Old Roads: And Then I Was Born (1951-1958)

This lifetime began, for me, on April 8, 1951, at 7:05 pm in Mountainside Hospital in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

My mother, Edna Mae Brown Cilwa, and my father, Walter Sigimund Cilwa, lived at the time in a small but airy apartment called Styertowne, in Clifton, NJ. I was named after my grandfather (Vernon Paul Brown) and my father, although under the heavy sedation then used in childbirth, my mother wasn't quite able to duplicate the spelling of my father's middle name.

My memory begins somewhere around 6 months old. I can describe the layout of the apartment itself, and I distinctly remember sitting in my high chair, watching Pinky Lee on television. (And I was gay then; even in my high chair, I knew that striped pants and a polka dot shirt didn't go together!)

Visitors included my father's daughter, Shirley, by his first marriage, and my cousin (not much older than me) Mike Ryan, son of my father's sister, my Aunt Rose. When we went visiting, we saw my maternal grandparents, my mother's Aunt Edna, and my father's other daughter, Betty Ann, and his son, my half-brother Walter.

Although my dad's name was Walter, everyone in his family called him "Bill". When little Walter was born, everyone called him "Billy". No one knows how this odd name substitution began, but when Betty Ann and her husband had their first boy, the aunts pressured them to name him Walter, but call him Bill! Betty Ann's husband, John Dow, responded that instead, he would name the boy "Edward" but call him "Otto." (The kid was actually named, and called, Craig.)

One morning, when I was about one and had just started walking, my mom stepped outside for the newspaper and the wind blew the door shut—and locked—behind her. She began banging on the door, calling me to open it. Since I couldn't reach the doorknob, there wasn't much chance of this happening. She finally had to run to the office to get a duplicate key (in her nightgown, which totally humiliated her).

Another time, a fire alarm woke up the family and I was carried outside, wrapped in blankets. The apartment above us had caught fire. The building was saved, but water damage from the hoses soaked into our apartment and destroyed many of our things, particularly a valued bedspread. I remember looking at the apartment at night, surrounded by people in pajamas and coats and blankets, but do not recall seeing any flames. We eventually spent the rest of the night in a friend's apartment.

On June 18th, 1952 (my mother's birthday), my sister Mary Joan was born, and Mom and Dad began thinking about moving into a larger place.

The week that Mom gave birth to Mary Joan, I was sent to my grandparents' home in Bloomfield, NJ. When I returned and found this new person there, getting all the attention, I stopped talking and didn't say a word for a month. Of course, I might merely have been speechless at the cute, little, pink newcomer!

Garfield, NJ

As it happened, my father owned a larger place: it was a factory, the Cilwa Mold and Tool Company. Apparently, business wasn't going so well; after the Second World War, Dad had gone to work for Bendix Corporation, and we moved into the factory building, on which Dad had done a lot of work, some by himself, some with my half-brother, Billy, helping. The place had even needed a new roof, and my Mom helped with that!

I don't remember moving, but I certainly remember the place afterwards. It was located at 148 MacArthur Drive, and the front part of the place was refurbished and made into a nice little home. My father may have had trouble finishing things, though; my room was given a first coat of paint, but the tape between the sheets of sheet rock was put over that and a concealing second coat was never applied as long as we lived there.

Playpen

I had a playpen, standard for the time, made of wood with vertical wooden bars on the sides. (No soft mesh for us children of the fifties!) I suppose it worked well enough at first, but once I learned to walk, I wasn't about to be imprisoned in this thing all day. I discovered I could put my legs through the gap between the bars and walk the playpen by holding onto the bars with my hands while pushing against the floor. In this way I walked the playpen against the sofa, and then simply climbed onto the sofa and over to freedom. After that, Mama gave up trying to keep me penned up most of the time. If she had to, she put me on the floor with the playpen on top of me, upside down.

This was an era before air conditioning and our windows were always open except in winter. We had screens on them, and a screen door too; but somehow flies always managed to come in anyway and then cluster on the walls and ceiling in a torpor.

