Friday’s Child is Loving and Giving – My Birth

Biography, The Book of Me, , , ,

I am the first daughter, born during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. 

mercy_hospital_maternityI was born at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts, August 30, 1946. My parents arrived there the fall of 1945 when my father was chosen as Pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church.  My mother was 23 and my father was 33. Although I was one of the people present in the delivery room, I’ve had to rely on the memories my mother shared with me. 1946_kris_birth_telegram_blogMy mother was given a wiff of ether as I crowned so she did not see me born. I had a head full of dark hair, enough that a nurse pulled it up into a little pony tail and tied a ribbon around it. The nurse told my mother that all of the dark hair was going to come out and I would have blond hair. She was right. All of that fell out and I had a small amount of blond hair. It would be years before there was enough to pull up in a ribbon. My eyes were blue/gray.info_cardMy mother said that she was unable to breast feed me because she had no milk. I always felt very sad about this, not so much for me, but because I think that if I could have gone back in time with what I learned about nursing when my own babies were born, I could have helped her make a go of it.  After ten days in the hospital, we went home. A member of the church, Reginald Funn, drove us to the parsonage because my parents didn’t have a car until I was 8 years old.  Looking at my baby book, there were many visitors and gifts from friends, family and neighbors.

Reginald Funn and car.
Reginald Funn and car.

Both of my grandmothers came from Detroit to help out.  I was the first grandchild on my father’s side and the second on my mother’s side. My maternal grandmother, Fannie Graham, had a cold so she was regulated to washing clothes and cooking and other duties that kept her away from me so I would not catch her cold.  My Grandmother Pearl Cleage had the care of me.  My mother said that her pediatrician told her not to give me any water because it would make me drink less milk.  Below is a letter my Grandmother Pearl wrote home about it below.   Poor baby me.

In this letter, Toddy was my father’s family nickname. Louis was his MD brother. Barbara is my father’s oldest sister, left in charge while her mother was in Springfield.

pearl_1948210 King St
Springfield Mass
Monday 23/46

Dear Barbara,

How are you? How are Gladys and Daddy and the boys?

We have had a time with this baby, the first nights and all last week Toddy and I were up all night each night!  She cried and cried and screamed until she would be exhausted and so was I! Last night and today, so far, she has slept a lot better. Before we talked with Louis I’ve put her feedings 3 hours apart, just last night because she acted like she would burst open, with crying. This a.m. we got the Bio Lac and are giving her water regularly too and she is acting 100% better!

When I would have given her water before, they told me her stomach would not hold it and food and had me stop her feeding at about 3 ounces, for fear she couldn’t hold it all, not to feed her too much, and Kris just starving to pieces! I did as they told me until I said I was going to talk to Louis because I had never seen a baby eat and be dry and then just act like she was starving to death and never sleep!

***************

 I regret that nobody took any photographs of little me with either of my grandmothers.kris_1_year

Two excerpts from a letter my father wrote home in January. Actually, I did look like him, and more and more so as the years passed until now, if he were still here, we could pass as twins.

January 1, 1947

“…Doris and Kris welcomed in the New Year in their own inimitable way…at home. They got out only once during the holiday…on Christmas day we went to a Turkey dinner at the Funns. We had a tree “for Kris (and Doris) which Kris ignored…disdainfully.  Our double-octet went out caroling to the hospital Christmas eve (yes Louis, for the white folks) and came back by and sang carols for us afterwards. Kris listened to them with her usual disdain…and they all agreed that “she is the most sophisticated looking baby they had ever seen!”

“…. She loves to play from 2 until 4 a.m. She had the sniffles for part of one day…but seems to have so far avoided a serious cold…even with us and the rest of Springfield down with Flu, Grip and everything else… She weigh 11:4 (last week) She’s learned to yell or scream or something…and will scream at you for hours if you’ll scream back (Just like M-V) and seems to love it…then after an hour or so…her screaming will shift into a wild crying…and then she must be picked up and played with for several more hours…SHE LOVES ATTENTION…No, mama, we do not let her cry…and her navel seems to be doing O.K.  AND SHE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE ME! All reports not withstanding!”

March 18, 1947  – from a letter to my father’s sister, Anna by my mother.

“Kris (with her 2 teeth) says anytime for you all laughing at her bald head – I fear it’ll be covered all too soon with first one thing and then another.”

__________________

March 31, 1947 – From a letter to the Cleage’s from a friend of my parents in Springfield

“Last night at home, Kris had quite a time with her teeth and I think Doris was quite anxious.  Reverend Cleage had to leave for Loring before Kris really let go so he didn’t know how much the baby suffered.  I know it won’t last long, tho’ for mother says some teeth give more pain than others, but it is soon over with.”

__________________

From an April 7, 1947 letter my father sister Gladys wrote home while visiting Springfield.

“Kris is no good- but cute! Head’s not like the picture – kids! I definitely have no way with babies – I have truly lived!”

