Morning Will Come: An Intimate Memoir of a Woman Who, After 40 Years, Discovers She Has a Daughter and the Unbelievable Events That Follow.

By Maura O'Neill

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 3, 2005
• ISBN: 9781465318732

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Copyright © 2005 by Maura O’Neill.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval

system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book is a work of fact and fiction. Segments of the story, dates, names,

places, and events are inspired by a true story and the author’s imagination.

Some of the names of persons mentioned in this book have been changed to

protect the individual’s privacy.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

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Contents

Chapter One

EARLY YEARS

Chapter Two

WORLD WAR II YEARS

Chapter Three

MEETING DAVID

Chapter Four

MY LIFE WITH CIRCUS MODELING IN MIAMI DANCING ON THE CRUISE SHIPS

Chapter Five

LIFE IN THE FAMILY BUSINESS AND MEETING MARCEL

Chapter Six

THE LETTER AND SEEING DAVID AGAIN

Epilogue

MORNING HAS COME

I had the chance! Had I been brave enough

to have gone through with it

my life might have been happier.

As the poet wrote . . .

"Of all sad words of tongue and pen,

the saddest are these:

It might have been!"

Chapter One

EARLY YEARS

My name is Anya Simone Lipman. This is my story. I have had a sad and eerie life. I came into this world on a cold winter’s day in January. My mother and father had been expecting me most any day now. Papa said, The moon is about to be full. I must be ready to get the doctor.

Mama soon told him, I think it’s time.

I weighed only five and a half pounds, and Jerusha, the black nanny Papa had hired to look after us, said, Now, Mr. Reuben, I’m putting her in the warming oven of the cook stove. She is so small. She’ll stay warm there.

My great-grandfather Erasmas had been a diamond merchant in Amsterdam. Just why they had come to this country had never been determined. For the trip across the waters he had my great-grandmother sew all their valuables including the Dutch Bible in the folds of their clothes. My father said, Diamonds don’t move in this country. We must get into something else. People need work clothes, so we will sell what they need and have money to buy. The Depression of 1929 was on. My mother, Isadora, brought me to the store with her. She had to help Papa out, because they could not afford to hire anyone. Nobody had any money to spend, and they could not buy anything. Papa said, I could get another job somewhere, but selling is all the family has ever known. Maybe things will get better. They put me in a shipping box. As I grew older, they tried to teach me about the store. We had a large old-fashioned cash register, and I learned to make change by the time I was four or five years old, standing on a wooden box to get into it. I dusted shoeboxes and helped clean up. I loved to sell Valentine cards when February 14 rolled around. They were fascinating to me.

On Saturday nights my parents would keep the store open later. I would get so tired I would go out on the back step in the darkness, watching for the train to come. The train that always brought the cattle from the west, coming through our town to reach Atlanta. There it would turn north and go to Chicago. Up the road about half a mile was a big water tank. There they would stop and water the cattle. They would be lowing and bellowing, and I would cry when I’d think about them going to be slaughtered.

My parents built me a playhouse in our backyard at home; it was like a regular house with windows and a stove to keep warm by. I enjoyed staying there by myself. There were no other children in the neighborhood to play with ’til I started