So every evening, and I have no idea how this ritual started, my mom would place me on the floor underneath my overturned playpen, putting me in a cage as it were. She would then take out our art deco Kenmore vacuum cleaner with the long wand and suck flies into it. As an eager participant, I would point out any she missed. I couldn't yet talk, but I could hunt flies.

Chocolate

One time Dad took me to the grocery store. I was about three, and he apparently let me wander while he picked up some groceries. I wandered directly to the candy counter, sat on the floor, and began pulling candy bars off the shelf and unwrapping them as fast as I could. I took a bite of each one. By the time Dad came back, I had over $5 worth of candy bars opened around me and chocolate all over my face, hands, and clothes. (And this was when a really large chocolate bar cost a nickel!)

In spite of this, I wasn't really much of a chocolate fan. When Mom bought ice cream it was always the Neapolitan (vanilla/strawberry/chocolate) type; but I preferred "white" ice cream to "brown".

In fact, my favorite snack was a slice of cheese served in a little tin cup in milk. I don't know who invented this concoction, but I do remember that it just wasn't the same without the tin cup. Eventually the tin cup "disappeared" (Mom threw it away) and I switched to cheese by the slice.

Grandma Johnson

Apparently, at this time, a person known as Grandma Johnson came into my life. She was a woman from "the old country" (Sweden) whose daughter-in-law had thrown her out of the house. My dad, with the soft heart I've inherited, took her into our home with the idea that she could help my mother care for the growing brood of children (my other sister, Louise, was born October 10, 1953; and the remaining sister, Dorothy Gene, was born June 24, 1954). 

Now, here's an odd thing: With all the clear memories I have from this period, I cannot remember Grandma Johnson. I've been told she slept in my room, but I don't remember her there. Other things that happened, she was either present or a significant part of; yet I seem to have edited her out.

For example, I remember a ruckus one night when Mom found Mary Joan, who was being given a bath, sound asleep in the bathtub. We all ran in to look, and I saw her, mouth open, lower teeth under the surface of the water. She couldn't have been more than two or three, and it's a miracle she didn't drown. Yet, I only found out a couple years ago that it was Grandma Johnson who was supposed to have been bathing her, and who had left her alone. Presumably, a big argument between my parents and Grandma Johnson must have ensued; but I have no memory of it.

According to Mom, sometime after the bathtub incident, Mom and Grandma Johnson got into an argument over Mom's belief that Grandma Johnson was taking over the household. She probably hadn't ever expected the woman would spend years as a member of the family. In any case; the final straw had been loaded, and Grandma Johnson was asked to leave. She went back to her family, her daughter-in-law presumably having cooled off by now.

I do have one memory of the woman. One day, after I had been playing outside, I found my mother and a woman I didn't recognize sitting on the sofa. "Paul," my mother admonished when I didn't say anything, "This is Grandma Johnson! You remember her." But I didn't, and I continued on into the back room to play. Mom tells me she died a few years later, though she and Dad visited her in a nursing home before she passed on.

The White Dream

Sometime around now, something happened that I do remember, though out of context. That is, it happened, and I remember it too clearly to be a dream; but I have no lead-in memory and no lead-out memory.

I was in some kind of white place, about the size of a crib. Although the walls were solid, they were not rectangular; and somehow, I could see though them...and what I saw was our car, a Studebaker, from above...and I could see through the roof. I could see my father driving, my mother in the front seat, and Mary Joan and Louise sleeping in the back. I started crying, because I thought they were leaving me; and I began yelling for them, but they couldn't hear me.

I might be tempted to call it an early out-of-body experience, except, then, where was I? My sleeping body should have been in the back seat, with my sisters'.

I have no answers; I only know that I can remember the experience now with more clarity than I can muster for this morning's breakfast.

The Toy Box Incident

I can also remember The Toy Box Incident.

My father had given me an antique sailor's trunk, with the year 1911 carved into it, to use as a toy box. I had it in my room and it was pretty packed with Lincoln Logs, model train pieces, stuff animals, and the like.