________________________

June 29, 1947 (from a letter by my father’s visiting sister, Anna)

“… Doris went to a reception today and I watched Kris. I tricked her, I played some soft music on the radio and waltzed around the room with her a few times, then eased into a rocking chair and first thing she knew she was asleep – so I put her in her crib and the next thing she knew Doris was home waking her to feed her.”

_______________________

I seem to have done fine, as you can see below, with my dirty bare feet I am sitting on the porch with my father’s father and my parents. I started walking at 9 months and my first words were – “Bow wow.” soon followed by “Some manners if you please!”  My mother said that people didn’t usually understand what I was saying when I came out with that.

My paternal grandfather, Dr. Albert B. Cleage Sr. sitting on the railing. My mother, Doris Graham Cleage, holding me. My father Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. Summer of 1947 on the back porch of the house on King street.
My paternal grandfather, Dr. Albert B. Cleage Sr. sitting on the railing. My mother, Doris Graham Cleage, holding me. My father Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. Summer of 1947 on the back porch of the house on King street.

You can read the front page of the Springfield Republican for the day I was born here.

On Lake Idlewild

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Kris, Doris and Pearl. Lake Idlewild, Michigan. 1956.
Kris, Doris and Pearl. Lake Idlewild, Michigan. 1956.

The summer of 1956, my mother would sometimes row over to the “island”, which was downtown Idlewild, not a real island, although you did have to go over a bridge or a drainage pipe to get there. At that time, Idlewild was booming, a place for Idlewild_signsblack people to go in segregated America and forget about all that for awhile. Big name acts preformed at the Flamingo Club and there was a skating rink in the club house. But when we rowed over in the morning, we were going to get the paper or milk or something else mundane.

Sometimes my sister Pearl and I would take our savings and shop at Lee-Jon’s or at Ma Riddle’s Log Cabin.  At Lee-John’s we bought tiny bears with movable limbs, about 3 inches tall. At Ma Riddle’s, we mainly looked while she tried to sell us salt and pepper

Picture 2
Idlewild is located at the red A

shakers that looked like picnic tables. Her store was a real log cabin.  I don’t remember going inside because it was so small that the front was a shutter she raised and lowered and you looked at the merchandise right there.

I wonder why we weren’t wearing life jackets in the photo above. We certainly couldn’t swim at the time. There were life jackets because I remember playing in the water and wearing them. The lake was 4 miles around and there were spots, my Uncle Henry used to say, where the bottom had never been found.

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I Am

Biography, The Book of Me

header_krisI am the first daughter, born during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night.
I am the one walking to school whistling when the woman turns around and says “A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to a no good end.”
I am one of the cousins squashed into the back seat singing on the way to and from our grandparents.
I am the six year old sick with pneumonia, upstairs in bed for months.
I’m the 12 year old elementary school graduate, out of school early and throwing snowballs with my friends.
I’m the double promoted 7th grader without friends who knows how many minutes left in each school day.
I’m the high school student longing for escape.
I’m the girl standing on the sidelines at Youth Fellowship dances.
I’m 19 and hopelessly in love.
I am 20 with a broken heart.
I’m the printmaker using found zinc scraps for my pieces.
I’m 23, alone and in labor with my first child, in a large dark house, waiting.
I’m a woman, carrying, laboring, birthing and nursing.
I’m the city girl milking goats, chopping wood and plucking chickens.
I’m the 35 year old mother of 5 dancing around the kitchen with my young son.
I’m the 45 year old mother of 6 walking four fast miles around the lake, ignoring my aching achilles tendons.
I’m the granma with bad feet making my way around the track.
I’m the child and the woman moving from place to place.
I’m a woman who has been with this man forty eight years.
I’m a gardener without a garden, a water woman without water and a sewer who rarely sews.
I’m an artist and a writer and a teacher.
I’m a feeler trying to be invisible.
I’m the one the ancestors come through.

Reading the Paper

Biography, Grahams, sepia saturday
reading_old_plank
I’m reading the paper with my mother. 1962, Old Plank Road. Near Wixom, MI.

This is a small undated Polaroid snap shot. I dated it by looking at other photos from that year that were dated. It was probably taken in the summer or early fall.  I was 16 and would be a high school sophomore in the fall of that year.

What were we reading about? I decided to look up what happened during 1962. It was an eventful year.  Lot’s of above ground nuclear tests; countries in Africa and the West Indies gaining their freedom; Civil Rights demonstrations in Albany, GA; the Berlin wall; Thalidomide; the Cuban missile crisis and George Wallace winning the governorship of Alabama are a few stories we could have been reading.

1962_collage

In February of 2013 I did post about reading the newspaper on a Sunday morning  Reading The Newspaper – 1962. Appears my mother and I did a lot of tandem newspaper reading.

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A Man and Two Women

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Connie Stowers, my uncle Hugh Cleage and my mother Doris Graham Detroit, 1940.

