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Defeat on the field, death in the family
Memory, loss, and the '50 Phillies
My father and two of my uncles sat at the breakfast room table in our West Philadelphia rowhouse, the radio between them. I lay on the floor, rigid with tension, the linoleum cold as clay under my back. When Dick Sisler hit the winning homer, I was so happy.
That October of 1950 I was a boy who devoured Sport Magazine and the backs of baseball cards and the baseball books my mother brought from the library when I was ill. I knew ERAs and RBIs. I knew most-of this and longest-consecutive that. I knew who the Sultan of Swat was and the Rajah and the Chief and Dizzy and Dazzy and Daffy, Big and Little Poison, Ducky Wucky and the Wild Horse of the Osage. I knew it had been 35 years since the Phillies had won a pennant— which, to an eight-year-old, seemed like forever.
I didn't know it would be 30 until they won another.
That summer had confirmed the truths I had learned from the books I read and the movies I watched: The good guys always won.
A portable TV in school
When my younger sister Susie had been hospitalized earlier that year, a friend of my parents had given her a portable TV set for her room. It had a six-inch screen and a rabbit ears antenna. When she came home"“ pale, thin, her arms black-and-blue from the IVs"“ we kept the TV. The winning of the pennant was an event of such civic importance that my third grade teacher let me bring our TV to class so everyone could watch the World Series.
The Yankees swept. Historians recall it as a debacle; but it wasn't that bad: 1-0; 2-1 in ten innings; 3-2 (the Phillies led 2-1 in the eighth); 5-2. Of course, the closeness only made the pain more excruciating.
My sister died within the next year. Her leukemia had only been postponed, not cured. I received the news from my father when I came down for breakfast. I sat on the steps. I knew I was supposed to cry, but I didn't. My only memory of my sister today is someone who teased me and, when I got mad, called to our mother that I was picking on her, so that I would be blamed. I recall the Phillies lineup more clearly than my sister's age or height or weight or the season of her passing.
"The last thing she said," my father said, "was "'Tell Robert I love him'."
I wonder if he made that up to make me feel better. It made me feel worse.
Rooting for the Phillies quickly became not even a matter of "Wait until next year." It was a foregone conclusion that next year would be no improvement.
The unmentioned loss
After Susie's death, my parents put away all pictures of her. They didn't talk about her. (My father said it would upset my mother. My mother said it would upset my father.) They donated her dolls and dresses to charity. They let me keep the TV. I would sit on my bed and watch wrestling from Baltimore or the Pabst Blue Ribbon fights. I remember thinking home wasn't fun any more.
In the fall, my parents transferred me from Lea School to Friends' Central. Perhaps the inducement was Jacqueline Susann's mother, a Friends' central teacher whose idea of effective pedagogy was to have students copy out pages from the dictionary. But another, I suspect, was that they would encounter fewer people who had known Susie. I liked Friends' Central, but often during my first year I was sent from class to the infirmary with stomach pains of unknown origin.
Once I heard myself described by the nurse as the boy whose sister had died.
The folds of depression
In the film I Loved You So Long, the character played by Kristin Scott Thomas remarks that the death of a child is a prison from which you are never released. I understood (almost) completely what she meant. My mother, who had lost her own mother as a child, was familiar with the folds of depression. To my father, who had scrapped his way out of South Philadelphia, the best cure for life's adversities was "a good kick in the ass." Therapy was not an option; grief counseling might as well have been practiced on Mars.
My mother told me once that she coped by driving to the airport and sitting in the coffee shop, watching planes take off and land and finding, in this regularity, re-assurance. But this recollection conflicts with my independent belief that my mother didn't obtain a license until much later. Perhaps, at this late date, I'm conflating her with a character in a Joan Didion novel.
My mother's regrets
There is no one left to ask. My father is dead. My aunts and uncles are dead. My sister doesn't show up in Wikipedia. A Google search wouldn't provide reliable stats. My mother survives, but only as a 97-year-old victim of a stroke on top of Parkinson's. Sustained conversation isn't her best medium.
To be specific, after 1950 the Phillies finished fifth, fourth, third, fourth, fourth, fifth, fifth, eighth, eighth, eighth and eighth "“ out of eight. I turned for succor to friends. My mother did once confide to a cousin that she regretted not paying more attention to me when Susie died, but she and my father had concentrated on my three-year-old brother. They thought I was old enough to handle it.
The greatest challenge
I blame no one for anything. I mean that without qualification. I believe that everyone did their best. I think that's usually the case for most people. But sometimes you fail to advance the runner. Sometimes you're tempted to swing at the wrong pitch. Something internal or external distracts.
Hitting a pitched ball with a bat is said to be the most difficult challenge in sport. Succeed three times out of ten and you are an All-Star. Four puts you in the Hall of Fame.
