A Childhood Remembered

A Childhood Remembered

I’m a senior citizen now but the memories of my childhood are still vivid. My earliest memory was when I was fifteen months old. My bedroom was on the second floor at the front of our row house in Philadelphia. The room was wallpapered in large blue, yellow and pink flowers and my crib was situated on the far right of the room. Three curved bay windows overlooked the street. My parents were amazed when I described the room in detail many years later when I was an adult. They verified that the room was indeed how I described.

I was born in 1940 and I remember a few years later as a toddler, I was puzzled that every evening my mother would cover the windows in black cloth to block out the inside light from outdoors. She explained that this was in case of “air raids.” I didn’t know what that meant at the time and was innocent to the fact that a world was going on. On different nights during the week New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. all experienced near-total darkness come 10 o’clock at night.

When I was four years old my sister Judy was born. Things did not go right and my mother hemorrhaged during delivery. An emergency hysterectomy was performed. She was in critical condition and not expected to live. My father was working in a Philadelphia factory, a city home to many factories throughout the state, the leading producer of crucial resources needed to win the war, such as coal and steel. 

With my mother in the hospital and no one to care for the children including a newborn baby, my father had to quit his job. The Selective Service was drafting married men, and just before my father’s biggest fear of leaving his family was realized, men with three children were excused from the draft. Remembering that stressful time in his life, my father vowed that if he got through this period in his life, he would never worry about another thing. And he never did. After that he always remained positive, no matter what.

In desperation because he didn’t have anyone to care for me, he took me to a Catholic orphanage. I’ll never forget it. As we walked down the long marble hallway, my shiny black patent shoes made loud clicking sounds and echoed. I held on tightly to my father’s hand and his words “Don’t worry Geraldine, you’ll just be here for a short time” did not allay my fear that we were going to separate. I feared that he was going to leave me in this strange, foreboding place.

We entered the Mother Superior’s large, dark-paneled office. We sat down across from the daunting woman in black robes behind her imposing mahogany desk and my father explained the situation. (In hindsight, the nuns were as covered up then as a Muslim women wearing a burqa). Her serious face was completely framed by stiff white fabric supporting her black veil that fell over her shoulders. I stared and wondered if she had any hair underneath the veil.

After listening attentively to my father’s tale of woe and his request to have me stay for a while in the orphanage, she said “I’m sorry Mr. Treacy, but we only take orphans whom have lost both their parents.” Whew!

Part of me was so relieved to hear that news which meant I would be leaving with my father, not staying in this strange, cavernous building for God knows how long. But as we left, I worried what was going to happen to me. Who was going to take care of me? My father had to work and my hospitalized mother, at the age of 26, might not survive the birth of my sister. That is what I had just heard my father tell the Mother Superior.

My father finally found a distant relative who agreed to take me in. While my mother recuperated in the hospital, my father took me to the row home of someone whom I had never met. She was old and not at all caring or friendly. After my dad thanked her and departed, she ignored me leaving me in the parlor while she went into the kitchen. I spotted a coloring book and crayons on a shelf near where I was sitting. I was painfully shy, but I asked the woman if I could use the art material to color. “Well, I guess so, although I was saving them for my niece.” I took that as a yes but felt uncomfortable with her answer. Even though a young child, I knew her response was needless and impolite.

Later in the day, before getting ready for bed, she told me to go into the gloomy cellar and use the shovel near the furnace to add more coal to the furnace. I was terrified to open the heavy hot iron door to the furnace and to see the raging fire inside. But I did as she said, and stood on my toes to put a shovel full of coal into the fire. The crackling noise and sparks that flew up scared me and I quickly closed the door. Even then I remember thinking that the job was not one to give to a young child like myself. The experience terrified me.

I was a quiet, obedient child, typical of a first born. After a couple weeks of staying with this relative who to me was a cold stranger, my father picked me up, much to my relief, and took me home. He always adored my beautiful mother and tended to her care thankful that she survived the childbirth and subsequent emergency hysterectomy. He carried her into the house. I remember her wearing a gray flowing dress and high heels.

Mom recovered and my father started his own business as a carpenter and cabinet maker, a trade that served him well for the rest of his life.

My other memories of my early years in Philadelphia were being sent to the Saturday movie matinee with a couple neighborhood children. We would spend the whole afternoon on Saturdays watching triple features, some of them too scary for children. The Thief of Baghdad was one of them. A boy thief (Sabu) and a genie in a bottle help a blinded prince (John Justin) recover his kingdom from a grand vizier. (Definition of grand vizier: the chief officer of state of a Muslim country especially during the Ottoman Empire.) This film was way too scary for a young child and gave me nightmares.

Another incident in a movie theater gave me nightmares. I vividly remember that during one matinee an older man seated on my right continually rubbed my arm up and down. I was scared motionless, too frightened to get up and change seats. I was frozen. In retrospect, I should have reported the pervert to management. But at that young age, I didn’t even know what a pervert was. But I did know that a stranger should not be touching me.

Since my mother instilled in me the importance of never speaking to strangers, my aloofness was always interpreted as snobbishness, rather than shyness. In hindsight, my mother’s fixation on this probably stemmed from her vivid recollection of the kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the 20-month son of famous aviator. The kidnapping and murder of the child in 1932 was one of the most highly publicized crimes of the 20th century.  Even though my family was neither famous nor rich, my mother feared that a stranger might kidnap me and she instilled that anxiety into me.

We were sitting side by side on a trolley car one time, when a drunken man in front of us turned around and addressed me as “little girl” and asked some questions. My mother firmly admonished “Geraldine, don’t talk to strangers!” Her concern was probably due to the well-publicized kidnapping of the Lindberg baby. Although I was blonde and cute, my parents couldn’t afford any type of monetary ransom, so I don’t know why the anxiety about kidnapping. 

The happier times of my childhood involved roller skating down our hilly street, flying around the corner. I would fit my shoes into the skates, and clamp them tight with a skate key. Now these type of roller skates are considered “vintage.” Philadelphia was very hot and humid in the summer and we could always count on a mischievous tike opening a fire hydrant. We quickly stripped to our underwear and ran through the gushing cold water. It was delightful. On hot evenings the adults would gather on their stoops (front steps) and have block parties with their neighbors. 

Looking back—just like now—there are good times and bad times and we manage to weather the ups and downs. 

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