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Entering the nursery, Mary sees a baby. The caregiver in the nursery at the school offers an explanation: “This baby was left by its mother. She isn’t well. She is sick and almost died.” Mary was orphaned too, at the age of 10 when both her parents died of tuberculosis. She left rural Alabama and went to one of the only schools that would accept women, the University of Chicago Teachers College. Four years later Mary came back south to teach at a school for girls with a nursery for orphans.
Mary picks the baby up; it pushes against her, kicking and screaming. The baby’s cries are unyielding, high pitched, sounding more like an animal in pain than like a baby. The infant yanks its head away, yet its light blue eyes make contact with hers. Mary decides in that moment, this baby will be hers. She requests a meeting with the headmaster of the school.
“I will be adopting a baby in the nursery.”
“You are not married. You are a spinster. You cannot adopt a baby.”
Firmly she says, “I will adopt the baby in the nursery. That baby is mine.”
“If you do that, I will fire you.”
“Fire me.”
This is how my father’s cousin Emmy came into our family.
Elizabeth Stone (1988) writes compellingly about the family stories that are passed from generation to generation that allow us to begin to understand ourselves within a larger narrative. These are stories that enable us to know ourselves to possess the characteristics and qualities of our ancestors. They become our bequest. We take on these qualities as these stories come to live in our bones, our blood, our marrow. (Loewald, 1960).