AFTER STARTING ANEW
Chapter Forty-Two
June 25, 1965
I finally admitted last night to everyone
about this wonderful legacy that Rose has left us. I told the girls first,
gathering Molly, Edy, Marjorie, Cora and myself up in the attic. It seemed a sort
of woman’s thing and I thought it fitting that I should let them in on the
discovery first. We all took turns reading some of the parts that pertained to
us. It seemed almost unfitting at first to giggle at the various ways Rose
described some of the scenes in this family’s life, but perhaps that is what
she intended. Some comic relief to brighten our faces and give us tears of joy
instead of sorrow. There is sadness hidden in some of the words as well and
sometime when we have healed more we’ll read those parts.
We chose not to bring the books down to the
rest of the family. After all, those were Rose’s private thoughts. It’s one
thing to read in the privacy of the attic among us girls, but to make a circus
out of it is not our intention.
Everyone, including my father-in-law, agreed
that since I love to write and was the one that discovered the books, that I
was indeed entitled to continue the tradition. I must say that I feel honored.
I didn’t know Rose as long or as well as the others have, but perhaps after
reading and studying her journals I’ll have a better insight to her life and
that of her family.
There was at least one lighthearted moment in
this awful week. When I told everyone about the journals, Jack turned beet red
and rolled his eyes. I can only imagine what he thought Rose must have written.
We chuckled and just told him it was all good. That brought a smile to his
face, one of the few we’ve seen this week.
July 4, 1965
My sister-in-law’s birthday. Cora is 47
today. Too bad we all couldn’t stay in Denver to celebrate. We had all taken
off time from our lives and jobs and really needed to get back to our daily
routines. Frank and Marjorie and their boys have taken up the task of helping
Jack cope, though we all decided that if he is willing it might be a good
distraction for him to make the rounds visiting all of us from time to time.
I decided that I would try and put together
the pieces of everyone’s life through the pages of the journal. Some of the
stories of my in-laws are crystal clear and straightforward. Others, like those
of Patrick and myself, twist and turn down roads we never expected.
It seems as though Edy and Frank fell into a
nice normal pattern. Edy married Nils in 1936 and they had three daughters.
Virginia, Mary, and Jacqueline. Edy was a teacher and Nils a respected
physicist. The only unusual little blip in their story took place in 1944 when
they lived in New Mexico.
It was fascinating to read Rose’s entries as
she visited Edy in Santa Fe. She wrote of the furtive glances of people on the
street, the strange P.O Box number that their mail went to and the odd fact
that she could not travel to see Edy’s home. It wasn’t until later that we
learned that Nils had been involved in the development of the atomic bomb and
the greatest secrecy surrounded every aspect of their lives.
Good old Frank and Marjorie also fit
perfectly into the mold. They met and married during the height of the
depression, experiencing the usual hard times and setbacks that everyone did in
those days. Marjorie became a teacher and Frank an attorney. They live in
Denver and their two boys Robert and Richard are the same age as Edy’s.
But being that this is Cora’s birthday, I
should probably reread the story of her hardships. Rose was not the one writing
when Cora got polio, it was her mother, Ruth. And through her eyes you can feel
the helplessness of the rest of the family, the hopelessness of poor Cora. My
sister in law though was a fighter and she came through with flying colors.
Ruth alludes to the fact that Rose was away when Cora made her great progress
and that perhaps Jack in his wisdom might have found the right things to say to
her.
Whatever, Cora seems to have found her niche
with Matt at Warm Springs. Reading through some later entries, I can sense that
Rose’s heart overflows with happiness when Cora finally became a mother. It was
not easy for Matt and Cora, but they were determined to have a family. When
things did not work out, they adopted first Jasmine from China in 1945, Anthony
from Italy in 1946, and Alexandra from Hungary in 1947. It warms my heart to
see that multicultural family and I know that Rose carried her banners high
when speaking of her grandchildren. She proudly showed pictures of those
babies, despite the fact that some people made rude remarks. I know we all
joined forces to make those babies welcome and the closeness of our
relationship remains today.
Of course the most thrilling moment for us
all was when Cora gave birth to their own child. Imagine after all those years.
I think wherever there was a Dawson that night, we all celebrated from afar
when little Rose was born. Rose Flanagan, with the same red curls and green
eyes as her grandmother. Though my mother-in-law would never have said so, I
suspect that she and Rosie were kindred spirits from the very beginning.
Matthew and Cora have done a splendid job,
never favoring their own child over the older children. There is enough love
for everyone in that home. It is really quite something special to see.
I am going to lay my pen down in a few
minutes. I’ve got my own little ones to look after. Especially Patty. She is
only five. It is still a little hard for her to understand what happened to
Grandma. One day, perhaps, she will read these journals and become inspired as
I have.
Right now I can’t think of anything more
wonderful than putting her in the tub on this hot night and then hearing her
giggles when I wrap her in a nice big towel. There is something about a sweet
child after a bath that just melts a mother’s heart.
