Norry and Sunbury memories

 Jim gave me a tremendous gift last Thursday. We spent the week in Maryland and Virginia, visiting my brother and his wife, my niece, and four presidential houses (Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier, and Highlands) in Virginia.

Thursday night he booked us at the charming Stained Glass Inn in Sunbury, PA, kitty-cornered from my old elementary school, St. Michael Archangel. (It’s now called Saint Monica.)

Friday morning Jim had a business phone call and I took a ‘walk’ with R’el: talking on the phone as she walked home from Bellevue Hospital and I explored the south side of Sunbury. When Jim was free we walked along the sea wall dividing Sunbury from the Susquehanna River. I don’t know why we always called it the sea wall, it must have been my dad’s name for it.

I read that the ‘flood wall’ was conceived after a disastrous flood in March 1936. Native Americans had told British colonists that Sunbury flooded every 14 years. Built near the confluence of the north and west branches of the Susquehanna River, it has suffered many floods over the years. The flood wall was officially finished in 1951 but was already protecting the city from flood in 1950. I remember in 1960 my dad telling us that the river had flooded: I was about four years old.

After the walk along the wall and seeing the profile of Shikellamy, we drove to Northumberland, the town across the river where I lived until I was nine. We called it Norry. I felt like Scrooge in Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, every sight bringing up memories: there’s where the pond was where we ice skated; there’s the street sign that I would swing around calling, “Annnnniiiiieeeee! Can you come out and pla-aaayyyyy? I wasn’t allowed to cross the street and Annie Scully lived across King Street and Seventh Street. So many memories came rushing back and I savored each one.

679 King Street was vacant with a notice in the window. We learned from some people on Eighth Street that a doctor lived there and that perhaps he had died. Since the house was unoccupied,  I peered in the back porch window and remembered practicing piano and meeting the washer repairman. I felt free to walk in the yard, pointing out to Jim where the forsythia, lilacs, magnolia, apple trees, grape arbor, peonies, cherry tree, and sandbox (with plentiful splinters) were. It’s mostly grass now, with one large evergreen to the side. The peach tree, which always looked sickly, was surprisingly healthy. The yard is small; how does it hold so many memories?

What a gift. Thank you, Jim. 

Home-making

 Today Jim and I drove to the home on the “little mountain” that Thomas Jefferson developed over 40 years of his life.

As a teenaged girl I was infatuated with the Thomas Jefferson of the movie, 1776, which was released as I was turning 16. Thomas Jefferson was tall (no boys in my junior high school were as tall as I was) and boyishly handsome with his red ponytail and knickers. Now I prefer the piercing blue eyes of William Daniels (John Adams), but in my girlish eyes it was all about Thomas and how he played the violin for his beautiful and beloved wife. 

Living in Massachusetts for the past 20 years, and influenced by my Adams-phil husband, my feelings for Jefferson had waned.

But Monticello rekindled my appreciation of the man. Jefferson designed so many thoughtful touches to his home. I love how he filled his entry hall with maps and objects of interest. He placed his bed in the wall, opening into both his study and bedroom, so convenient. And his books: he owned about 10,000. We moved closer to that number, buying four books in the gift shop at Monticello along with three at Mt. Vernon.

Both the tours of Mt. Vernon and Monticello emphasize the tremendous work that enslaved people were forced to do to create and maintain these plantations. I’m grateful for the ongoing work to document and bring to light the efforts of countless unnamed people and the need to live up to the ideals of American liberty for all people.

On a lighter note, I’m thinking about house decoration and home. We attended the Washington DC Temple open house with Xiomara and our grandchildren. Jim and I started our marriage there 43 years ago. We stayed with my oldest brother and his wife. Visiting my niece, a busy mother of five children, reminded both of us of raising our children. When R’el was about four, I helped her paint the alphabet, one upper-case and one lower-case letter on twenty-six manilla folders. We taped them together and posted them around the kitchen wall above our heads. We had no living room in those days, just a dedicated playroom with toy shelves and bookcases. How did we ever manage?

When younger moms have asked, I usually say, well, you only have 24 hours in a day. You do what you can and move forward.

But now we don’t have such a busy, demanding life. We can tour Virginia and let others raise children, focus on careers, sustain life. “Sustain life” is a phrase I latched on to in southern Indiana back in the eighties. At a church meeting a woman used it to describe her role as a mother of young children. There were certainly days where that was my goal. I hope I accomplished more; I know I tried.

As I sit here in Gordonsville, Virginia, listening to Bach on YouTube, I’m savoring the memory of our lunch today at La Michoacana restaurant we happened upon in Charlottesville and the sunshine on the mountaintop.

I’m looking forward to returning home and making it ever more of a home. Washington and Jefferson were gardeners: it’s time to plant mine.