Wake up Singing!: My Life with Mary Helen Richards and Education Through Music

By Trudi Lee Richards

Wake Up Singing is the story of Mary Helen Richards and her revolutionary approach to teaching, Education Through Music. Written after her death by her husband, Cedric Ricky Richards, and edited by their children, it is a both a love story and a history. It tells the story of their lives over the course of more than half a century together as they worked and played, suffered and rejoiced through the birth, growth and development of their children and their work, ETM and the Richards Institute of Education and Research. To Rickys long narrative, written during the four years before he too moved on to join his beloved Mary Helen, their children have added some of Mary Helens and Rickys personal writings about the years before they met, as well as love letters from their courtship, and an epilog about the last years of their lives. Telling the story of the dedication and love of life that made their work possible, this book is a testimony to the way a shining intent can unfold through doubt and delight, anguish and adventure, into reconciliation and beyond

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 6, 2007
• ISBN: 9781465334237

Trudi Lee Richards

Cedric W. Richards, born in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1913, married Mary Helen Bush in 1945, before going overseas in World War II. After the war they moved to California and began their teaching careers - he at Stanford University, she in the Portola Valley Public Schools. During the many years she developed her life work, Education Through Music, he supported her in every possible way, and after his retirement continued as a key figure at the Richards Institute. After Mary Helen’s death in 1998, he spent the last four years of his life writing the story of their life together.

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Copyright © 2007 by Trudi Richards.

Pangea Press

Davis California

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Cover photo: Mary Helen and Ricky as Newlyweds

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

CEDRIC’S LOG

MARY HELEN’S STORIES — A SELECTION

OUR LIFE WITH MARY HELEN RICHARDS AND EDUCATION THROUGH MUSIC

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

EPILOG

APPENDIX

I     

II     

III     

IV     

One of her favorite celebration times was morning. She would wake us up by singing. It was dim and still in the back of the house where we all slept, mercifully unconscious. Loudly and tunefully, and with terrible enthusiasm, she would sing, to the tune of the military trumpet revele, It’s time to get up, it’s time to get up, it’s time to get up in the morning!!! Awakening in the confusion of dreams, I was seldom ready for such an overly cheerful affirmation of the waking state . . . That singing bothered me!

But in all vital questions, my mother was my anchor, my reference, my reflector of all good things. I trusted her absolutely. Hour after hour we would talk—about Life, and people, and everything related. We talked about having friends, and being shy, about art, and music, and cooking, and giving, and working, and loving, about husbands and brothers and sisters and parents . . . 

—Revele, Trudi Richards

INTRODUCTION

A Love Story

The work our father devoted himself to for much of his long life was really her work—and our father, a brilliant mind in his own right, never pretended otherwise. From the time Ricky first laid eyes on Mary Helen, he was hopelessly enchanted. From then on, he committed himself heart, mind and body to his beloved’s well-being, and to everything she wanted to do and did, with such energy, joy and conviction, throughout their fifty-two years together. This is the story of their passion and their love—for life, for their family, for their work, and, in the last analysis, for each other.

—

Mary Helen

Mary Helen Bush was born in 1921 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Her parents, Leota and Frank Bush, were hard-working middle class folk, and struggled through the Great Depression, both of them running a boarding house, while Frank held two additional jobs to make ends meet. He had wanted to be an artist, but had ended up going to work at a young age to support his mother, since as Mary Helen always liked to say, her grandfather, one George Bush, was no good.

In the boarding house, Mary Helen grew up with an interesting in-and-outflow of characters around the dining table, while her mother tirelessly cooked and cleaned for them. Her two brothers, Richard and Bobby, had beautiful singing voices, and Mary Helen often accompanied them on the piano at church and community events. Plagued with asthma from the age of three, she had many hours at home to devote herself the piano and the cello, both of which she loved. But more than anything, she wanted to sing—all the more so when her mother gently suggested that she should stick to the piano, because that was what she was really good at.