Big day tomorrow. We will pack up a ton of
food and head into town for the rodeo. An annual event. At least this year I
don’t have to worry about Patrick falling off a horse. The fall he took last
year was enough to scare him forever. I am sure even his own mother would say
it served him right. Still though, even with that daredevil streak, I love him.
I guess that was what made me fall in love with him in the first place.
July 14, 1965
Let’s see, where was I? I am looking back at what
I’ve written so far as the newest journal writer of the family. I guess I have
been explaining how we all ended up together. I’ve covered Cora, Frank and Edy.
That leaves Molly and Patrick. I guess I’ll leave the best (Patrick and I) for
last.
Reading through Rose’s journal I could see
that she was always concerned about Molly finding a husband. Apparently she
drove both her parents crazy with her tomboyish ways and the devil may care
attitude with which she plunged herself into World War II. No safe stateside
nursing for Molly. No, not only does she become an Army nurse, but a flight
nurse, putting her life on the line with a double dose of danger. I’ve read
where Rose spent many sleepless nights worrying about Molly.
She had always dated, sometimes more than one
man at a time. No one could ever pin that girl down. Until the last New Year’s
Eve of the war. She and some friends were at a club in London when the air raid
siren went off. They all hustled to the shelter. There were a bunch of them,
her nurse friends and some pilots they had never met. In the commotion of
getting down in the shelter in a hurry, one of the pilots twisted his ankle
pretty badly. All of the girls except Molly had been drinking and she was the
only one left with the wherewithal to help this guy.
To make a long story short, true love came
like a bomb out of the sky that night to Molly. She and her pilot Jim Weston
were married in England on VE-Day after a wild and sporadic courtship of four
months. They both finished their tour of duty and then moved to Long Beach
where Jim is still a test pilot for Douglas aircraft.
Like the tornado of their romance, Molly and
Jim became parents in equally rapid succession. Jim Jr. in 1946, Diane and
Dorothy, the twins, in 1947, and Tom in 1948.
For a girl who used to be such a tomboy and
lead such a hectic life, our Molly loves to be glamorous and we tease her about
her rather hedonistic spending on her nails, massages, hair color, and clothes.
Well, so what. We love her the way she is and
underneath all the glitter, still lies that warm and tender heart. It seems
that of all the kids, Molly and Patrick were the ones that had the adventurous
spirit of the young Jack.
And if it weren’t for that spunk and
stubbornness of Patrick I would not be sitting here writing this right now.
Much against his mother’s wishes Patrick enlisted in the Navy right after high
school graduation. There was a big argument between Rose, Jack and Patrick over
this. Jack felt that Patrick needed to be his own person, as he had once been.
Rose had visions of Patrick going down in a ship as she relived the horrors of
Titanic night after night. Finally before he left home, he did patch things up
a little. He promised Rose that he would try and stay out of the way whenever
possible and not volunteer for anything out of the ordinary.
Reading Rose’s journal I can see how
terrified she was all those months he was at sea. She knew Pat’s reputation and
history of getting into trouble. Somehow, she knew deep inside that something
awful would befall him. And then it happened. The ship on which he was serving
was sunk in the Pacific in November of 1944. That was when Rose and Jack got
that awful telegram that he was "missing in action." There was again
tension between the two of them, since Rose blamed Jack for encouraging Patrick
to go with the Navy. It was tempting fate.
I think they were slightly estranged, not for
the first time in their marriage, for a few weeks. It seems then that Jack had
a little spell with his heart, scaring the dickens out of Rose. Things between
them went back to normal, but they still had a missing son. Jack tried all he
could to convince Rose that Patrick like he would be a survivor and to never
give up hope.
That’s where I came in on the story. In the
summer of 1945 (well, summer in Australia). It was really February of 1945. I
was a student nurse and one of my rotations took me through the orthopedic ward
of a military hospital in Brisbane. All of my friends warned me about a
particular Yank sailor who was the most outrageous flirt. He was just starting
to learn to walk again and they told me that he was doing much more ogling than
walking.
Before I met this boy wonder, I was
determined to be stiff, formal, businesslike and unimpressed. After all, I was
nineteen, a second year nursing student and in my eyes, well able to handle
some oversexed, hotshot Yank. Certainly experienced enough to handle an
out-of-line patient. Or so I thought.
Nothing in the world could have prepared me
for my first look into Patrick’s sea blue eyes. They shimmered like a lagoon in
the Great Barrier Reef. Against his sunburned skin, he reminded me of a vision
when thirsting in the Outback. I realized then, that the only way to quench
that thirst was to fall in love.
When I first started taking care of him, I
tried, oh how I tried. I kept my professional demeanor. But when our eyes met
and our fingers touched accidentally, I lost every sense of decorum that I had
ever been taught. I blushed, stammered and I trembled.
For all that the other girls had told me
about Patrick and the line he had with women, I myself never heard it from him.
In the beginning we hardly spoke except with our eyes. When he recovered well
enough so that I could take him for walks on the hospital grounds, I realized
that beneath the bluff and bluster of his cocky behavior lay a deeply sensitive
and loving man.
