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| Vivian & Ed |
Sadly, there was little love lost between my great-grandmother Leta and her two children’s respective spouses. While she was very close to her son Dale, her daughter-in-law always kept her at a bit of arm’s length away. Although no one had ever told Leta, she knew that Kathryn’s family, strict Eastern European Roman Catholics, was opposed to the marriage. While they liked the groom, they were concerned how much his mother’s scandalous reputation would tarnish their own. After all, she was a loose woman. She went with a lot of men, and everyone knew it. What did it say about them that she was now in their family? It’s hard for a person to be friendly and close to folks who are always sitting in judgment.
Roman Catholic guilt, as it is called, further pulled daughter-in-law from mother-in-law. While I don’t know how many children my great-uncle and aunt intended to have, I do know that they lived in an era where devout Roman Catholics did not use birth control and followed their denomination’s dictum to have as many children as was physically possible. Dale and Kathryn had four children. The first three were born in the early years of their marriage, one right after the other. But their second-born, their only son, died at age 4-1/2 of infant paralysis. This meant that for many months before, his mother spent most of her time nursing him as he slowly deteriorated. I can’t help but think that the family considered his death as divine punishment for Leta’s sins. This, of course, would have further alienated daughter-in-law from mother-in-law.
As for Leta and her daughter Vivian, that relationship took much more work. Vivian was older than Dale and much more conscious of their parents’ divorce and her mother’s subsequent scandalous behavior—multiple marriages/divorces and just simply going with men. I think that my grandmother’s stoicism grew out of this, and suspect that for many years there was a cool attitude from daughter to mother, one that a mother’s persistence and a daughter’s strong sense of duty had to work very hard to achieve a sense of mutual respect and connection. I am also convinced that Leta was not a part of Vivian’s wedding to Ed. When the couple met, Vivian was living with her father and paternal grandmother and had been for some time.
And Vivian and Ed were dating long before he met her mother. His first impression, furthermore, was not very flattering. He is the one, after all, who first told me that my great-grandmother had married several times, that she made poor marriage choices and that she didn’t really know she had a daughter. He’s the one who shared with me that Leta’s second husband was murdered in some Mafia-related activity during Prohibition. He’s the one who told me that “there was a time your grandmother got a call. ‘Come, get me,’ she said. She had married some farmer with eight kids a week before and wanted out. Christ, you should have seen the dilapidated shack she was living in. Filthy, no running water, in the middle of nowhere.”
He also said that the first time they met, Leta was drunk. She threw her arms around and slobbered all over him, just what any young man in his early twenties would expect from his future mother-in-law. From that moment on, Ed kept his distance. Like his wife, he was formal in many ways and not very affectionate, but friendly and kind.
This dislike must have been very hard for my grandmother, just another aspect of life that she bore on a regular basis. However, daughter and mother must have reached some reconciliation. Throughout my childhood I recall them spending time together and my great-grandmother a regular part of our family. When Leta determined that it was time for her to enter the senior care facility, Vivian worked with her to make all the appropriate personal and financial arrangements.
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