One Sunday afternoon, we were having dinner with Shirley and her husband, Tom Westinberger. I was acting up, and my mother sent me to my room. Of course, I cried but, like any kid, I soon forgot I was upset and started playing with my toys...

And somehow got the idea to empty out the box and get into it, myself.

It was barely big enough, but if I bent my knees under my chest, I could fit. Of course, I had to try this with the lid shut. Now, I knew the lid had a latch for a padlock that would drop down if the lid were lowered abruptly, so I tried to lower it as softly as possible. And the latch stayed safely in place...until I tried to open the lid. Then it snapped down, and I was locked in the trunk.

Well, don't think I didn't scream...and Mom could hear me...but she thought I was still acting up from dinner, and refused to come.

Eventually she did, of course, and still thinking I was acting up, not understanding that I was screaming because of being locked in the trunk. She went to her grave unable to remember the incident at all!

A Death In The Family

My first experience with death came when I was about five. My father and his first son, "Billy", had extended the living quarters of the factory with a beautiful new room added beyond the master bedroom. This was to be where my sisters would sleep, though it doubled as a playroom.

Mary Joan and Louise had little twin beds, while Dorothy Gene slept in a crib beneath the high window between them.

Somehow I was awakened from a sound sleep by lights and the knowledge that something was going on. I stumbled into my parents' room, where my father was trying to give what I now recognize as the old-fashioned resuscitation to little Dorothy Gene. My mother was frantic and told me to go back to bed. Of course, I couldn't; so I waited in the living room until I finally fell asleep on the sofa, to the sounds of sobbing. Dottie Gene had died in the night.

She had had a cold. Mom forever blamed herself for the little one's death, though there was nothing that could have been done with the knowledge and tools of the time. (There were, for example, no baby monitors.)

We kids were not allowed at the funeral, nor did I know there was such a thing. Dorothy Gene simply vanished from our lives. Once or twice when her name was mentioned, Mom burst into tears; so we learned never to say it.

I was present when the police came to question Mom. It was just a routine questioning, but Mom couldn't talk about Dorothy Gene without sobbing, and all I knew was that the policemen had made my mother cry and I couldn't do anything about it.

The Gift of Music

My father worked the evening shift at Bendix, so he slept late into the morning, and came home around midnight. Even after he got up, he spent a lot of time that he was home sleeping or napping on the sofa, so I didn't see much of him. I didn't really think of him as a person I could play with.

However, when he came home from work, he and my mother would sit in the kitchen with its bluish fluorescent light, and snack before bed; and sometimes the light would wake me and I would join them. Or, the flickering light of the brand-new black-and-white television would wake me instead, and then I could sit on my Daddy's lap and watch with them, till I fell back asleep.

My father loved music, and one of the first things he got me was a wind-up, "portable" phonograph. That was followed by an electric combination record player and radio, and then an RCA player for the new 45-RPM records.

Every now and then, he would tell me to go look under my bed for a "surprise", and I would find a  new (or old) record there.

Once I caught him in his bedroom, with the bottom drawer of his dresser open—and filled with records. Once I knew where they were, I had to have them, of course. And I played them: the Nutcracker Suite, Verdi's Aida, even a spoken version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. And a Shostokovich symphony, which my mother hated because it was Russian and she was afraid listening to it would turn us into Communist sympathizers.

And, big band—Glen Gray, the Andrews Sisters (I loved Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree) but especially, Glenn Miller. Yes, I had a few of the little Golden Records supposedly appropriate for someone my age, but my tastes rapidly became too sophisticated for them.

Daddy's sister, Aunt Gene, gave me some other classical 78s, including Wagner's Ride of The Valkyries. Unfortunately, in addition to playing the records in the usual manner, I liked to play with them as toys (after all, I was only five). One of my favorite games was to sit in an armchair, jam the records into the cracks between the cushions and the arms, and to play that I was a jukebox. I would mechanically lift a record from the side and place it on my lap, then pick it up, return it to the crack, and "play" another one. Of course, not many 78s subjected to this treatment survived. It took awhile, but the loss of some favorite pieces—like Valkyries—eventually taught me to be careful with records.

