After the passing of my father she was never the same. Yes, she remarried and had a baby girl. We lived in a small home awaiting the move to the bigger. She wanted everything ready before the move. The location of the small house
was a walk over the bridge to school. The move would make it a half mile longer. A strainge thing about the water under the bridge. At times it would run yellow,red,blue and green. Later I found out there was a paper mill up stream. And in the new home you could see the Prison as the crow flies,but it was a walkable distance. Wow, those Prison walls were high and thick with a look out post on each square corner.
In the new house everything seemed to be going alright for a while. Yet the sadness or the lack of spark in her eyes was not there still. She made it a point to have everything ,even a dishwasher. For the time it was a luxury item. I started to plunk on an upright piano and had a few lessons. I kind of liked it. The next item in the home came a Parlor Grand piano. If I was not so afraid of my teacher I would have gone far. Funny my sister and I where always dressed as twins because at times you could not tell us apart. Or was it Ma did not like shopping all day.
Yet through all the dinner parties and luncheons and outdoor barbeques sadness still was held in her eyes. She was very beautiful. A Liz Taylor look alike and I’m not kidding and did not show her age. Always dressed in style and her hair done once a week. One day she came out of the her bathroom laughing! Instead of using hair spray on her hair,she used Lysol spray! Now that was funny. In her closet was a hand made bluish-green dress with tiny beads all around. Looked like something you would see a star wear.She did marry rich, sort of trophy wife when you look at the other brothers wives and my step father. Even a woman came once a week to clean the place but, we still had chorus to do on the weekends.
We called Mom, Ma. Remember the coloring book girl? Her goal was to truly make Ma happy in any way. Followed every rule as best as could be. First to get her weekend cleaning done and was responsible for sister to get hers’ done and wake her up for school every day and come down to the kitchen to find cream of wheat or oatmeal already made for us on the stove and never seeing Ma in the morning at all.
She was known as Aunt Cookie. I got to Watch TV in her room sitting on the floor . She liked Perry Mason ,Twilight Zone, Ed Sullivan and Star Treck.
She was a survivor of the Great Depression and TB. She had a huge scare on her back were a portion of her lung was removed. She had lost her childhood too due to illness and poverty.
I still hear her whispering,wash it,dry it and put it away,scrub the tub out when done,pick it up or out it goes on the lawn.
She had an affair which produced a son, so now with Gramps there was six of us living in the house.
Then came a day she was looking out the Main Entrance of this turn of the century house and said to me,”I can not stay here any longer.”
Two years later she had left.
The year before she left the screaming Manic inside threw her expressions on bedroom walls. You might say it was Mania expressed in an artistic way. Everyting all over the place with no place for anything. The Room at The End of the Hall.
