88l-EmilyAnn’s Memoir-A Stitch in Time-First Grade, 1959-Arithmetic, Reading, Writing and unending questions

Introduction

Do you remember the time you were learning how to read?  When was the first time you felt confidence with recognizing a word and were able to read it on your own?  How about reading aloud for your parents, siblings or relatives?  By the Spring semester of First Grade in 1960, I was making progress in reading, writing and arithmetic and often devoting time to play activities that developed these skills rather than to watching TV all weekend.  I spent one Saturday with my Auntie Maureen that I still recall since it was the first time I felt, deep down, that I really was doing more than memorizing words in class.  I not only recognized a word on sight but thanks to being around my Auntie Maureen, who loved word jumbles and crossword puzzles, I started making different words with one word I had just made on the Scrabble board.  My Aunt had taken out the game board and letters for Scrabble to keep me busy.  I was told to make words and arrange them on the board.  It took some time to find all the letters, but I finally had “STOP”.   After showing Aunt Maureen, I then changed the letters to create “SPOT”.  Aunt Maureen could not resist showing me another word “TOPS”.  She then created “POST” and told me that when I got a little older we could play a full game of Scrabble.  My Auntie then insisted that I had to pay attention right now, though, to learning correct spelling, as well as do all my reading and writing homework correctly.  I was so excited I looked forward to sharing my new skills with my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Paul, when I went back to school on Monday. 

Grandma Josie engaged me in a similar manner when I spent afternoons with her.  She made me count aloud as she was cooking, asking me how many forks, knives or spoons she had used so far.  She also taught me that there were different ways to label how many of something she was using for the dish she was making.  Carrots came in bunches.  Lettuce was called a head.  More often I had to write my numbers on ruled yellow pads she had around the house while sitting in the kitchen of the apartment on 65th Street.  While my Grandmother hung clothes on the line in the courtyard or called across the way to a neighbor, I was absorbed in what she told me was a tape measure.  I had to look at it and identify the numbers.  Grandma Josie explained to me that tape measures and rulers were important tools for sewing.  They were as important as drawing straight lines, neat circles and well-defined squares and triangles.  My practice sessions with her now included marking off straight lines of 1″, 2″ or however many inches she told me using the ruler.  I still had to learn what all the little lines between the numbers meant but for now I was making progress, she said.  To keep me busy, she took whatever old trims and hem tapes she had from the shop and asked me to cut them into 2″, 3″ or 4″ lengths.  Sometimes they went all the way up to 12″ lengths.

Mom and Dad also engaged me in activities that got me to sit still and think, even if it was for a short time.  Mom opened her coin purse and would ask me to count all the coins.  Then Dad would ask me to differentiate between pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.  I had to stack them and count how many of each were in each stack.

First grade had not started so happily.  The first six weeks or so provided so many things for me to complain about and get annoyed with that I never envisioned the happy days and times together that I have just shared in this introduction.  My dissatisfaction with first grade accelerated with the reader “Ted and Sally”.  The wall I was putting up between myself and that reader was taken down thanks to the patience and perseverance of my teacher Mrs. Paul.  She never gave up on her students.  This story will show how she finally won me over with something she said.  Something so simple but that gave me so much to think about and much later, so much to look forward to.

Relationship notes

Emily Leatrice Serrapede was EmilyAnn’s mother and Sammy’s sister.  Emily’s husband, Frank Jesse Terry* was the son of Al and Blanche Terry.  He had 3 younger siblings:  Alfred, Robert Edward and Maureen. 

Josie and Sam Serrapede were Emily’s parents.  Josie was like Mom #2 to EmilyAnn since she was very easy to relate to and was very in-tune with her interests.  After WWII, Josie returned to the workforce full-time as a sewing machine operator.  She worked in a shop located on 14th Avenue near the 62nd Street elevated line.  Her specialty was woman’s clothing and her expertise was in making blouses.