My father also introduced me to jukeboxes. We would sometimes go out to eat, usually to some pizza place where the smell of beer and wine would mingle with the aroma of pizza. I remember my very first slice. It was so hot I just about burned my mouth, but the smell of it had gotten to me long before the pizza ever showed up and the taste did not disappoint.

While waiting for the food, the ritual we developed started with my asking for a "qua'r" for the jukebox. At four years old, I could put the money in, select songs (by the appearance of the titles; I couldn't read them) and then watch, fascinated, as they played.

My favorite jukebox was at the bowling alley. While Mom and Dad bowled, I would stay in the bar and play it. It had a mirror at a forty-five degree angle, so that you could see the turntable from the side and from above. —Except, I didn't realize it was a mirror. I thought there were two turntables in perfect sync with each other, and I could not figure out how they did that. Hence the fascination. I would play Tony Bennett's Strangers In Paradise over and over, hoping to catch the one time the two turntables didn't quite start together. But, somehow, they always did.

Mommy's Little Helper

I also enjoyed playing "washing machine". From my toddler days, I had a table with a cutout in the middle for the baby (me) to sit. I suppose it was for playing and eating, but I mostly remember playing with it. I used to place this table on its side and sit behind it, while my sisters would push play clothes in through the hole and then I would toss them in the air to "clean" them.

Mom eventually found it expedient to wash all three of us kids at once. She would put us in the tub with the water running, pour in a liberal amount of Surf laundry detergent, and let us play in the bubbles until she thought we were clean enough. By now, we were big enough to be able to leave us for a few minutes (not that anyone would dare do this now!) and I got the idea that we could really wash clothes, considering that the hamper was next to the tub and we were being bathed in laundry detergent. So, I put all the clothes from the hamper into the tub with us, and we all spun around, the world's first triple agitator washing machine. Mom, of course, wasn't as pleased when she returned as I thought she would be.

Another time I tried to help was after lunch. Mom and I had enjoyed a sandwich and some milk (for me; coffee for her) and we had two plates, a glass and a cup to clean. I offered to do it, and, for some reason, my mother accepted. She even went outside the door (located next to the kitchen) to talk to a neighbor who owned a small apartment building next door to us.

I put the four items into the sink—I had to stand on a chair to reach it—but what I really wanted to do was mix cleaning products. So I got the egg beater and pitcher, half-filled it with warm water, and started adding every thing I could find: Surf, Spic 'n Span, hand soap; I even poured in a little shampoo from the bathroom. I then used the egg beater to blend it all to a nice, frothy, consistency.

Of course, such a mixture shouldn't be wasted on a mere four items; so I opened the cabinets and put every dish, glass, and pan I could reach into the sink. I then poured the wonderful mixture onto it...

And, with so much effort expended, became too sleepy to continue; and so was napping when Mom came in to find that she now had to complete the washing of every dish she owned.

It turned out that this innocent little venture into the world of cleaning products had its benefits: For the rest of my life, Mom would never let me do the dishes!

Blizzard

Winter in New Jersey always surprised me. One day, it would be perfectly nice outside; the next, Mom would wrap me up in a coat so thick I could barely move my arms, and then tell me to go out and play!

Outside, the air would be bitterly crisp, and the snow—having fallen the night before—would be unbearably bright. Or, days later, it would be charcoal-trimmed from the exhaust fumes of the passing cars.

Or, the sky would be leaden and close, with thick, heavy snowflakes hanging in the air.

Late one such day, on New Year's Day, in fact, I decided to visit the neighbors.

Now, I had done this before. Forbidden to cross the street, no one had told me I couldn't go all the way around the block. One by one, I had knocked on the neighbors' doors and asked them if they had a record player and, if so, could I see it? Most had invited me in, given me cookies and milk, and allowed me to choose a record to listen to. In this way, I had discovered there were such things as automatic record changers, and long-playing records that rotated incredibly slowly but played beautifully.

