Setting the Scene

This is what I know about my mother, June, that she has related to me.  Mom was born in 1924 to a 2^nd generation Swedish-American father, and a Swedish immigrant mother.  She had two older brothers, and there was a fairly large gap between the younger brother and her—maybe seven or eight years. Her mother emigrated from Sweden when she was only 17 years old, the first in her family to do so.  Of five children, four of them would eventually leave Sweden.  She had indentured herself for seven years to a family to work as a house maid in Chicago.  She met my grandfather during that time, but she couldn’t marry until her indenture was completed.  Getting married at age 24 back in 1914 was considered old. Their marriage certificate describes her as “the spinster, Lydia Thor”!  My grandfather was even older, in his 30s when they married.  A few years into the marriage, they had a baby girl whom they named Lily, but she died before she turned a month old.   My mother laments the death of her older sister, so I think Lily must not have been far from everyone’s thoughts in that family.  They soon afterward had two boys born within a couple of years of each other.  Then a space of several years, then my mother.  She says that her father, whom she endearingly called “Popsy-boy” was 50 when she was born, and her mother was in her late 30's. My mom was 5 years old when the stock market crashed, and the family was plunged with every other American family into the Great Depression.  My grandparents already had their house paid for, so thankfully they didn’t lose it, but my grandfather lost his printing business.  At some point he found work as a custodian at a grade school, but it sounds like their lives were seriously impacted regardless.  Her mother seems to loom large as a very practical, even harsh woman during this time.  My mom tells stories about my grandmother not allowing a Christmas tree because they were too poor to power the lights for it; that she would not buy my mother white stockings to wear to school for picture day. The photo itself confirms the story—there’s my forlorn 8 year-old mother standing in the front row with her stretched out brown stockings, one up to her knee, the other sagging to her ankle, flanked by all the other girls with nice white stockings and starched pinafores. My mom tells a story about how her dad once brought home a pretty dress that he had bought for her, and her mother lit into him for spending money so extravagantly. She made him take it back. Once, only once, she told me about the day she heard her mother say to her father, “We should never have had that kid.” That must have cut like a knife, and I am certain that, along with a thousand other ways a person may devalue a child’s self-worth, was the catalyst for my mother’s lifelong emotional problems.  Perhaps she said it out of despair for their financial state, and for the emotional impact and stress that must have had on the family. I wonder, too, how much my grandmother suffered from her own childhood problems.  I know teenagers are eager to be on their own, but moving thousands of miles away from home, to another country and culture, and without much prospect for future contact other than through the mail?  I can’t even begin to imagine her reasons. There are other stories that shine a brighter light on my grandmother.  My mom tells how she used to read and mark her Swedish Bible. She didn’t attend church (my mom says it was because she said she didn’t feel she fit in), but she supplied bakery for one church’s soup kitchen.  I’m pretty sure she was paid for that endeavor, but still, she baked all day on Saturday to provide the rolls for Sunday’s lunch. My uncle’s wife told me “Lydia was very kind. She used to set out milk and bread for the bums who frequented the alley behind their house. When your uncle and I were first married, we were going to have to take our clothes to a laundromat. She insisted that we bring it to her instead, and she washed and hung our clothes to dry.”  My mother has said that it was her mother’s dream to move to Coeur d’Alene Idaho where my grandfather’s brother had moved and open a bakery/coffee house.  They planned to move when my mom finished high school, but unfortunately those plans were dashed when my grandmother died of cancer when my mom was 14 years old. That, too, was traumatic. My mom has expressed regret that she never got to know her mother as an adult, anger that her mother didn’t seek treatment, and at the end would not allow my mother to visit her, and great sadness and loneliness after her death. 

I’m certain my mother’s childhood was difficult and harsh.  It’s unfortunate that she wasn’t able to get the emotional help she needed.  I believe she was left to cope on her own. For her, coping meant creating another June. A June that people loved and wanted, took care of and cherished.  A June who did everything right, wore the right clothes, had the right style, had the perfect family.