{"id":1049,"date":"2010-04-25T20:07:57","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T00:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2010-04-26T21:20:29","modified_gmt":"2010-04-27T01:20:29","slug":"they-made-us-who-we-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/they-made-us-who-we-are\/","title":{"rendered":"They Said It Would Never Last"},"content":{"rendered":"

They said it would never last.\u00a0 They really did say that forty years ago when Norman and I were married and they had good reason.\u00a0 We are very different people, different interests, different religions, and raised in very different circumstances by very different people. It hasn’t always been an easy marriage and never a simple one, but it has never, not even for a single day, been boring.\u00a0 We were both heavily influenced by our mothers; I’m sure we were also influenced by our fathers, but it is our mothers’ ways that we remember most.<\/p>\n

We lost both of these women in the last few months and I’d like to tell you a little bit about them and about us.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Both of our moms left their jobs to care for their families.\u00a0 In this these two rather different women were quite similar.\u00a0 They were devoted to their children and to their children’s future.\u00a0 Norman and I both remember knowing we would attend college for all of our lives.\u00a0 We probably knew this in the womb.\u00a0 The only allowable question was which college we would attend.\u00a0 Our mothers worked tirelessly for our schools.\u00a0 They were presidents of the Parent Teacher Organizations; always available to help in the classroom or with any extracurricular activities we might be involved with.<\/p>\n

I remember a basement full of Girl Scout cookies when my mother was cookie chairman.\u00a0 Norman remembers hutches full of rabbits for his brother’s Boy Scout merit badge project and chickens for his sister’s 4H project.\u00a0 His mother dispatched them as necessary.\u00a0 We both remember the many hours they listened to us read or helped us learn to write.<\/p>\n

How did the children of such different backgrounds meet?\u00a0 We met at college in Ohio.\u00a0 It was the farthest west I had ever been.\u00a0 It was the farthest east he had ever been. We both yearned for the experiences that were second nature for the other.\u00a0 He took me camping, fishing, and boating.\u00a0 I took him to New York and showed him how to master the subway.\u00a0 We met each other’s families.\u00a0 He took me to the northwest where I thought he would kill us both when he stopped to eat wild berries.\u00a0 My people knew that things that grew in the woods were dangerous.\u00a0 Norman knew what wild blackberries looked like.\u00a0 I found out what delicious means.\u00a0 I took him to Philadelphia and taught him about lox and bagels.\u00a0 He learned the proper protocol for ordering in a Jewish deli.\u00a0 When we moved to New Haven years later he went to the local Jewish deli for the first time with our two young children in tow. He was obviously a stranger.\u00a0 Half an hour later, having ordered properly, one thing at a time, and having schmoozed about our history with the owners, he belonged.\u00a0 The children each left with a cookie in hand.\u00a0 He says with pleasure that he can pass.\u00a0 He can, his black Irish looks fit in and his manners are impeccable.\u00a0 I have learned to fit with his family.\u00a0 I do my best not to interrupt the speaker with varying degrees of success.\u00a0 They seem to love me anyway.<\/p>\n

We are grown now, both sixty, but all this recent loss has made us feel slightly adrift.\u00a0 I think we will eventually be fine. We have each other and we were raised right.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They said it would never last.\u00a0 They really did say that forty years ago when Norman and I were married and they had good reason.\u00a0 We are very different people, different interests, different religions, and raised in very different circumstances …<\/p>\n

They Said It Would Never Last<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[74,76,63,49,75,77],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-cole-family","tag-cole-genealogy","tag-costello-family","tag-costello-genealogy","tag-silver-family","tag-silver-genealogy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1101,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions\/1101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}