—

Ricky

When Mary Helen was born, Cedric William Richards was already nine years old. He lived in another part of the city, in a small house with a huge, flourishing garden that his mother tended. The reclusive Richards family was known to be a little strange. His mother, Gertrude, having spent her first years in a sod house on the prairie, was proud of her English heritage. She cultivated a gentility that set her apart from the unpedigreed, and even managed to marry an Englishman—although he always considered himself first and foremost an American. Cedric was their second child; his older sister, Rosemonde, was a child diabetic who would spend her entire life living at home with Mama.

Cedric’s father, John Charles Norman Richards, was especially peculiar. A musician with a long beard, he made a living building and tuning pipe organs, as well as playing the organ in churches and silent movie theaters. In those days in Nebraska, when everyone ate a solid diet of meat and potatoes, he had been a vegetarian since he was small, when his mother had cooked his pet chicken for dinner. Now the children in their neighborhood would run past his workshop in a thrill of terror, hoping and fearing to catch a glimpse of the weird old man . . .

For Cedric, life changed completely when he met Mary Helen. No sooner had he introduced himself, than she looked him over and said firmly, Well, I’m going to call you Ricky! Never mind that his mother had chosen the name Cedric because she couldn’t think of a nickname for that dignified appellation. Ever after, even to his children, he was always Ricky—because that’s what she called him.

—

The Story

We’ve supplemented the story Ricky tells in his long narrative with several additional elements: Ricky’s personal Log of his early life before he met Mary Helen, stories by Mary Helen, a sampling of love letters from their courtship, and some short writings by Trudi, including a brief epilog about our parents’ last years together and a poem written just after our mother’s death.

Mary Helen began writing about her life after she retired as a teacher. It was an attempt, she said, to answer the question people kept asking her: Why did you do what you did? By then, she was feeling the first effects of Alzheimers disease, and although she still seemed to remember the distant past, more and more of her memories were slowly evaporating. They say that with Alzheimers all one’s insecurities and unresolved issues tend to come to the fore. Perhaps that was why, when people asked her that question, she sometimes felt as if she had to justify herself, as if they might be asking more in accusation than in curiosity. Nevertheless, her stories are completely charming, full of her inimitable delight in life and her fierce spirit, although they may well be graced with more fantasy than fact.

It wasn’t til after Ricky’s death that we discovered the love letters, jammed into an old suitcase in the back of the attic. As we began reading them—feeling as if we had come across the King’s secret and forbidden treasure—I was overcome with a mixture of delight and outrage. Why had they never told us about their incredible wartime romance? Growing up with them, I had thought their relationship less than passionate. Ricky had never hidden his love for her, but she, although warm and affectionate with him, never gave us to understand that there was anything there but a most wholesome middlewestern relationship—sensible and lukewarm. Certainly, she told us she loved him—but when she told us stories of their courtship, she emphasized her own struggles with doubt, never hinting that she had also felt longing and passion for the handsome lieutenant.

Perhaps she had buried those memories without knowing it. It would have been understandable. Her father was a tortured, emotional man who did not know how to handle his helpless love for his children. He abused his entire family—his wife and daughter psychologically, his sons both psychologically and physically, habitually beating them and throwing temper tantrums at his meek and self-sacrificing wife. Mary Helen was his treasure, and he never laid a hand on her. She had arranged her immunity at the age of three, the first and last time he raised his hand at her. At that moment she was seized with a severe asthma attack, which scared him to death. From then on, she was safe—he never tried to touch her again. But the price she paid was dear: from then on, she suffered from chronic asthma—until the day he died, when it blessedly vanished.

Despite her father’s violence, Mary Helen had a profound love of life. Yearning to have a family, she consciously looked for—and found—a supremely gentle man to be the father of her children. And from her dozens of long letters to her new husband, it is clear that although she although she was not sure whether she truly loved him, she did care for him deeply—that at least part of the time, she felt the passion, wonder and delight of true love . . .

But it is likely also that she suffered from a powerful contradiction in her love. Her father, after all, was a sharply contradictory model of what it was to be a husband and a father. From the mixed tenderness and rage with which she writes about him in some of her stories, it is clear that she both loved and hated him. Perhaps, in her child’s mind, love and revulsion must always walk hand in hand.

If that were the case, then she would have to reconcile with her feelings for her father before she could freely love any man. It seems that reconciling with that contradiction was the great mountain she had to climb in her relationship with Ricky. She spent her life climbing that mountain, and finally she did make it to the top . . . But that is getting ahead of the story . . .

