Memoirs Of A Cold War Son

3. The Home Front

chapter 3 The Home Front We sailed for America aboard the Queen Elizabeth . The distance seemed shorter and the ocean friendlier than before Paris. I faintly regretted not needing the French I had worked so hard to learn. John and I met an Englishman who preferred our company to that of his own younger children. He showed us how to sneak out of tourist class and find the cabin class bar, where he bought us ginger beer while drinking ale. He was emigrating with his family to Illinois, unable to make a decent living in his homeland since leaving the British army after the Second World War. We told him about the Midwest, unable to separate information from promotion, proud that he would soon see the Statue of Liberty. On the dock in New York a customs official looked at Dad’s detailed list of declarations and certified our baggage without opening anything. “If I can’t trust a professor,” he said, “I can’t trust anybody.” Our neighbors in Madison welcomed us home warmly. I found places in my bedroom for my French winter coat, small roulette wheel, Swiss wristwatch, acs yearbook, colored pencil sketches of French and British men-of-war, autograph of Gen. Shepherd, rosary blessed by Pope Pius XII. I gave the other rosaries to Catholic friends, whose grateful awe elevated my social status indefinitely. Bits of Europe and memories of Paris escorted me through the 1950s as I tried to establish my own identity in a generation that attended high school while Dwight Eisenhower was president, hydrogen bombs were added to the armories of America and the Soviet Union, and the space race began. These forces worked on my generation during the rest of the decade, a period of high tension in the Cold War and of greater social anxiety than one would gather from recent nostalgia for the Eisenhower years. The greatest influence on me was having a mother again and hoping to hold on to her. “Hi, Mrs. Post!” kids in the neighborhood shouted if they saw her in the yard or walking to Napper’s Grocery on Monroe Street two blocks west of us. Hearing those magical words in the summer of 1952, I felt as though she had just returned triumphantly from the war like dads and big brothers in 1945. Mom’s gentle touch with people made her a big hit. Within days of our return, she was waving to neighbors and trading staples. She soon rejoined the bridge and reading clubs that had never gotten over losing her. She became a member of the Madison Theater Guild and acted in several of its productions; in Jack and the Beanstalk, performed for grade schools, she played Jack’s mother and drew raves from youngsters in the neighborhood. She joined the League of Women Voters and solicited donations for the Mental Health Association. She whipped up outfits that won first prize at a university costume party, Dad a western gunfighter with handlebar mustache, Mom in a white Victorian dress with a black velvet choker and a red rose in her hair. Mother transformed our house at 2313 West Lawn Avenue. John and I did not get the private entrance she had mentioned in Paris, but we were not bold enough to bring girls home anyway. The fireplace and surrounding beams were stabilized with jacks and joists, oak floors refinished, rugs cleaned or replaced, furniture re-covered. Mom hung Postimpressionist prints (Cézanne, Braque, Gauguin) in the dining room and put her new French crystal in the china cabinet. She revolutionized the kitchen with a new stove and fridge, a fresh coat of paint, and the French habit of buying ripe produce for immediate consumption. Outside, she planted herbs and revived the small wildflower garden that we had neglected in her absence: lady52 : The Home Front slipper, jack-in-the-pulpit, lily of the valley, trillium. Upstairs, she sorted through dresses and shoes she had left behind years before, gave much away, and added things she had acquired in Europe, such as the shapely brown suit from Paris and, from Italy, a blue silk scarf and Florentine leather jewelry box. She hung over her bed the picture she had bought in Paris of the young woman sewing. My parents slept in twin beds, the fashion they had adopted in the 1930s. I...