Genealogy III: Filling More Gaps

Nina was neither the first nor only aunt who had several eye-opening stories to tell. On my dad's side of the family was my Aunt Agnes. She was the youngest of three girls in a family of 10 (surviving) children. If there was a hub around which so large a family revolved, it was her, perhaps partly because it was in her house that my grandmother, Elizabeth Maxson, lived out most of her final years.

Agnes was the one who took in the strays. Unable to have children, she and Larry Findorff, her husband, adopted two, Ronald and Marilyn. Apparently that wasn't enough, for she also took in babies through the foster care system, whom I later found out were spina biffida babies. I'm guessing that back then they didn't live long, for they never got past the baby stage in my recollections, although if I were an optimist, I'd think that they "graduated" to a caregiver who could provide care for older children. Whatever happened, I was never privy to it: just another of so many things that were never spoken of before children. During the time I lived with her, the babies were present, but never for me to interact with as one might with healthy younger siblings.

I was one of the strays she took in, the year my mother was sick. Those memories form some of my clearest early childhood memories, starting from the bus trip down there. Mom took me down on the Greyhound, a complete novelty to me, having only traveled at that point in my life in the family car, mostly with Daddy driving. I recall getting off and on again at the stops along the way. I also remember entertaining myself with counting telephone poles. They went by very fast and there were very many of them, so I had to invent a way of keeping track of where in the numbering system I was. I could keep track by tens using fingers, so when I started on the next ten, I moved a finger to a new position, so on for each ten up to a hundred. Then it got tricky, for hundreds and tens both had to be accounted for, so I now I had three finger positions, one for uncounted, one for tens, one for hundreds, and don't lose track of any one! They served me well until I reached a thousand, at which point I was both out of ideas for finger positions and bored with counting.

I was a little confused, though, especially in later years, why, if my mother was so sick I had to be sent away, she was well enough to bring me down to Minneapolis on the bus and then return by herself. Or perhaps she didn't return but was treated in the city. Nobody ever explained.

The months with Agnes were like a vacation to me, opening up whole new world. For one thing, I got to go to kindergarten at Calhoun School, just a few blocks away. Not only was there no kindergarten offered in Nevis at that time, so I got to do something my brother didn't get to, I got to learn how to cross the street. Before this either there were no streets unsafe to cross, living way up north at the resort, or we were strictly forbidden to leave the yard. At first Agnes walked with me, showing me how to stop for the light, tell whether it was red or green and what that meant, and still stressing that I had to look both ways for cars before crossing. After several weeks, I was trusted to get to school and home on my own. The only memory of school itself is standing in front of an easel wearing an old grown-up's shirt backwards to protect my clothes, and painting either with brushes or by fingerpainting. Both kinds had their own special smell, and years later those smells took me straight back to kindergarten.

Smells also remind me of Agnes's house, two in particular. Ivory soap was always used in the bathroom, something we didn't buy at home, so was uniquely connected to Agnes for me. Mom would always buy whatever was cheapest, so I'm guessing Ivory wasn't. I loved that smell. I also loved the smell of copper. Uncle Larry had a bowl of pennies out on the (winterized) porch which was "his" area, the spot he could smoke his cigars. Money was precious, and this was the first time I was ever allowed to play with it. I would spend hours pouring over those pennies, sometimes counting them, sometimes setting them out in different patterns on the rug. I don't know that we ever talked much, but he didn't mind my being there. By that time he was a retired cop, with arthritis in his hands so bad that his fingers were bent to the sides at such an angle that the hands were nearly useless. Years later he had surgery to straighten them, but within a year or two they were bent back again.

The house itself was huge to me. It sat on the corner of 28th street a block off Hennepin. A basement front entrance led to the apartment my grandmother lived in. It was very quickly made plain to me that I wasn't welcome to just pop in and visit. This was, after all, her personal space, consisting of a living or sitting room in front, and a bedroom in back. The rest of the basement was unfinished, containing the laundry area available to all. The main floor had a living room, porch made part of the house, dining room, full kitchen, and two long hallways. One led off to the right to my cousin Ronnie's room. I think I was allowed to see that about twice. The other led to the left, first to the bathroom, and then to a pair of bedrooms, one for Larry and Agnes, the other for my cousin Marilyn. She had twin beds in her room, and I slept in one. One of the many things I learned that year was how to make my own bed. I was so proud of having done it well, my cousin "allowed" me to make hers as well, every day. (Most mornings she was running late in a hurry to get to the high school a block away.) It was probably the one thing that made up for her losing her private room to a pesky young cousin. Thinking back, I'm sure there had to be a nursery area, but it, again, was strictly off limits, and I have no memory of it.

The living room was memorable for two other things. Agnes had a large bowl of seashells. Occasionally I was allowed to carefully take them out, look at them, and play with them much as I did the pennies. Of course, I had to neatly put them away again every time. No messes were allowed. It is also where I remember Heidi, their dachshund, being. She probably had the run of the house, but my memory always puts her in the living room. The reason for that is, every time somebody from outside came into the room, she got so excited she peed on the rug. Every time!

Around the back was a stairway up to the third floor, another place I was forbidden to go. It held rooms where working girls boarded, usually holding secretarial positions which didn't pay enough to allow them anything better. This was a safe and reputable home for them until they got married, the typical expectation in those days.