I had even met the people on the far side of the block, people with dark brown faces and bright, white eyes and smiles, who never ever walked around to our side of the block (although I earnestly invited them to come and listen to my record player if they wanted).

So, on this particular day, I had made it most of the way down the block to a particularly nice, large, brick house, set back from the sidewalk. The woman who lived there had a record changer that played LPs, specially fascinating to watch. So, she and I kind of got lost in the music, so that when I left it was getting dark and the snow was falling heavily.

Before I could make it two homes' worth, the wind picked up and the snow was flying vertically, into my eyes and ears. I couldn't see the curb that separated the sidewalk from the street; even the streetlights were confusing.

Worse, I couldn't see the houses; so I couldn't judge my location. How far was it to my house? I didn't know. I was afraid that, if I couldn't see the street, I might accidentally cross it and find myself on another block, where I might never find my way home again. Understand, I wasn't terrified; I was merely trying to avoid an unpleasant future.

I realized I had been walking in the wrong direction when I got to the corner, and, instead of the candy store, found a tavern. Too cold to go on, I went inside.

There were two or three men sitting on bar stools and a bartender behind them, looking at me as if I were the last person any of them expected to walk in (which I probably was). Apparently, one of them recognized me, and called home to let my folks know where I was, then bought me a hot chocolate. The bartender put a marshmallow in it, which was not the way we did it at home and I tried to drink around it. But it tasted good; and then my father showed up. I was asleep before I got home, warm from the hot chocolate and warmer still from being safe in my daddy's arms.

Mysterious Visitor

One block from our house was our church, that of Our Lady of Mt. Virgin. My father did not attend church, but mother did, and I went with her. (My sisters were considered too young to behave themselves.) While there, Mom would give me her Rosary, and I would pretend the little beads were Roman solders, and would pile them up on the helpless Jesus bound to the little cross.

Or, sometimes, I would point to an architectural feature and ask about it. That's why I pointed to a particular statue, one Sunday, and asked what it was. "That's the Blessed Virgin," my mother explained.

Now, understand, neither the word "blessed" nor the word "virgin" was in my vocabulary; so, I thought the statue was the Blessed Virgin, not just a representation thereof. My confusion was to become compounded shortly afterwards.

It was weeks later, and I had been put to bed on a normal, uneventful, night. However, I awoke in terror to find my room lit by a strange, blue light that glowed from the living room visible through my open door. Between the door and my bed, clearly silhouetted in the doorway, was a tall, angular figure, hooded and gray. To me, it looked like a statue; so I thought the Blessed Virgin was in my bedroom...and it did not belong there. I was terrified, and tried to scream for Mom—only to discover I was also paralyzed.

Unable to do anything else, I shut my eyes tightly and waited...and went to sleep. When I awoke, suddenly, sometime later, the figure and light were gone, and so was the paralysis. I did scream, then, and it seemed like it took an awful lot of screaming before anyone came to help me. It was my mother, groggy, who wanted to know what was the matter. "The Blessed Virgin was in my room!" I sobbed, "and I couldn't move!"

Mother, of course, like most Roman Catholics, believed in miracles as long as they happen to other people, so she offered her stock response: "It was just a dream, dear. Go back to sleep." For years, I harbored resentment: that she had taken so long to respond, that she hadn't believed me, that she hadn't comforted me. I thought the blue light had been the TV set, so I didn't see how she could have gotten that deeply asleep. Now, of course, that I am more familiar with the alien abduction phenomenon, I understand that Mom did all she could do under the circumstances.

Playing

I remember going to Two Guys, a department store, with my sisters and parents. Actually, we didn't usually go into the store; in those innocent days, we kids would be left in the car while our parents went into the store for "just a minute". These minutes often seemed to be hours. We would play for awhile, then cry until our parents finally returned.

I do remember getting doctor kits. Or, rather, mine was a doctor kit; my sisters got nurses' kits.

I also had most of a train set, though for some reason I never got an actual power supply so I had to make the train move by myself.

