Christmas Day, 1909. Ina and Ernest Kenyon, newly married, at the family farm in western Michigan.
By the next generation, the family farm was gone. Ernest and Ina moved to Hastings, Michigan, and lived in various rented properties in the town as the family grew. They would have nine children. The boys’ names all began with R: Robert, Russell, Rex, Raymond, Richard, and Reginald; the girls’ names with L: Louise, Lois, and Leora Jean. All the children, except Reginald, lived to adulthood (and most of them to old age). Reginald died in infancy.
Ernest, their father, died in 1942 of a burst appendix, after refusing to see a doctor for severe abdominal pain. A few weeks earlier, the family had invited the high school basketball coach to dinner. My father, Raymond, was on the team.
The dinner would haunt my father. This is what he told me about it. He said that Ernest arrived late to the table that evening and was still wearing his work overalls. Since the Depression years, Ernest had relied mostly on casual jobs - farm work, and some hours as a janitor for the schools. At the table that evening, when Ernest (already late and in work-stained overalls) reached for the food, my father felt a deep embarrassment at the sight of dirt beneath Ernest’s fingernails.
When my dad learned of his father’s death, he hid behind the chimney outside the house and cried and thought about the night (only weeks before) when he felt ashamed of Ernest. My father did not tell me this story until his own old age. He said it still bothered him. He said he could never shake the memory of the moment he felt ashamed of Ernest.
Ernest was the only grandparent I never knew. Ina lived for another twenty years. Every December during my childhood, there was a large family reunion in Hastings and each grandchild (we were numerous in that already big family) received a little gift from her.
Ina scared me a little. She was stern. I once overheard her telling my mother to put something foul-tasting on my thumb so I would stop sucking it. Also, I believed death was in her house. When we stayed overnight there, I begged my parents to leave the hall lights on. Grandma Kenyon objected to this.
Looking back, I see that I never knew her. I was one of the youngest of dozens of grandchildren. I was not there for the lean years during which she learned to take care of herself. She was stubbornly independent and self-sufficient. Had I been older or known her longer, I might have understood her occasional severity. I might have known that what I saw, her own children did not. I might have understood why my father sat on our front step with tears in his eyes the day Ina died.
Finally, I think the scent of death that occasioned those childhood visits was to do with the loss of Ernest, a residue of grief in Ina’s rooms, and the fact that each visit included a trip to the gravestone. I was not helped by the fact that one year, I consumed too many chocolate-covered raisins and was sick when we went to the cemetery. Chocolate-covered raisins entered a child’s narrative and to this day, I cannot eat them.
But I would visit that old cemetery, so far away.
Fascinating story of your family, Amy! I Love to read about families and the generations that preceded us.