That doesn't mean that I'm free of regret or the occasional desire to wail or pound a wall. This seems reasonably human, too.
That October of 1950 I was a boy who devoured Sport Magazine and the backs of baseball cards and the baseball books my mother brought from the library when I was ill. I knew ERAs and RBIs. I knew most-of this and longest-consecutive that. I knew who the Sultan of Swat was and the Rajah and the Chief and Dizzy and Dazzy and Daffy, Big and Little Poison, Ducky Wucky and the Wild Horse of the Osage. I knew it had been 35 years since the Phillies had won a pennant— which, to an eight-year-old, seemed like forever.
I didn't know it would be 30 until they won another.
That summer had confirmed the truths I had learned from the books I read and the movies I watched: The good guys always won.
A portable TV in school
When my younger sister Susie had been hospitalized earlier that year, a friend of my parents had given her a portable TV set for her room. It had a six-inch screen and a rabbit ears antenna. When she came home"“ pale, thin, her arms black-and-blue from the IVs"“ we kept the TV. The winning of the pennant was an event of such civic importance that my third grade teacher let me bring our TV to class so everyone could watch the World Series.
The Yankees swept. Historians recall it as a debacle; but it wasn't that bad: 1-0; 2-1 in ten innings; 3-2 (the Phillies led 2-1 in the eighth); 5-2. Of course, the closeness only made the pain more excruciating.
My sister died within the next year. Her leukemia had only been postponed, not cured. I received the news from my father when I came down for breakfast. I sat on the steps. I knew I was supposed to cry, but I didn't. My only memory of my sister today is someone who teased me and, when I got mad, called to our mother that I was picking on her, so that I would be blamed. I recall the Phillies lineup more clearly than my sister's age or height or weight or the season of her passing.
"The last thing she said," my father said, "was "'Tell Robert I love him'."
I wonder if he made that up to make me feel better. It made me feel worse.
Rooting for the Phillies quickly became not even a matter of "Wait until next year." It was a foregone conclusion that next year would be no improvement.
The unmentioned loss
After Susie's death, my parents put away all pictures of her. They didn't talk about her. (My father said it would upset my mother. My mother said it would upset my father.) They donated her dolls and dresses to charity. They let me keep the TV. I would sit on my bed and watch wrestling from Baltimore or the Pabst Blue Ribbon fights. I remember thinking home wasn't fun any more.
In the fall, my parents transferred me from Lea School to Friends' Central. Perhaps the inducement was Jacqueline Susann's mother, a Friends' central teacher whose idea of effective pedagogy was to have students copy out pages from the dictionary. But another, I suspect, was that they would encounter fewer people who had known Susie. I liked Friends' Central, but often during my first year I was sent from class to the infirmary with stomach pains of unknown origin.
Once I heard myself described by the nurse as the boy whose sister had died.
The folds of depression
In the film I Loved You So Long, the character played by Kristin Scott Thomas remarks that the death of a child is a prison from which you are never released. I understood (almost) completely what she meant. My mother, who had lost her own mother as a child, was familiar with the folds of depression. To my father, who had scrapped his way out of South Philadelphia, the best cure for life's adversities was "a good kick in the ass." Therapy was not an option; grief counseling might as well have been practiced on Mars.
My mother told me once that she coped by driving to the airport and sitting in the coffee shop, watching planes take off and land and finding, in this regularity, re-assurance. But this recollection conflicts with my independent belief that my mother didn't obtain a license until much later. Perhaps, at this late date, I'm conflating her with a character in a Joan Didion novel.
My mother's regrets
There is no one left to ask. My father is dead. My aunts and uncles are dead. My sister doesn't show up in Wikipedia. A Google search wouldn't provide reliable stats. My mother survives, but only as a 97-year-old victim of a stroke on top of Parkinson's. Sustained conversation isn't her best medium.
To be specific, after 1950 the Phillies finished fifth, fourth, third, fourth, fourth, fifth, fifth, eighth, eighth, eighth and eighth "“ out of eight. I turned for succor to friends. My mother did once confide to a cousin that she regretted not paying more attention to me when Susie died, but she and my father had concentrated on my three-year-old brother. They thought I was old enough to handle it.
The greatest challenge
I blame no one for anything. I mean that without qualification. I believe that everyone did their best. I think that's usually the case for most people. But sometimes you fail to advance the runner. Sometimes you're tempted to swing at the wrong pitch. Something internal or external distracts.
Hitting a pitched ball with a bat is said to be the most difficult challenge in sport. Succeed three times out of ten and you are an All-Star. Four puts you in the Hall of Fame.
That doesn't mean that I'm free of regret or the occasional desire to wail or pound a wall. This seems reasonably human, too.
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