My uncle Hugh is sitting on my mother’s parent’s couch being hugged by my mother and her best friend, Connie.  I remember that ash tray.  It was red.  The couch was dark green and over it hung a tapestry with a garden scene that included… wait, here is a photograph that includes the bottom of the tapestry.  I wonder where it came from and where it went.

maryv_popp_scooter_tapestry
My aunt Mary V, holding her grandson Frank with my grandfather Mershell Graham aka Poppy.

By 1966, we had the old couch at our house and my grandparents were using my great grandmother Jennie’s furniture. At the time I thought it was strange they changed to that hard wooden furniture but as my knees give out, I appreciate that it was higher, easier to sit down on and get up from. Plus there must have been a lot of memories for my grandmother.  My mother sold it to an antique store after her parents died.

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Cleage Cookout – August 1958

sepia saturday, , , , ,
My uncle Hugh by the gate.
My uncle Hugh by the gate.

I remember several cookouts in my grandmother Cleage’s backyard. There was the one where the tables were set up right in front of the gate that looked out on the street. There was some sort of minor argument about this. Afterwards, my sister and I called any sort of family argument a “cookout.” On that occasion Grace Lee Boggs dropped by, not for the cookout, but for some political reason, dating it in the 1960s.

tables
You can just see Hugh’s head behind Louis, my mother, Henry.

The cookout pictured below took place during the summer of 1958. My uncle Louis bought a big blue plastic swimming pool that took up most of the cement part of the yard. I don’t remember it being there any other summer. Once, my sister Pearl was drowning when my uncle Henry noticed her on the bottom of the pool, reached down and pulled her out. I don’t know why she didn’t stand up.  She was 9 and I turned 12 that August.  The bushes on the fence were full of tiny, pink roses during the season. Those are still my favorite roses.

Pearl remembers: I am still mystified as to why I didn’t just put my feet down. I don’t remember being at the bottom of the pool. I remember going down and splashing my way back up to the top and not being able to stay with my head above water. and then Henry came over and grabbed me and pulled me up and out. who knows what was going on? and we had those little plastic life preservers, too. how deep was the damn thing anyway?

in_pool
Pearl, my aunt Gladys, Kris, cousin Ernie in the pool. It was blue plastic with a metal frame.
doris
My mother sitting beside the pool.
barbara
My aunt Barbara standing by the fence between my grandmother’s and the Smith’s.
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A Mouse Machine & Mrs. Topp

Grahams, sepia saturday

I forgot that I had this picture and article about Mouse (Move Only Under Spring Energy) competition that my daughter, Ife (smiling in the middle of photo 1) participated in as a middle school student. Unfortunately I can’t put my hands on a photo of her contraption but you can see one of them created by Mr. Bigford.

Article from The Lake County Star, about 1988.
Article from The Lake County Star, 1986.
mrstrop
Mrs. Topp reminded me of the woman in the prompt in this photo. Unfortunately she’s not riding in any sort of contraption.

Mrs. Emma Davis Topp roomed with Moses and Jean Walker, after her husband died in 1912. Her husband, John W. Topp was twenty years older than she was. He was an engineer, a black Canadian who arrived in Detroit at age 17 in 1875. My grandparents, Mershell and Fannie Graham were also roomers after their marriage in 1919. Mrs. Topp was born in Mississippi and attended school through the 8th grade.  She was working as a dressmaker in 1920.  By 1930 she had moved to Los Angeles, CA and was living with her cousin and aunt. She was no longer working and lived the with her cousin until she died in 1948.

My grandfather Mershell Graham and Emma Topp in the Walkers yard. 1919.
My grandfather Mershell Graham and Emma Topp in the Walkers yard. 1919.
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The Ludington Lighthouse, 1956

Biography, memories, sepia saturday

 My grandfather, mother, sister and I were spending several weeks at my Uncle Louis Cleage’s cottage in Idlewild.  We made a day trip to Ludington, on Lake Michigan, about 30 miles from Idlewild. We had walked out to the light house, which was no longer in use. 1956 was the year I wore glasses.

light_house
Pearl, Poppy and me. Ludington, Michigan 1956.
doris_pier
My mother, Pearl, me.

In this picture, taken facing land but on the same pier, you can see how the cement walk slopes down toward the lake.  There was a flat part down by the water where fish had washed up and they were flopping around trying to get back to the water.  My sister Pearl and I climbed down and were throwing the fish back in the water until our grandfather noticed and told us to come up and stop it before we fell in the water.  We did it but we were not happy about it.

poppy_rowing_smaller
Poppy rowing on Lake Idlewild.
Patio. My mother, Pearl and me. Notice the face in the trees to the left. It looks like my grandmother in her younger days. It doesn't look like it belongs there.
Patio in front of the 2 cottages. My mother, Pearl and me. Notice the face in the trees to the left. It looks like my grandmother in her younger days.  Is it really there?
Close up of face in the trees.
Close up of face in the trees.
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