Running Away

Next door to our house was an apartment building owned by a woman named Lucy, who I used to visit because she had a record changer and would let me watch it play. But, next to that, was the home of the Gallucios. The parents lived upstairs, and Mr. and Mrs. Gallucio lived in the downstairs apartment with their three children, Barbara, Joena, and Tommy. Joena (pronounced Jo-eena and short for Josephine) was my age and so we played together and I called her my girlfriend, as by that time I understood that everyone was meant to pair with someone.

So we played constantly, in that era when kids could be sent outside and weren't expected to be seen again until suppertime. We had pretend weddings, we played with spoons in the dirt, we floated boats in the gutters after rains or when the snow was melting.

There were other kids in the neighborhood, and some played rougher than others. An older boy from across the street somehow pulled little Tommy Gallucio's fingernail off. I didn't see it happen, but he showed us later and it was horrible.

The Mickey Mouse Club was big on TV in those days and we all trooped inside each afternoon to see it. It was every child's dream to visit Disneyland. I asked many times, and the answer was always, "We'll see...someday." No one tried to explain how far away it was; and in my five-year-old's notion of the world, I thought it must be fairly nearby—after all, we could see it on our television set—so I really couldn't understand why they wouldn't take me there.

My father took me for a walk, one day, and we reached the top of a hill just as the sun was setting. I had asked where Disneyland was, and my father pointed in the direction of the setting sun. Of course, he meant "west" but I thought he meant, just over the next hill.

So, the next day, I plotted with Joena to sneak to Disneyland. We agreed to meet after she had been put to bed. She was going to creep out of her room and hide behind the sofa until her parents went to sleep. Then she would answer the door when I knocked, and we would just go.

My father worked at night; my mother took her shower after putting us kids to bed. I insisted on putting on my own pajamas that evening, and when I called Mom in to kiss me goodnight, I was already in bed with the blankets up to my neck, to hide the fact that I was still in my clothes.  I waited for her to start her shower; then I snuck out of bed and tiptoed to the front door, which was right next to the bathroom door. The shower was still going, so, heart pounding, I opened the front door and escaped.

It was dark outside, illuminated only by the street lamps and the gentle glow of a city night sky. There was no one else in sight. I ran the two doors down to Joena's house and rang the doorbell. To my consternation, her mother opened the door and her parents were clearly still awake—dressed in day clothes and entertaining company. They were also quite surprised to see me.

"Paul!" Mrs. Gallucio said. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to see Joena," I replied, still not sure how to handle this unexpected turn of events.

"She's in bed, asleep," Joena's mother asserted.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Did you look behind the sofa? We were supposed to go to Disneyland tonight."

"She's in bed," Mrs. Gallucio said firmly. "And you should be, too. Don't you think your mother will worry about you being out so late?"

I knew I wasn't supposed to go out without permission, and I knew I should be in bed. I also knew I would be in trouble if my mother found out. But it hadn't occurred to me that I might be the cause of worry on Mom's part. Reluctantly, shoulders drooping, I returned home. Of course, by the time I got there, the shower was off and mom was in bed, where she heard the unmistakable sound of the front door opening.

"Who is it?" she demanded.

"Me," I said, forlornly. I knew what was coming, what years later on in the South I would learn was called "a good ass whomping." That was, however, the last time I ever tried to "run away" from home although, as I tried to point out to my frantic mother, I hadn't really been running away; I was trying to run to Disneyland...and this would never have happened if they'd simply taken me when I asked.

School

I started kindergarten in 1957. I remember little of kindergarten except that two nuns taught us. And I remember Flora, who didn't do well in class but who had one skill we all admired: During recess, she would climb to the top of the chain link fence, where she would perch while peeing in her pants. By the end of the year there was a vertical yellow streak staining the chain link.

Mom walked me to school the first day. After that, I walked with other kids in the neighborhood going to the same school, which was only a couple blocks from the house. This was the first time I was allowed (indeed, required) to cross a street on my own. There were no crossing guards in those days, of course.