Ricky’s narrative is a meticulous account of his life with Mary Helen, and of the birth and development of her life work, Education Through Music. When Mary Helen died in 1998 at the age of 77, after Ricky had cared for her during her last years of illness, I suggested to him that he might write about their life together, and about her work. I thought it might help him reconcile with his great loss. He was 85, and to our delight, he agreed. We got him an E-Machine, and with his usual silent and curmudgeonly doggedness, he went to work, typing with two fingers, the same way he had written the manuscript for his long and well-respected textbook, Engineering Materials Science.

Ricky was an old Navy man, an engineer, and a methodical person who always ate his meals at the same time every day. It should come as no surprise when what he wrote reads like a ship’s log. What might be surprising—if you didn’t already know his deep sensitivity, the side of him that loved music and beauty and that contemplated the universe in mute awe—are the bursts of innocent poetry that pop up throughout, the sort of thing that tends to discombobulate readers of logbooks . . .

—

Ricky’s Passing

Two years after Ricky began writing about Mary Helen, my husband Jorge and I and our son Juan moved in with him when we had to sell our home in San Francisco. I wanted to be with him—to get to know my father, and to take care of him, as he had cared for us, and then for our mother, for so many years.

Two years later, when he was 89, he summoned us to his bedside one evening. He had been feeling poorly for several months, although there was nothing really clearly wrong with him, other than old age. Indeed, his current complaints had begun when he threw his back out shoveling compost. Up until then he had continued to climb up on the roof every year to clear the gutters, and had done all his own gardening work, even wrestling his gigantic rotatiller through the earth every spring to prepare for the next planting.

Now he lay down and informed us of his decision. He was ready to move on. He really couldn’t write any more on the book, because he didn’t know how to tell the last part of the story, the part where his beloved Mary Helen began to to retire into herself, forgetting little things, finally even seeming to forget who she was, and who we, her loved ones, were.

Two weeks after his announcement, Ricky was gone. He had died of heart failure and pneumonia—basically from complications of old age.

It was after that, cleaning out the house, that we found the letter. It was a letter from the bank, congratulating Mr. Richards for having finally paid off his mortgage. The letter had arrived just two weeks ago, the day he made his announcement. Ricky was always very thorough. Perhaps that was the signal he had been waiting for.

He had done what he wanted and needed to do. He could go on.

—Trudi Richards, February 2007

CEDRIC’S LOG

Cedric W. Richards

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Cedric, age 9, with sister Rosemonde

1913

Born March 3 in house at 1836 Washington St., Lincoln, Nebraska (Grandmother’s house). Time 4:00 am (0400). Lived at 837 So. 32nd St.

1917-1918

Moved to 1836 Washing ton St. to live with Grandmother for a year. Had measles sometime during that year.

1918

Moved back to 8737 so. 32nd St. during summer. Had whooping cough.

1919

Started to old Randolph School, at 26th and Randolph, in the fall. Did not like it, so went only two or three days and then quit. Stayed out of school for two years (Rosemonde wrote her first book)

1921

Started in Miss Acott’s school, at 444 So. 27th St., in the fall. Mother went to the hospital just before Christmas. Very nice Christmas, tho, in spite of everything. Got acquainted with the Harrises. Mrs. Harris and Maybelle stayed with us kids part of the time. Mother was in hospital two or three weeks.

photo%203.jpg

Cedric (second row, standing on right)

and family visiting relatives in Chadron

1922

Summer—First real vacation trip. Mother and Rosemonde and I went to Chadron on the train. Were away for one whole month. Visited Harrison and Hot Springs, South Dakota. Went thru Wind Cave. Dad came up and spent the last week with us. All a wonderful adventure for us kids. Bought the Cheney photograph for $250.00.

1923

Fall—Rosemonde started High School.

1924

Late Summer—Rosemonde got diabetes. Rounds of hospitals started.

Got first automobile: 1923 Buick.

Got Rover at Plattsmouth.

1925-6

Went to 26th & O School (9th Grade)

1926

August—Took our first camping trip. Went to Chadron and Harrison in the old ’23 Buick (Dobbin). Two weeks.

