Lighting by Pearl Cleage

Grahams, memories,

Today, a guest post from my sister, Pearl Cleage, written about our mother. Doris Graham Cleage.

Doris Cleage 1923 – 1982

My favorite memory of my mother takes place in one of my least favorite environments: the airport. The Detroit airport at that. I had just flown in from D.C. and the plane was rolling slowly toward the gate, giving me ample time to worry about the next three days.

In the best of times, arrival and departure gates are not great places to play out complex emotional moments. The lighting is terrible and you’re surrounded by strangers. If you’re leaving, it’s too late to start any significant conversation, but not yet time to kiss and say good-by. If you’re arriving, first there is the interminable wait to actually deplane, the impatient jostling of people in the jet way, anxious to get to the concourse so they can jostle their way down to baggage claim, if they were foolish enough to check one.

Once there, those like me being met by friends, lovers or family members try to accomplish the almost impossible task of hugging hello without bumping noses while juggling belongings and trying not to get trampled by the jostlers who are now breathing down your neck as the bags begin to tumble to the carousel and for the merest fraction of a second, you wonder if the trip was even worth it.

And then I saw my mother. She was standing at the agreed upon meeting place, surrounded by a crowd of people, all anxiously scanning the new arrivals just like she was and my first thought was: When did she get so tiny? At just under five foot two, she was dwarfed by the people on either side, even standing between them on tiptoe, searching the sea of strangers for her baby’s face. She looked worried and frazzled and, in the weird way that happens with post-middle aged parents who are seldom seen, suddenly older; more fragile; more vulnerable.

The fragility is what startled me. When had this change occurred? How long had it been since I had actually laid eyes on her? Too long, I knew, but the distance was necessary to insure my emotional survival. I loved my mother, but like most of the women on both sides of the family, including me, she had a mean streak that could manifest itself in harsh judgments about any and everything. That made moments like the one we were now approaching even more fraught with emotional peril since the last thing I needed was a critique of my behavior. I was just emerging from a series of ill-conceived moves both professional and romantic that resulted in a tearful phone conversation during which my mother asked me the worst question in the world: What were you thinking? The next three days were supposed to give me an opportunity to respond.

Please, God, I thought, let this be a good visit. By that I meant one with a relative lack of family drama (possible, but if past is truly prologue, not likely), and maybe, if I was very patient and very lucky, a moment or two where my mother and I could sit together and talk calmly like two grown women about where we were in our lives.

Even as the thought of such a conversation popped into my head fully formed, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. My mother was not a share your deepest secrets kind of woman. She didn’t solicit your opinion because she truly didn’t care what you thought, a trait I admired even while it terrified me. She married brothers, but was so unconcerned about the resulting gossip that I never even knew her behavior was perceived as scandalous until I heard two women discussing it in the seat behind me on the bus all the way home from ballet class at Toni’s School of Dance Arts.

Like the song says, she had paid the cost to be the boss, and while there was in my mother a deep disappointment at some of the ways her life had turned out, she was prepared to live with the consequences of her decisions without complaint. Heart to heart discussions of what she might have done or said differently held no interest. On the contrary, such unsolicited opinions were certain to evoke a look of such amazed indignation and displeasure that all you wanted to do was take back your feeble offering and beg her humble pardon for having had the temerity to make a suggestion about how she lived her life.

But I had a plan. I would ambush my mother with a fresh pot of peppermint tea in a sunny corner of her kitchen. I would put on a record of Leontyne Price singing Puccini, confess my sins and gently begin to pick her brain.  I wanted that conversation. No, I needed it. My life was undeniably a mess and I had exhausted my ideas about how to make it better. The moment, I decided, had arrived for my mother to tell me the womanly secrets and ancient female coping mechanisms she’d been withholding until I was ready.

Well, I was ready now. There were so many questions I needed to ask; about her, about me, about whether or not work was worth the risk and love was worth the pain. You know, those questions. The problem was, where to begin? With her journey or mine? My mother was an archeologist trapped in the body of a first grade teacher. She longed to ride camels and see the pyramids of Egypt, but had to settle for the west side of Detroit and a few weeks in Idlewild at the end of the summer, having cocktails lakeside with well manicured doctors wives, all the time dreaming of the shifting white sands of the Sahara.

Could I ask her how it felt to see so much less than you could imagine? Could I ask her why she did it? Could I ask her how she had survived the loss of all those adventures and the stifling of all those dreams? Could I ask her if she thought I could survive it, too? And last but not least, could I ask her if she still loved me even in the midst of all my flopping and floundering and foolishness?