I walked to school, and in the afternoon I walked home. This walk involved passing the corner store, which as far as I remember was primarily a candy store. I often had a penny or two with me, and could buy candy. A penny bought a Tootsie Roll. But once the novelty of being able to make my own purchases wore off, I more or less stopped. My love affair with candy was over.

Christmas

1957 presented us with another cold winter. When we wanted to go out Mama bundled us up in garments called "snowsuits" that were basically full body armor made of down. They were supposed to keep the cold out; I believe they would have stopped an AK-47 slug as well. When they were on, every part of our bodies were covered, even our mouths, thanks to the woolen scarf that had been wrapped around us prior to the enveloping by the suit. Then came mittens (which prevented us from using our fingers) and rubber boots (which just about prevented us from walking). Once safely insulated, Mom would open the door and allow us to go outside.

This year's blizzard had dumped maybe two feet of snow on the ground. Our gritty little New Jersey street had been turned into something white and magical. The gutter, which always had water flowing along it, was frozen solid. Snowplows had created huge white hills along the road for climbing and sliding down. (Something we could do without harm since, in those snowsuits, if we'd been dropped off a building we'd have just bounced.) Joined by our friends the Gallucios, we slipped and slid and spun and rolled, laughing ourselves silly.

I was in kindergarten and the next Monday I had to walk to school in the same overblown suit. The principal of the school, a stern-faced nun with a hair that grew out of her nose and who was called Mother Superior, came to our classroom and announced that we would all participate in the Christmas play. She didn't bother to explain what a "play" was, and no one dared ask. We simply followed her to a large room with a raised floor on one end, and hundreds of chairs at the other. She pointed at one kid and told him he would be "Joseph" which made us laugh because his name was Bobby. Then she told Flora, the girl who pee'd on the fence during recess, that she was to be "Mary." We began to worry. We'd had no idea that Mother Superior could change our names. I was pretty sure that my parents, who had named me after my grandfather, wouldn't stand for it.

However, when Mother Superior pointed at me, instead of renaming me she said, "You are to be the orchestra conductor." Now that was a real surprise. What orchestra did she mean, and why did she want me to take it somewhere on a train? However, I kept quiet because I'd only been on a train once and was very excited at the idea of going for a ride on one again.

At the end of the day I was handed a piece of paper to bring home, which I jammed into a pocket of my snow suit. It took two Sisters to get each of us re-wrapped for returning outside; finally, we were allowed to waddle into the brisk air and crunch our way home.

Mom found the paper as she was unwrapping me, and read it. "Oh!" she cried. "You're going to be in the Christmas play!"

"I'm going on a train!" I told her, excitedly.

She laughed. "No, you're going to conduct the orchestra. That means you're going to lead them—tell them when to play, and when to stop. We're supposed to rehearse tonight." So Mama had me hold a pencil, and she held one, and we put on a record and she showed me how to mark the beat with the pencil.

The next day we began rehearsals for the "play." The "orchestra" turned out to be the second graders, who had learned to sing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." And I was supposed to lead them. The beat was simple enough, and when I was handed a baton to hold, I moved it in time to the beat.

"No! Not like that!" Mother Superior snapped. She knelt behind me, so close I could feel her starched collar on my back and her breath on my neck, and gripped my right hand like a vice. It startled me so that I resisted, and in trying to gain control of my arm, she whacked my nose with the handle of the baton, hard. Oblivious to this, she instructed the choir to resume singing and moved my imprisoned hand in a triangular motion. Finally she let go. "Now, you try it!" she commanded.

I did, but apparently did not duplicate perfectly enough whatever it was she'd had in mind. Meanwhile, my nose was growing stuffy and my my eyes were smarting. She descended in front of me and growled, "What's that face about? If you're going to have an attitude, we can just find another conductor!" And she did, freeing me to sit in one of the chairs and wipe the blood now pouring out of my nose onto my sleeve.  I didn't dare say anything about that.

When I got home, Mom had apparently already been called by the school. "I'm very disappointed in you," she said. "Your principal told me you made a face at her. You know better than that."

I held up my bloodied sleeve. "My nose was bleeding," I said. "She hit my in the nose with the baton."