Fall—Started in High School. Acquired house at 1836 Washington St. and decided to remodel into apartments.

1927

August—Second camping trip. Went to Chadron and then down to Derwen and Colorado Springs. Two weeks. Stayed in Manitou at the foot of Pike’s Peak for a day or two. Drank Manitou water and walked part way up the cog railroad.

1928

Taking pictures—no more need for organists in the theatres. Dad lost his job.

1929

June—Graduated from High School. Barely 16 years old.

Fall—Started in University of Nebraska in Arch. Engineering.

Stock market crash, and beginning of great depression.

1930

Trip to Carthage, Illinois and Chicago. Took the old ’23 Buick, Rover and the whole family. Spent one month away from home; one day in Chicago. Came back thru Des Moines. Drought began in Nebraska. City limited use of water on lawns and our beautiful cut leaf birch all but died. Dad put in all his time in the organ servicing business and playing at the cathedral. (Won $10.00 prize in Pi Mu Epsilon exam—analytics).

1931

Spring—Won $10.00 prize in P.M.E. exam—calculus. Joined the society. Rover died of rabies.

1933

June—Graduated from Univ. of Nebraska with B. Sc. In Arch. E.

Brownie born in May 1933.

August—Got Brownie at farm north of Scribner.

Fall—continued in Univ. Took some graduate courses.

December—quit Univ. to take job at State Highway Dept. under C.W.A. project of mapping Nebraska counties.

1934

June—project (above) completed, so out of a job.

Went into partnership with Dad in the organ business—called it the Lincoln Organ Company.

Fall—got first big rebuilding job—Grand Island Methodist church. Worked on it all winter. Rented building at 905 N. 21st St. from Cushman Motor.

1935

Summer—moved factory to 4115 O St. Installed organ at Grand Isl. Methodist Church.

Trip to Chadron and the Black Hills. Rosemonde stayed at home. Saw Sylvan Lake, the Needles, etc. for the first time.

1938

Trip to Chadron and the Black Hills. Whole family went this time, including Brownie. Stayed about a week in a cabin at Sylvan Lake. Went up toe Spearfish and Rapid City, also.

1939

September 1st (?)—Second World War began.

1934

September—Went to Chicago Worlds Fair with E. Ryan. First boat trip across Lake Michigan.

1940

October 16th—national Registration preparing for Selective Service.

Spring—Got first electric refrigerator, also first electric razor.

1941

December 7th—Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

1942

February 1st—got job at University, teaching Engineering Drawing in E.M. Department. Draft classification 2-A.

May—went out with a girl for the first time in my life. Vera Emrich.

Memorial Day—went horse-back riding for the first time. Went again next day. Went riding about every week all summer.

Had complete charge of one class in ESMWT, Drafting and Shop Math during summer.

Met Eloise Dobbs. Went with her a few times. Phooey.

1943

Army Specialized Training Program began to materialize.

Spring—went to first Square Dance.

Summer—taught refresher courses at Ag. College under STARS program. Got acquainted with Don Glattly. Went with Marguerite Talbot a few times. Phooey.

Fall—September—Started singing in St. Paul’s Choir.

Began to get acquainted with Mary Helen Bush!

MARY HELEN’S STORIES — A SELECTION

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Mary Helen as a child

Mother, Aunt Helen, and the Sentence

My mother’s maiden name was Leota Miller. Leota is a Native American name for a Nebraska prairie flower. Leota Miller Bush was a quiet, gentle lady; I am quite certain that I never heard her be critical of anyone. She had many friends and stayed in touch with them. When I was a child, I thought her way was everyone’s way. I assumed that I, too, would grow up to be kind, generous, long suffering, and married with three or more kids—unless I decided to take all that goodness into a convent like my mother’s sister, Aunt Helen!

My mother always said, The greatest gift is to sing. I knew her singing was beautiful, but she told me, Your Aunt Helen really had a beautiful voice. She was the most gifted singer I ever heard!

