Michele Hudson (12/12/38 - 7/31/04)

Family Memories of a Time Gone By

In the years before World War II, Americans were still relatively innocent. There were many small, sleepy towns, where young men and women courted, children and adults alike listened to radio programs and milk could be collected from the dairy when needed. Our life was centered in our home and family, school, church, sports activities and seeing friends. This is the world I entered. Our family lived in a tiny town name Tiburon, just across the bay from San Francisco. I think the only thing that kept that little place alive was the railroad that ran right through the middle of town and the Naval base that operated there. Our house (built in 1900, the same year my dad was born) along with others perched on the side of a hill overlooking the town, with a trestle in order to walk over the railroad tracks as a short cut to get to the center of town.

Our world was never so innocent again after World War II, not after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the holocaust that murdered more than six million people of Jewish heritage and the death of over 15 million people worldwide during the course of the war. This war also ushered in the start of the atomic age when America dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing 100,000 people. The whole world wept before it was all over. Though it changed our lives forever, we as a nation were spared war on our shores. We were luckier than most. In other countries entire families were wiped out.

During the war years, I was unaware of the pain and suffering happening in other parts of the world. My dad had a career in the Navy and spent most of the war on a ship in the Pacific. So he was gone and we missed him, but my mother made sure that life went along normally for us at home. She planted her victory (vegetable and fruit) garden and we mixed powder coloring into lard to pass as butter, but we still had our life together. As young as I was I recall rationing and watching my mother barter with the butcher. She had four growing hungry children at home and I have never seen a woman stretch a dollar or cook such economical and delicious meals as my mother.

Mom was a Navy wife. She had traveled extensively with my dad, birthing children as she went. So in wartime she managed her household and later I learned that each night after she put us all to bed, she wrote my dad, his mother and my Aunt Myrtle. There were no televisions or email then; the main method of communication was by letter writing. Many years later, Aunt Myrtle shared some of those letters with me. I noticed how giving my mom was to my Aunt and Granny. If she had something they needed, she sent it to them. If she had rations, she shared with them. Now I understand why my dad's family loved my mother so much. Now I know she worried herself sick about my dad, but she never let us know.

As a result I have happy memories of watching my brothers play football and basketball games, having hot cocoa and cinnamon toast in our kitchen around a pot-bellied stove after being out in the cold evening. I remember my mom fixing hot tea and putting a pretty cloth on the table when my sister came home from school, so we could sip tea while they discussed my sister's day at school. My mother made a home for us; quietly, courageously and often with much ingenuity.

We heard the lapping at water's edge, the whistle of the train and certainly the almost eerie, forlorn sound of the foghorn on foggy nights. We had a two-story house, so we had quite a beautiful view. We could curl up in a window seat and watch many evening scenes: gleaming lights of Alcatraz Island and San Francisco and on sunny days, sparkling water of the bay and boats with full sails. In our town, everyone knew one another and we kids skipped our way through the town playing, fishing and picking up stones and driftwood at the waterfront. Mostly wherever my brother, Ed, went, I went also. I was the youngest child. We had a good time being children. We were safe and protected, not knowing that most of the world was not. And, of course, not knowing that in a few short years, life would change so enormously for our family.

Toward the end of the war, my mom became ill, and the Navy released my father to return home. As it turned out, my mom had breast and uterine cancer. We moved from our house on the hill to the larger town of Vallejo. We lived in Navy housing, small but adequate. At the back door of our home, my mother placed a trellis and grew honeysuckle, think and fragrant. I remember passing through from outside and taking a deep breath to take in all of that wonderful scent! My mom was skilled with crochet, knitting and emroidery. She made lovely things for our home and also gave them as gifts. While we lived in Vallejo, my parents solemnized their marriage vows in the Catholic Church with my oldest brother and sister standing as witnesses for them. My mom had surgeries and bouts of depression, but she continued to keep house and rear us.

In the summer of 1946, my dad planned a family trip to Minneapolis, where he had been born and raised and where my Granny, Aunt and Uncle still lived. I have a few photos from that trip. My dad looked worried and older than his years, a look I had never recognized before. I don't know what that trip was like for my mother, being ill, with four energetic children in the back seat, undoubtedly fussing at and teasing each other.

I was seven years old at that time. I have vivid memories of seeing tall geysers at Yellowstone, cool caverns with stalagmites and stalactities, seeing Mt. Rushmore, walking into a small Midwestern restaurant with red and white checkered table cloths and candles on each table in the warm twilight of a summers evening. My dad bought me a squaw doll with two children dolls along the way. They were beautiful to me and I have them now. I recall delightedly floating in the waters of Salt Lake and watching my brothers count license tags from all the different states as we drove along highways and byways (no interstate highways in those days!) competing to see who could count the most. I remember the house my dad was born in and seeing my very elderly Granny. As children, we had a wonderful time, seeing all the new sights, not realizing my dad had taken my mom back there because as newlyweds, they had lived in Minnesota. This is where my oldest brother was born and died at 14 months old of meningitis. My dad just wanted to take her home one last time. I do not think my mother knew she was saying goodbye. She was never told she had cancer. It was my experience that most people at that time did not discuss disease and death.

My mother died in February of 1947. Because of the silence on the subject, the whole event was shrouded in mystery to me. I did not understand and I missed her terribly. I started fearing the dark and looking for the boogey man in my closet and under my bed. My dad becamse morose and depressed and then angry and violent. Our house was no longer the happy, safe place it had been. The heart of our home was gone

Two years later, my dad died too, of lung cancer. I just don't think people understood the danger of smoking cigarettes then, so a lot of people had the habit. Our family scattered when my dad died. My brother Jim and I needed care. Jim went to a boy's boarding school that he ran away from and I went to an orphanage. I remained lost and forlorn a long time. I stayed at that school for three years. I was terribly lonely and emotionally abused by a few women, but I also learned very valuable lessons from others. As I got older, my goal was to personally survive and to help younger children to do the same. When I started high school, I lived with my sister and her husband. I went to several summer outings with my friend Pat's large family, which showed me once again how families function.

As children of our parents, we tried to pull the threads of our collective lives together as a family unit, but it remained very difficult and elusive. As the youngest, I think I wanted it more because I felt so insecure. During my lifetime, I have experienced healing from the pain of my past and have become very strong. I know now that what does not kill me will make me stronger. My mom did not stay long, but she left me a legacy of strength, as my role model for mothering and making a secure place for my sons when I became a single parent. I learned to crochet and knit all sorts of gifts. During those lonely days in the orphange, I poured my feelings out by writing in journals and still do so. And my children write also. My parents poured their feelings out too, very eloquently, in letters. Possibly it is a gift that is passing from generation to generation. And one other thing: my oldest son is a career Army officer. During high school, he became intrigued with the military. I think this is beyond chance, that just maybe he is fulfilling a family destiny.

The house on the hill is still there. I went back to visit it with my children. The front of the house has been redesigned and the Navy base and railroad with its trestle are all gone. The town has grown into a luxurious seaside resort. I doubt my parents would like the changes. Personally, I loved it as the small sleepy town of my childhood.