Agnes taught me how to write my name - my first introduction to letters. She also quickly corrected my ignorance about how to tie my shoes. I'm sure there were lots of other things, all aimed at making me as independent as a five-year-old could be. We never talked about why I was there, or how long I'd stay. I just was. I was part of the family as long as I was there, and all my memories are happy ones, at least around Agnes.

Grandma was another story. Of course she was my Grandma, and I loved her in a remote kind of way the way a child does a relative they don't know well but are supposed to love. But we did have one argument. I was playing outside in their tiny yard with my doll. On this particular day, I hadn't dressed my doll with underpants. Grandma very emphatically scolded me, telling me the doll was disgraceful, and insisting I go right away and find her pants and put them on her before I could be outside playing with her again! I didn't get it. After all, it was just a doll. She had nothing to show off but smooth plastic, so what was the big deal? But Grandma insisted, and when I tried to complain at the unreasonableness to Agnes, she backed her up. I had to go get those pants.

Once I left their house, Aunt Agnes became just another of my many aunts and uncles to me. We'd see each other at family get-togethers, parties, funerals, what have you. My generation grew up, married, left home, but my folks stayed close to her (Larry had died early). Then about 15 years ago I was invited by my folks to go visit her in the nursing home in Hopkins. Her son had placed her in there and then moved down to Arizona. Apparently, she needed more care than living alone provided, and he was no longer available to provide it. So in she went, probably the most able and lucid of the many residents for many years. Her neighbors, and especially her roommates, were no kind of company for the most part, and she made friends with the staff. While she was still capable, she also assisted with fellow residents, caretaker to the end.

One day I was driving past the home on my way home after work, and on impulse stopped by for a visit. We had such nice visit that I stopped by periodically after that. It seemed the least I could do for somebody who took me in when it was needed. One weekend I even arranged to take her out to a movie and dinner at Burger King. (I figured one meal of junk food couldn't hurt her.) Most of the time she talked about day-to-day things when we were together: her permanent, collecting pop-tops for Ronald MacDonald House by the bagfuls, how senile and hopeless her roommate was.

One evening was different. She related two different stories to me, both hard to listen to, although thankfully I had had enough support group experience listening to unpleasant stories by then that I could listen unflinchingly and supportively.

First, she related the real reason why she could never have children. When she was two, her parents sent her to stay for a few hours with a neighbor when nobody else was able to take care of her. During that stay, both the neighbor and his son raped her, causing such damage that surgery was necessary to save her life. The result was that she would never be able to bear children. She grew up afraid nobody would ever want to marry her, but when Larry grew interested in her enough to propose, she told him the whole story, fearing it would drive him away. He said it didn't matter. It was her that he loved. They could adopt. His acceptance and love of her despite society's standards of the time saying she was unmarriageable was what she treasured most about him.

The second story concerns my grandmother, Elizabeth. As Agnes grew older, she became especially close to her father. She told me that while she was still a young girl, while the family lived in Browns Valley, her mother started having an affair with the local minister of their church, and she named him. She would see the sorrow and pain in my grandfather's eyes each time my grandmother left to go see him, and Agnes tried to keep him company and help ease his pain. It seems the caretaker in her came out early. She believed she was the only one in the family who knew about the affair besides her father, being both young enough to be home to witness and old enough to interpret what she saw.

I feel it necessary to comment on both stories. Even by Agnes's account, these were secrets kept from the rest of the family, so there was nobody who could verify or deny them. Even then, when she told me, few of the family were left, and none but my dad - and apparently her - untouched by senility. I found her to be reasonably clearheaded at the time, and had never seen any cause to believe her to be one who makes up wild stories for attention. My impression was that they were true. The rape explained the infertility, and telling the tale to Larry brings it out of the realm of childhood fancy into adult reality. As for my grandmother, I make no judgment. She was a woman who by then had had 11 pregnancies, 10 live births, the babies coming along at regular 18-month intervals, meaning each one started either as she finished nursing the last or just after she let her husband into her bed again. At the time, she would have just finished with the very last one. Whether she needed someone different in her life at that time, or whether she actually needed intensive spiritual counseling, I'll never know. I'm not sure Agnes and her father really knew anything more than that she was spending a lot of time out of the house and with whom. What I do know for sure is that 90 years ago, family secrets were very well kept.

* * * * *

My grandfather, Francis Eddy Maxson, was superintendent of schools for Richfield in his later years. After he died from a urinary tract infection in 1934, before penicillin, (which event caused my father to leave Hamline University to help support the family) the school district bought him a plot with a very large headstone in the local cemetery on Lyndale Avenue across from his church. There was room there for 4 to be interred. When Larry's parents died too poor to afford their own plot, the family graciously allowed them to be placed in two of the spots. Agnes believed that, in addition to simple compassion and generosity, her mother at least felt gratitude to the family who raised a man wonderful enough to love and accept her damaged daughter. When she finally died at age 92, Elizabeth joined him.

Agnes had continued caring for her mother most of Elizabeth's life. By the time we lived in Park Rapids, Agnes needed a break, and Elizabeth spent time living in other of her children's homes, including ours for a few months, before returning to live with Agnes until finally being placed in a nursing home. Having Grandma there meant that my brother had to give up his first-floor bedroom, moving upstairs into my very large room, a situation we were both glad to see ended. I do remember her taking me aside for a private conversation once. She told me that my father had always regretted taking up smoking - news to me, but what did I know? - and asked me to promise her that I would never smoke. I did, probably as much to end an uncomfortable conversation as anything. But I never did smoke.