So there it was at last. I had buried the lead, but then my mother spotted me and however long it had taken to stumble upon the real question, her face at that moment was the real answer. There was so much absolute, unconditional, unequivocal, pure, joyous love shining in her eyes as she threw up her hand and hurried toward me that the force of it made me stumble and I almost dropped my bag.

Now I am not a mystical person, but I felt my heart crack and open that day to welcome the gift she was giving me and I understood that there is only one answer to all the questions that were driving me crazy: love/love/love/love/love.

Suddenly the fantasy conversation I’d been hoping for was just that – someone else’s fantasy. My mother and I didn’t need a cozy sunlit corner and a steaming pot of peppermint tea. We had each other. Then we bumped noses and she hugged me so hard she didn’t seem fragile at all anymore, which is, of course, tangible proof that the power of love can strike anywhere, anytime. Even when the lighting is absolutely terrible.

____________________________

Another post about my mother you may find interesting- GrowingUp – In Her Own Words,

Easter Memories

Cleages, sepia saturday, The Book of Me, , , ,

Henry, Toddy, Albert Sr & little Gladys

Henry’s back, Hugh looking out of car.

Kris ((me) and my sister, Pearl at our Cleage grandparents house with our “mashies” and Easter baskets. 1953

Memories of Easter – dying eggs in my Graham grandparent’s basement on Easter Saturday with my sister and cousins.  Easter baskets with jelly beans and chocolate eggs and one big chocolate Easter bunny.  Tiny fuzzy chicks.    The year someone gave us 4 or 5 real chicks that died one by one in their box in the basement.  Sugar eggs decorated with wavy blue, pink and yellow icing and a little scene inside.  Reading the book “The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes”, new clothes, going to church. Going by the Grandmother Cleage’s after church.  What I don’t remember is gathering for a big Easter meal like we did for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I wonder why?

I have some Easter hats here and although you can’t see them clearly, my sister and I are holding some stuffed bunnies.  To see other Easter or bunny Sepia Saturday offerings click here.

Poem for Poppy

Grahams, poetry & literature, , ,

Today I am transcribing my Grandfather, Mershell C. Graham’s funeral program.  I’ve been looking for my grandfather’s funeral program for several months.  It wasn’t in the binder, where it should have been, or in the box with the not yet filed funeral programs.  Today, while looking for something else, I found it.  It was in my file cabinet in a folder having nothing to do with anything relevant.  The poem was written by my sister, Pearl Cleage.

Mershell Cunningham Graham standing beside his corn patch.

Poem For My Grandfather

(for M.C. Graham)

The handing down of things
worn smooth between your fingers.
The handing down of parts of you
in hurried kitchen ceremonies.
The smell of biscuits
and the smell of heirlooms.
A story about trains.
A whisper of hard times
and magic in the face you hold so close to mine
and smile.
The handing down of things.
The handing on of you…

By Pearl Cleage

In Memorium

Mershell C. Graham
Thursday, September 6, 1973, 12 Noon
Plymouth United Church of Christ
514 Garfield
Detroit, Michigan
Rev. Nicholas Hood, Pastor

Order of Service
Processional……
Hymn          ……
Invocation   …….
Scripture      …….
Hymn          …….
Eulogy         …….
Benediction  …….

Interment
Detroit Memorial Park

In Charge
Charles T. Cole Funeral Home

Honory Pallbearers 
Friends of Mr. Graham

Active Pallbearers
Members of the Men’s Club

Mershell C. Graham was born December 25, 1887, in Coosada Station, Alabama.  He received his early Christian training in the First Congregational Church of Montgomery, Alabama.  He met his beloved wife, Fannie Mae, in the church.  They celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary in June of this year.  They had four children and shared a long and beautiful life.  

He was one of the founders of Plymouth United Church of Christ and was a devoted member of the church all of his life.  He served as treasurer for many years and was Trustee Emeritus.  He was retired from the Ford Motor Company after over thirty years of service and was a member of the U.A.W. and the N.A.A.C.P.

Mr. Graham passed on September 3, 1973, at his home at 16260 Fairfield.  He leaves to mourn his loss his wife, Fannie, his two daughters, Mary Virginia Graham Elkins and Doris Graham Cleage; five grandchildren Doris Diane Elkins; Kristin Cleage Williams; Barbara Elkins; Pearl Cleage Lomax and Marilyn elkins; and six great-grandchildren; Maricea McNeil; Harry McNeil; Frank Elkins; Lonnie Elkins; Jilo Williams and Ife Williams.

He was preceded in death by his two sons, Mershell C. Graham Jr and Howard A. Graham.