Mom frowned. She hated confrontation and to admit the principal was wrong would have required one on her part—better to just assume the whole thing was some kind of misunderstanding that would work itself out.

This, of course, left me feeling I was to blame somehow. And that meant I'd been naughty. Now, I didn't know much about Santa Claus, but we'd been learning about him in Kindergarten. There was a song about him, how he was coming to town and would know if we were naughty or nice. I'd already had one mysterious figure appear in my bedroom; I didn't need another one to show up and judge me on my poor performance as a conductor.

I was a little fuzzy regarding who Santa was, exactly. This was before the media had become saturated with the jolly old elf and my friends seldom talked about him. I knew he lived at the North Pole, and I knew he wasn't a relative or close friend of Mom and Dad's or we'd have been instructed to call him Uncle Santa. Since they talked about him in kindergarten, I thought Santa might be one of God's friends, like Adam and Eve or The Three Wise Men. From going to church I knew that God was about to have a baby; Mom took me to see the life-sized crèche that had been erected in the church, and the empty little hay-filled cradle where the Mary statue would put the baby when it arrived. Mary and Joseph and the Wise Men were already there, and I thought if Santa Claus was a real friend of God's, he'd be there by now. So, maybe not.

Dad always took us with him to buy a tree, but his custom was to do this on Christmas Eve, when the prices had usually gone down. We would come home, our snowsuits damp and flecked with white, our noses running from the cold, Dad carrying the trussed-up fir into a space Mom had cleared in the living room. The wooden trunk would be lowered into a red metal bowl that was brought out for the occasion and three metal screws were driven into the trunk to hold it steady. Water was then poured into the bowl and my job was to keep water in that bowl, since I was small enough to get to it without disturbing the decorations. Every day for the next two weeks I would hydrate the tree, looking with wonder each morning at the nearly-dry bowl, amazed that a dead tree could drink so much.

However, on Christmas Eve the tree was not yet decorated. Mom explained that Santa decorated the tree for us, and that was how we'd know he'd come to the house. We had to go to bed early on Christmas Eve, because Santa couldn't get started on the tree until we were asleep.

So now I figured Santa was someone they hired to decorate the Christmas tree, like the man they hired to fix the roof or the pest control man who came when Mom thought there was a mouse in the house.

First, though, Dad read us a book before Mom put us to bed. My sisters and I all sat in his lap as he began, "'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house..." There were a lot of interruptions, because we wanted to know why they hadn't gotten the pest control man to get rid of the mouse whether he was stirring or not, why the father in the story wore a hat to bed, what "sugar plums" were, and how, if Santa came down the chimney, would he get into our house since we had a furnace and not a fireplace.

Eventually, we went to sleep. And, eventually, we woke up. How is it that little kids are instantly alert on Christmas morning? When I wake up now, it takes me fifteen minutes to remember what planet I'm on; but that morning, I was up and running for the tree before I'd taken my first waking breath.

It was beautiful! —All lit up with big colored electric bulbs, and shiny bright balls and glittering strips of aluminum tinsel. And the smell—that wonderful tangy smell of a spruce in its death-throes. Beneath the tree were wrapped presents, complete with bows and tape. My little sisters were there, too, six-year-old Joanie tearing open the wrapping of one of her presents, five-year-old Louise just hugging one of hers, thinking the pretty box with the ribbon and bow was the present.

I was just happy to recognize my name on several. I knew the word "to" and the word "from". I knew "Mommy & Daddy." But who was this present from? S-A-N-T-A. "Who's this from, Mommy?" I asked.

"That's from Santa, dear," she replied.

To this day, I have no idea what Santa brought me. I was just so thrilled it was anything, and that he hadn't held a grudge against me for making Mother Superior bloody my nose.

Moving Out

I don't remember where I heard about Vermont, but, when I did, I announced I was moving there. I don't think my mother took me very seriously, because, apparently, they were already planning that move.

They waited until school was out for the summer, then packed all our stuff into an open-framed trailer, and us into the Studebaker; turned the house over to the family who had rented it from us, and headed North.