A Woman of Independent Means (44 page)

I have just seen my first grandchild for the first time. At one week she already seems to know everything. She actually glared at me as if demanding to know why it took me so long to get here. I admitted she had the right to ask.

We were on the Pan American Highway headed for home on Monday, August 29, two weeks before the baby was due. Carefree, with no hint of what awaited us, we decided to stop for the night at Ciudad Monte. We drove to the best hotel only to find it surrounded by automobiles and restless, milling crowds. We discovered to our horror that heavy rainfall had flooded the rivers to the north of us. All bridges were down and there was no way to get through to Monterrey.

All the hotels in town were overflowing and we were sent to the dormitory of one of the biggest sugar mills in Mexico, where we were hospitably received by the owners, who happened to be Americans. We felt fortunate to have beds as the tourists who arrived after us had to sleep in their cars. The bridges could not be repaired until the waters receded, so we had no choice but to wait until the rivers that separated us from Monterrey were shallow enough to be forded.

We were stranded without any means of communication for several days. When telephone service was finally restored on Saturday, I learned that I had been a grandmother for three days. I could hear Walter telling me that Eleanor and the baby were both fine, but apparently he could not understand a word I was saying. I have never had a more frustrating conversation.

I was beside myself with anxiety when the governor of the state of Tampico came to my rescue. He appeared unheralded at our hotel, riding, not a white charger, but a huge road-digging machine which he said would get a limited number of us across the first river. I was the first to volunteer. Sam stayed behind with the car, waving dubiously as I climbed onto one of the lateral beams and crouched there. There were twenty of us seated in every conceivable spot on the machine when we left.

We forded the first river, then proceeded on foot over huge stones to the main channel where the current was very strong. There we got into hastily constructed flatboats and crossed to waiting cars in which we forded two more rivers before finally arriving in Victoria for the night. From Victoria we took a bus to the next river, then had to walk a plank, crawl over stones, and finally climb up a ladder to the one section of bridge still standing. We were then crowded into a much smaller bus and after fording another river, reached Monterrey.

In my haste to start for home, I had left my pocketbook containing my tourist card and most of my money in the car with Sam. I was carrying a small change purse in my pocket, which contained just enough for a second-class train ticket to Dallas with nothing left over for food or drink. During the past week while we were stranded in the sugar mill we had subsisted entirely on the crackers and canned goods we had been wise enough to store in the trunk of our car as emergency provisions. I thought I would never be able to look at another can of beans, but by the time I reached Monterrey I was so hungry I would have happily eaten the can itself.

The train was very crowded but I finally found a seat next to a Mexican woman with two crying babies. In halting Spanish I explained that I was on my way to Texas to see my first grandchild and I offered to hold one of her babies. She accepted gratefully and the baby was soon sleeping peacefully on my shoulder. As a means of thanking me, the woman offered me a banana from a large bunch she was carrying. I ate it so hungrily she quickly offered me another. Four bananas later, we were fast friends. I don't believe she had ever seen a starving American tourist before. She talked to me the whole trip, unaware that I could understand only a fraction of what she was saying. My hunger had made me seem like a sister no matter what language I spoke.

When we got to the border and I had no tourist card to show the official, I broke into tears trying to explain what had happened. The official was trying to make me leave the train when my new friend began an eloquent defense. Something about a baby was all I could understand, but it seemed to satisfy him. He gave me a paternal smile, patted the baby asleep in my arms, and let me continue on my way.

When I reached Dallas, Eleanor and the baby were just leaving the hospital. I drove home with them and for the second time in a week held a sleeping baby in my arms but this time it was my own granddaughter.

I am as exhausted as if I had given birth myself—and just as proud.

Love,
Bess

August 1, 1939
Dallas

Dear Mother Steed,

It seems very sad that we have had so little to say to each other in the last two decades. I know you have taken great pride in Lydia's family and we were all thrilled when Marian gave birth to your first great-grandchild two years ago. But let me remind you that you have another great-granddaughter here in Dallas whom you have seen only once since she was born almost a year ago.

She is staying here with us for two weeks while her parents vacation in New Mexico. We would love to have you come for a visit and share in the fun of having her to ourselves without parental interference. She is just on the verge of learning to walk. In fact, she could do it today if she had any confidence in her own ability, but her parents have done nothing to encourage her, insisting that she will take her first step as soon as she is ready and not before. However, today I purchased an ingenious little harness with a long belt attached to the back. I stand behind her holding the belt and, secure in the knowledge that I am providing total support, she literally runs down the front walk into the waiting arms of her grandfather.

Forgive me for conferring the title of grandfather on a man who earned it only through marriage, but, never having had a child to call him father, Sam is doubly grateful for the role of grandfather. And just as my first marriage was cemented by the arrival of children, my second marriage has been surprisingly strengthened by the presence of a grandchild.