We talked for hours about his life in Denver,
growing up with what I thought then to be a rather eccentric family and the
pain he suffered from his injuries. What hurt him and confused him the most was
the lack of any communication from his family. He told me that he had written
letter after letter, knowing that his mother would be worried sick or assuming
that the worse had happened. He just could not understand why they had not
answered back.
After seeing the hurt look on his face, I was
determined to find out what was going on. Finally I convinced my supervisor to
get in touch with Pat’s commanding officer. A telegram was sent via military
channels confirming that Patrick was alive and well. Three weeks later a tear
stained message arrived from Rose, thrilled and relieved that her youngest was
still among the living. Apparently the civilian mail clerk who was collecting
the hospital mail was rather unreliable and hundreds of unsent letters were
found stashed away in the hospital laundry room.
Finally Patrick was discharged from the
hospital and given a two-week pass before catching a ship back to Pearl Harbor.
During those two weeks, he courted me, romanced me, and seduced me. Being with
him was like a pleasant addiction that I knew could never be cured. We were in
love.
To make a long story short, what happened to
us happened to countless others during the war. I became pregnant in August of
1945 and Patrick caught a ship back to Hawaii. All of this happening just days
before the end of the war. With my parents dead for a couple of years, and only
my distant great aunt for a relative, I packed my things, quit school, and
waited. He promised he would send for me and he did. We got married in October
of 1945 in San Francisco. While he was finishing the last minute details of his
mustering out, we made plans to meet at his parent’s house on Thanksgiving Day.
In yet another case of communications gone
astray, I arrived on Jack and Rose’s doorstep without prior warning. Just one
scared, pregnant, Aussie bride. They took one look at me and I sensed a few
raised eyebrows. Later I found out it was not I they were scrutinizing, but
their son’s behavior. They did their best to make me feel at home though. And
then Patrick arrived. There was a joyous, if not slightly strained reunion. I
thought Jack was going to have it out with Patrick.
They disappeared into Jack’s study upstairs.
There were loud voices and Rose went upstairs to see what was going on. I crept
out into the hallway and looked up at her. She stood silently out side the
door. I could get a glimpse of the gentle, almost seductive look on her face
and wondered what on earth she was doing. Then she took her right hand and
slowly dragged it across her left breast. There was a short expletive from Jack
and then the tone of Jack’s usual cordial voice.
I never understood what had happened until
Rose herself explained several years later. It all had to do with Titanic and the
fact that Rose had been rather forward when she and Jack met and she too had
gotten pregnant before they were married. She had wanted Jack to remember that
and therefore take it easy with Pat. "Put your hands on me, Jack,"
she had told him. I’ll never forget how she stood there smiling and sighing as
if that had happened only yesterday.
Well, the hour is late. And I sense someone
standing in the doorway. Someone with piercing blue eyes and a smile that melts
my heart from even miles away.
August 1, 1965
Such exciting news. The first of the younger
generation of Dawson’s just got engaged. Edy’s oldest, Virginia, is going to
marry a young man by the name of Michael Lawton. She met him at the University
of Wisconsin. They are both teachers there in Madison. They haven’t set a date
yet, but it is thrilling just the same.
September 22, 1965
Another engagement. This time it’s Frank and
Marjorie’s oldest Robert. Robbie followed in Frank’s footsteps and is going to
finish law school soon. His wife to be is Carla Mendez, a distant cousin to the
Lopez family. They were the ones who took care of Arthur and Ruth. Carla is a
social worker. Theirs will be a big wedding in Mexico City, where most of
Carla’s family still lives. What a fun time that will be to travel there for
the occasion.
October 15, 1965
Another scare with Jack. He was visiting Edy
and Nils in New Mexico when he suffered another mild heart attack. He was in
the hospital for a few days there and the doctors have put him on some medicine.
We have not told him, but we were informed that his heart is considerably
weakened and if he has another attack, it could be fatal. I feel like we are
living now with a walking time bomb. It does no good to try and restrict his
activities. He won’t listen. For to Jack being inactive is the same as being
dead.
I just flipped back a few months in my
journal. I never really finished our story. Patrick and I had a beautiful baby
girl named Sally in April of 1946. He went on to finish college with the GI
Bill and I finally finished my nurses training. We put additions to our family
on hold until 1955 when Arthur was born. Patty, who arrived in 1960, was sort
of a surprise. A welcome surprise.
Life has been good to us. With his degree in
agriculture from the state college here and his legacy from what he refers to
as "that damned necklace", he was able to buy a cattle ranch here in
Colorado and that is where we have settled. A couple of years ago, he was
approached by a growing company called McDonald’s to supply beef for their area
restaurants. Needless to say, we (and they) have done quite well. It’s been a
long journey from the suburbs of Brisbane, Australia to the outback of
Colorado. However, I’ve followed my heart and the man I love. Taking a risk on
someone I barely knew, only to find a world of love with him. Rather like
another woman in this family.