She often spoke of God’s great gift to Helen—a great voice. I pondered the mystery of His letting her die at such a young age. Aunt Helen was a nun, and many of my mother’s friends told me about her beautiful singing; I cannot remember it. She lived with us for a while in El Paso, Texas, but was very ill with tuberculosis, and was soon called back to the convent in Nebraska where she died at the age of 35, when I was seven.

When Aunt Helen lived at our house, she took her temperature every morning and evening. For me and my brothers, she always pretended it was a cigarette, and told us she was a fast woman. After that I could always tell a fast woman from the slow kind. Fast women smoked! I wondered how it worked.

I liked Aunt Helen. I had struggled with severe bouts of asthma from the time I was two years old. She told me to just go ahead and wheeze, and stop worrying about it. When I followed her advice, the asthma seemed to go away.

Many years later, I met a voice teacher who had known Aunt Helen and still, after a those years, remembered her singing. She told me that Aunt Helen had been her good friend, and asked me if I had known her. I replied, Yes, she was my mother’s sister. The lady was thrilled and asked me to sing for her. Since I had been a voice major in the music school at the university, she was very eager, expecting much from a close relative of such a wonderful singer.

I couldn’t escape. Reluctantly, I sang one or two phrases, and in the middle of a phrase, she interrupted, saying, Oh no—you can’t sing. I laughed. That was the verdict I had learned to accept throughout my life.

Mother began teaching me to play piano and read music when she heard me trying to make melodies on those fascinating black and white keys at the age of two or three. She was afraid I would never want to study the notation if I could play by ear without the music.

From the beginning, as far back as I can remember and continuing on into my teen years, she pronounced the following sentence upon me: You can’t sing, but you can play the piano. From the first time I heard it, I fought that sentence, which condemned me to being a non-singer. Far from making me content with my lot, that sentence underscored my need and desire to sing. I was convinced that singing belongs to everyone. To tell anyone that she or he could not sing was as bad as telling them they could not communicate.

My two brothers, Richard and Bobby, were both gifted with wonderful singing voices. Their lives were filled with song. I longed to sing too, because Mother kept saying, You can’t sing, but you can play the piano. As a result I disliked the piano and only reluctantly became my two brothers’ accompanist.

Despite my envy of their singing voices, I did enjoy accompanying them. When they were invited to sing at many places in Lincoln, and in Denver, Colorado, I loved to see the people, and to talk to them afterwards, and especially to have first choice at their delicious desserts.

The people were enthusiastic about our music. I was about nine years old when we first began to perform together. My big brother was eleven, and terribly embarrassed at being with his little sister. My little brother Bobby was four years younger than I was. Our audiences always loved them both, and gave us many encores. They would not sing together; I always went with each of them separately, and usually played piano solos for the people as part of our program. I loved to perform, and so did Bob. My big brother said he didn’t enjoy it, but I know he did. Richard’s voice was a beautiful mellow alto, which later changed to a fine baritone, and Bob’s was a spectacular soprano.

I loved to play the piano and spent hours at the piano—not practicing, but playing, as in having fun. I played with the keys, making up my own music. For a year or two I took lessons with a piano teacher with a class of other children.

I knew piano playing and being a girl were good things. I enjoyed piano and Mother was always telling me girls were blessed because they got to be Mothers, which was a holy thing.

But I considered both to be second class positions. Not only did the boys get to sing and be boys, but they also were going to grow up in a man’s world and would get to be in charge. It bugged me. I always liked the boys better than anything or anybody in school. I had quite a few girl friends, but I wanted more than anything in this world to be a boy! However, praying for that favor never worked. I remained a girl, and now have three daughters and three granddaughters—and one son and three grandsons.

—

Daddy and the Ice Cream Sodas

Mother told me that she had never wanted to marry Frank Bush. But when Cora Lee had backed out of marriage with him at the last moment, Leota felt sorry for him because he was so destitute. He had given Cora Lee a beautiful engagement ring, and parties celebrating their coming wedding were many and joyful. Cora was beautiful. But just before the wedding, she realized that even though he was the handsomest fellow in Lincoln, Frank was tempestuous and very unsure of himself. She discovered that she couldn’t take it.

Frank was deeply offended—his pride, always with him but often wavering so that he frequently needed reassurance, had received a severe blow. Mother, ever generous and self-sacrificing, and overcome by pity, gave her consent to be his wife.