When Eleanor got married, Sam and I were left alone as husband and wife for the first time since our own wedding fifteen years ago. Too often in the past I have taken for granted everything that lay within easy reach and sought adventure abroad. But in the last two years, exploring the mysteries contained within the familiar boundaries of our own continent, I have seen evidence of a glacial era in Canada, an ancient civilization in Mexico, and hitherto undetected ardor in the eyes of my husband.

Our newly discovered joy in each other's company has been sealed by the presence of a grandchild in our lives. I see now what a child of his own would have meant to Sam. He has been unstinting in his affection and concern for my two children, always treating them as his own, but this is the first time he has shared in the miracle of a baby.

He took such pride in her progress today. Tomorrow when I put on the harness I will only hold the belt for the first few steps then I will let go, and I am convinced she will walk alone. When she finally discovers that I am far behind, she will be too elated by her own ability to care. By the time her parents return, I am determined to have her walking everywhere. If I have my way, they will never see her crawl again.

The presence of a grandchild has mercifully diverted my attention from the absence of my only son. I know now how you must have felt when your only son married me and moved away. When Andrew told me he was moving to Kansas City to open an advertising agency, I was overcome by a feeling of loss unlike anything I have ever experienced. He is so far from where I want him to be.

The west bedroom is ready and waiting for you. It is still furnished with the organdy and chintz Eleanor chose when she was sixteen. After she left for college, she never occupied the room again, preferring the privacy of the third floor. For a while after her wedding, the house seemed much too big for us and I considered selling it, but now I look forward to filling it with grandchildren—and a visiting great-grandmother. It must be so thrilling to see your life descend into another generation. I am determined to have that experience before I die.

Hope to see you soon.

Much love—as always,
Bess

November 9, 1942
Dallas

Mrs. Hans Hoffmeyer
240 N. Cheyenne St.
Tulsa, Oklahoma

 

My dearest Annie,

How deeply I am grieving for you today. Last night I was reading the paper, feeling the war coming ever closer, when the name of Franz Hoffmeyer seized my attention. Above the name was the photograph of a captain in the United States Army, whose smiling countenance gave the lie to the accompanying news item “killed in action.”

It does not seem so long ago that I was writing to another grieving mother whose son Franz had been killed in the war. But that was the First World War and your brother was fighting on the other side. At that time you and Hans were understandably torn between your loyalty to the country that contained your past and your commitment to the country that promised you a future. But this time there can be no doubt about your citizenship; I only hope its privileges can compensate for the heavy price you have just paid.

Until I read your address in the newspaper I did not know you and Hans had moved to Tulsa. I hope that his automotive supply business is prospering and that you are continuing to pursue your chosen profession. I can vouch for your skill as a healer of wounded hearts as well as bodies. Had it not been for your devoted care after Robin died, I am not sure I would have found the courage to continue. I know too well the despair engulfing you at this moment. And the anger at a life denied. Franz was just twenty-five—with marriage and children still ahead of him. But at least he was allowed to reach the threshold of life—to exult in all the choices that seem open to a person on reaching his majority. After that so much is compromise, with each choice narrowing the range of succeeding choices.

I do not mean to insult the sorrow you are enduring in the death of your son by comparing it to the disappointment I am sensing in my own life, but the subject of loss summons many variations to mind. And perhaps because I was forced to experience the death of a husband and a child so early in life, I am able to see more clearly the death that exists in life and, conversely, the life that survives death. The love I felt for my first husband continues unchanged by the fact that he is no longer at my side—and I must admit that there are moments I still prefer to share with him than with the man who greets me every morning at breakfast.

The power of memory is that it preserves every image intact, safe from the tarnishing effects of time. For me Robin remains forever a happy little boy of eleven even at those moments when I wonder what kind of man he would have become. At his death I still cherished the illusion that a mother could shape the destinies of her children, could will them into attaining their full growth as individuals. But with each passing year you expect less from them until one day you find you are asking for nothing more than their physical appearance at regularly appointed times and places so that you can pretend you are still as close in mind and spirit as you are in the flesh.

Nature as a process provides for no growth past physical maturity. Only the individual, through an effort of will and imagination, can add, enhance, enrich. Life unresisted merely subtracts. I no longer believe an individual can change the fate of other people, no matter how much she loves them, but I will not relinquish the responsibility for my own life until the day I die.

Dearest Annie, circumstances have conspired to keep us at a distance since I moved from the house and the life we shared into one of my own, but I think of you often and my heart aches for you and Hans in this time of loss. Please know a devoted friend shares your pain—and that as long as I am alive, you are not alone.

July 8, 1943
Dallas

Dearest Eleanor,