In
1842 an Englishman, Thomas Babington Macaulay, a poet, politician and historian,
wrote a poem about the Roman hero Publius Horatius Cocles and his feats of
courage when Rome first gained their independence from the Etruscans. The poem
tells how Horatius and two others held a bridge against thousands long enough
for it to be destroyed and prevent the Etruscans from entering Rome. At the end
it is Horatius alone on the far side of the bridge when it falls.
You may have
heard the expression that someone fought “like Horatio at the bridge” when referring
to someone’s heroic efforts on behalf of others. It was a famous poem, and
long. I read it while I was interested in Roman history in my 6th
grade year and I liked it very much—despite struggling with some of the names
and Victorian English. Later I found out that as a boy Winston Churchill had
memorized the entire poem so impressed was he by Horatius’ actions.
Note: you can read the entire poem at the link below--but it is a long poem--one of the few long poems I still enjoy reading
So
why do I bring Horatio at the Bridge into the story? Whenever I think of what
my mom did to keep things together while everything was crumbling around her I
compare her efforts to those of Horatius.
She
had three kids, 12, 10 and 8, little money, a husband on his deathbed, an
apartment house to clean, a job at the bakery, a coal furnace to fill and
stoke, and still had meals to cook, shopping to do and—this is the biggie—no
one to help.
Someone
told her about Social Security for Aid to Dependent Children—about $50/month/child
and she applied for that. It was a big help, and maybe was what kept us off the
streets. Her family was in Wisconsin, dad’s dad in Moline, Illinois, and his
sister Laura and her husband Jim in North or South Carolina.
After
the ADC money came she was able to hire the daughter of one of their friends to
do some babysitting, and once word got out how bad dad’s condition was there
was another nice surprise. Dad’s old buddies from the stag bar Lindy’s—the one
across the street--sent a delegation from the bar to tell her, “Mrs. Mac,
anytime you need help you just pull those blinds down and one of us will be
right over.” The same signal she used to use to call dad home. She did get
further help from a sweet upstairs neighbor, Theresa Hart, whose husband Tom wasn’t
in very good condition himself.
Towards
the end, dad’s sister and husband came to stay with us for a while, and I have
to spend some time explaining the lessons I learned from observing the differences
between my dad and his sister Laura.
I’ll
begin this way: Dad and Laura had the same parents and step parent. Dad was
pretty much driven from home at 16 by his stepmother while Laura was allowed to
stay. Dad had to make it on his own during depression times and Laura had a
home.
While
dad was beaten daily by a religious zealot before he could escape, nearly
killed in a forest fire and worked his way around the country as a teenager
Laura stayed home, finished high school, and soon married a fellow who,
according to family reports—including mom’s—was a well to do and highly
intelligent person. That marriage produced her first child, a daughter.
Dad
had nothing and liked everyone. Laura had everything and hated everyone. The
picture below of her and her third husband Jim is the closest she ever came to
a smile unless she was drunk and making some racist joke. Her sneer would have made Dick Cheney cower.
On
the rare instances they would visit before dad’s illness she would complain
about how mom cooked, kept house, and raised us kids. Oh yeah, she made sure to
be drunk every day as well. So did her husband.
Laura
never liked me. I supposed it was made easier by how much I hated her. One time
when she had criticized mom and re-arranged mom’s kitchen to her liking I pulled mom aside and asked why she didn’t snap back at her. Mom
said, “Son, Laura is your daddy’s only sister and he loves her. That is why I put
up with her and let her run things while she is here. She’ll be gone soon and
I’ll put everything back to normal.”
Laura
was always smart enough to be nice to mom when dad was there, and only got
crosswise with him once. One of my sisters reached for some food at the table
without asking first and Laura scolded her and called her rude. Dad’s response
was, “That’s enough, sis. I remember when you and I would fight over a piece of
gristle.” That ended that.
It
would be fair to ask here why I am spending so much time on this. (And I
haven’t even spoken of how poorly Laura treated her first daughter, Beverly after she had her second by her
second husband—So badly in fact--that Beverly came to live with mom and dad for a time).
But back to the the reason and lesson:
When
I was older and thought back about dad and Laura I saw two kids who had the same
upbringing by the same parents and stepparent, and how dad had to scramble for
everything through the depression while Laura had it easy; when I thought of
what a struggle it was financially for dad and that Laura made three marriages
with husbands that had at least more than average incomes—the last a top
engineer for DuPont; and when I thought how Laura would drive nothing but
Cadillacs and dad rode buses or drove older cars without complaint; and finally
when I saw that my dad was kind to everyone while Laura hated the world, I came
to the conclusion that being a kind person instead of a bitch is a conscious
choice.
By any logical analysis if anyone had a right to be bitter and angry
about how life had treated him it was my dad. And I decided, when I finally had
worked out the biggest part of my own anger issues, that I wanted to be like him—not
like her.
Every
person has tough times in their life. Some more than others, some just a few—but
each one of us can point to some bad break or some tragedy and use it as an
excuse for our own lousy actions or attitudes. We can try to make them someone else’s
fault. Or, we can rise above the hard times and enjoy the blessings we have and
take responsibility for our own errors. We can treat others with respect rather
than disdain.
I
know that first hand, because after dad’s death I became an angry, bitter and
hateful kid. I’m going to talk about that; as well as more about my Horatius beginning
with the next post, but we’ll leave things here for now.
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