Frank’s pride never was eased. He suffered bitterly. He longed to be important. His discontent was partially because he was never boss. He knew he had a good mind, and graduated against the odds from Lincoln High School in 1906. I do not use the word intelligent to describe him, because although he wanted to be good, his anger and ambition always overcame his thinking.

He longed to be an architect, but never studied architecture. He went to work instead, and worked two jobs throughout the Great Depression of the thirties. His strong feelings of responsibility for his parents and sisters, and later the need to support his wife and children, denied him the satisfaction that an absorbing and respectable career in architecture might have supplied.

Frank was a self-conscious man, unsure of himself and self righteous. One of his favorite statements was, What will people think? One time I told him that one of my friends had said she thought he looked like the president of a big firm. He beamed and adjusted the angle of his hat to a slightly cockier tilt.

When I was older, I felt sorry for him because he was so unsure of himself. He wanted to do the right thing more than anybody I knew, but his belligerence was not a good foil for that attempt. Although he could make a good first impression, he almost always lost that advantage and caused discomfort in subsequent contacts.

But he loved to surprise people, and for me that one characteristic made up for some of his bad temper. One of my first memories is of a night when I was five or six years old.

I had gone to bed and was sound asleep. Suddenly I felt someone shaking me. Wake up, Mary Helen—come on honey, get up. Come on, hurry! I got out of bed. Daddy was handing me my clothes. Quick get these on. Here! I grumbled, I didn’t want to. But Mother picked me up and carried me out to our little ’27 Chevy; Daddy carried Bobby. My hero, my big brother Richard, ran out to the car, delighted to have an adventure.

It was a hot Nebraska night, but Daddy was wearing his suit coat, as he always did when he went down town. We’re going to have a real surprise! he said, and chuckled. In spite of myself, I was getting interested. But when I asked him where we were going, he would only say, Just you wait and see!

It was about nine o’clock in the evening and that was late for us kids. He drove down town, about three miles, to the dime store, and parked the car. Then he said, Let’s all go in. Our curiosity aroused, we tumbled out of the back seat and followed Daddy. Mother brought up the rear so that no one would get lost. He led us to the back of the store, to the brand new ice cream fountain, where he lined us up at the counter and ordered four ice cream sodas!

I can still see Woolworth’s the way it looked that night. The stools in front of the counter mere high. We lined up on the stools that were so much fun to spin around on, and I got to order my own chocolate soda. It was wonderful. It was big and I drank it all. Richard had chocolate too. So did Daddy and Mother, and Bobby had some of Mother’s. Frank Bush grinned joyfully all evening, and didn’t ever correct our manners—not even once! We went back out to our car on an emotional sugar high, and the three of us drove Daddy crazy all the way home.

Nowadays the authorities, whoever they are, would say, You were on a sugar high. We were. We were wild. But we knew when a good thing had happened. We appreciated the expenditure of a dime on each of us for a treat late at night when we were already asleep and had to be awakened for the adventure. I have never forgotten it; even the details are still alive in my mind.

Now I can’t eat chocolate and I can’t eat ice cream. I still dream about it, but Daddy isn’t around any more. He died about twenty years ago. I hope he has found the best place to get ice cream where he is now. If he has, he is probably saving his nickels and dimes to surprise his children and grandchildren, if and when we all make it to the Heavenly Ice Cream Parlor.

—

My Big Brother and the Bike

In school during music time I always sat in the last seat in the row, in the back of the room, where they put the kids who could sing. I could read and sing music easily because my mother had taught me how to read music and play the piano when I was three. I equated reading and playing music with playing hop scotch and tag and run sheep run. It was fun. It was easy. It was competitive. So was I!

I adored school. My big brother hated it. He could read music and sing like an angel. He sat in the front seat because he wouldn’t sing. His teachers often said to him, Why can’t you be like your little sister? I was the bane of his existence.

Even with this handicap threatening our relationship, Richard was really good to me. He even taught me to ride his bike!

The boys had bikes. I always wanted one too, but for some reason, I never told anyone. I think it was because I knew my dad would make fun of me if I said I wanted one. My big brother knew I wanted one, so one day he said, Would you like to learn to ride my bike? My world grew bigger and everything was better. I was thrilled.

He and the Emerich boys went with me to the top of the J Street hill. It probably wasn’t a very big hill, certainly not compared with San Francisco hills—but for Lincoln, it was a great hill. It was one very long block to the top of the hill from our house. We lived on the corner of 30th and J Streets. Thirtieth was a quiet street, but J was a long and quite important street—not terribly busy, but it did lead to the capitol building, so there was some traffic. The next street down was Randolph, an important street with streetcars, and the neighborhood grocery store. (I loved to go there to spend a stolen penny which I took from my mother’s pocketbook. I felt wicked and guilty, but how else could I take care of my craving for tootsie rolls?)

My brother and his friends, Richard and Roger Emerich, put me on his big bike at the top of the hill. I was eight and they mere all eleven. For two years I had tagged after them (to their annoyance). I wished I were a boy too.

They put me on the bike, gave me a push, and ran alongside me until I was balancing well and going really fast. Then—off I went, down the hill, the wind blowing through my hair. It was wonderful! I zoomed across J street and on down that long block towards Randolph. The road became flatter as it approached Randolph, with its traffic and clanging street cars.

Suddenly I realized that I couldn’t stop. I didn’t know how! The street cars and other cars were zooming home from work. I could see them and hear them! What should I do? I loved the speed, but . . . I could hear the streetcar coming.

I turned off—up over the curb—and flew across the sidewalk, bounced across a lawn, and crashed in a prickly hedge by a front porch. Scratched up and bleeding, I gingerly worked my way off the bike and out of the hedge.

I knew one thing for sure. I loved bikes! I wanted one. Each birthday, each Christmas, I yearned for a bike. Mybe this time . . . I prayed for a bike. I tried to save my allowance—but it was only a nickel a week. I could imagine my dad proudly rolling my brand new bike out of the bedroom door into the living room where the Christmas tree stood in its grand attire—or where I was excitedly eyeing all the birthday presents piled at my place at the table. They never gave me a bike. Why didn’t they respond? But, then, I never told anyone I wanted one!

Later in his life, my big brother became a Christian Science practitioner and was very much revered as a healer. When me were in our 60’s, he came and apologized for hating me all those years. I was touched but also horrified because I hadn’t known that I was hated. I knew he didn’t like me very much, but people always told me that brothers didn’t like to be bothered by little sisters, so I had never understood that he really hated me.

When he came to apologize, everyone thought I was dying of cancer. We had a wonderful conversation, and I treasured it. Perhaps that gave me one reason for living. Perhaps knowing that among the many people who disliked me, one had come to help me by trying to love me instead, gave me the strength to survive.

My dad told me I was too self-centered to die. I retorted, I must be just like you! He loved it, and believed it. I have hoped that it was and is not so, but am afraid that there are many similarities between us. I do love to have new ideas, and to figure out ways to make them come to fruition. That was one of his weaknesses also. I loved that trait in him.

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Table Play

We have so many wonderful songs that refuse to get out of our heads, that sometimes one has to dance them on one’s toes or tap them in one’s pocket if one is in a dignified place where decorum is necessary. (I avoid such places if I possibly can.) My fingers often sing when I am waiting for someone. If I am sitting at a table, I can hear and feel them sing, i.e. tapping the rhythm of the song in my head, or fingering a tune or even playing a sonata! I often find myself fingering a tune for the cello or piano. It is very pleasant for the one whose fingers are doing the singing.

If one’s mom or dad or spouse is nervous, however, it may be better to avoid such actions at the dinner table. My dad was very nervous, and my brothers and I loved tapping our toes and singing at the table. We would take turns on phrases and try to outdo each other in What song is this? competitions. It was good for our musical development, carrying all of that on while hearing the music in our heads.

If Daddy was in a good mood, he might even join us in such competitions—but never at the table! Eating was almost a sacrament at our house. My mother was a marvelous cook and my father practically worshipped the meals she placed before him every supper time.

That was during the Great Depression of the ’30s. It was difficult for him to support the family. As the Depression continued, he became less and less optimistic. He was always worried.