Maureen was EmilyAnn’s paternal Aunt and Baptismal Godmother.  Maureen was very close to all her nieces and nephews.  She and her husband Alex wanted, but could not have children of their own.  Around 1957 Maureen contracted the mumps.  After recovery she learned that the illness left her infertile.

Mrs. Paul was EmilyAnn’s 1st grade teacher.  She was a well-disciplined woman who carried herself with great confidence.  Mrs. Paul had a steady presence in the classroom.  She dressed on most days in the style of a businesswoman:  slim skirts, tailored jackets and blouses with a bow or fancy collar.  The impression that remains with EmilyAnn to this day is that of a woman with light brown hair that was turning silvery.  She was dressed in a grey tailored suit and walked methodically up and down the aisles in the classroom watching the children practice their penmanship or read their lessons.

EmilyAnn’s Memoir:  Who will write their stories?

I did not enjoy the experience that was the 1st grade classroom during the beginning of the Autumn 1959 term.  Gone were the little tables of the kindergarten classroom where students faced each other in a fashion similar to sitting around the kitchen table at home during meal time.  Here in first grade each student had their own desk facing the front of the classroom.  We no longer looked at each other or sat in a fashion that reminded me of home.  Because my surname began with a “T” I sat in the last row near the window.  I took some comfort in looking out the window when I was not looking at the clock above the blackboard at the front of the room.  The days in school were now 6 hours long.  We got one hour for lunch during which time, Mom came to pick me up and take me home for 45 minutes before we went back to school.  That still did not stop me from complaining to her.  I wanted to stay home and take a nap. 

There were other things I went on and on about, too, when I came home from school.  On the first day we each had to stand up when our name was called and say a few words to our new teacher and our classmates.  I had never hesitated to speak or stand up in front of family.  I enjoyed being in the spotlight, as Dad told me.  But that was family, a place and group of people I felt safe and loved in.  At school that all changed.  I felt very cold and very small when it came my time to stand up and introduce myself. I had watched the boys, seated in the rows of desks running from the entrance of the room towards the middle of it, speak their names with ease.  There were several boys that had the same names like John and Michael.  Our teacher, Mrs. Paul asked boys with the same name if they would like to be called a variation of that name.  One of the boys named John could be called Johnnie in class.  The boys didn’t seem to care and there was little disagreement.  Often Mrs. Paul made the decision as to which Michael became Mikey and which James became Jimmy.

88k-EmilyAnn’s Memoir-A Stitch in Time-Tiny Betsy and the Button Jar

Note: Continued from posting 88j-A Stitch in Time-EmilyAnn’s Memoir-Endings and Beginnings, 1958

Introduction

Patty and I looked out the front window of the sunporch watching the housewives and their children start their Saturday morning activities.  Some walked down the block with their shopping carts.  Others swept their front stoops filled with the dry, brittle autumn leaves.  I wasn’t really interested in what anyone was doing.  I was more interested in their reactions at seeing Patty looking out with me.

It was chilly in the sunporch and Mom called out to me not to stay there too long.  The cold didn’t bother me.  I was too excited by the buzz Patty created around me.  I was now 6 years old.  Patty Playpal was a doll as tall as a 3 year old.  I loved brushing her hair and showing her off.  I daydreamed about what it would be like to have a 3-year-old sister.  Would she sneak upstairs to keep me company after Mom had banished me to my room?  Or would she play up to Mom and say I annoyed her, too? 

Patty Playpal was a big seller among dolls that were manufactured and came to market in the late 1950s.  She was the exact size of a 3-year-old girl and had the ability to walk when you held her hands and guided her along the way.  I didn’t think of it so much as a walk but a waddle.  Still, even in her comical way of walking, Patty was a big hit with my friends when I brought her out on the stoop.  I felt I had arrived somehow.  I was somebody.  I had a meaning in life.  I was the owner of a Patty Playpal.

Other girls on the block were getting a glamorous doll called Miss Revlon.  Oh, how her evening dresses sparkled, her seamed stockings were so silky and her jewlery so sparkly.  My playmates were moving away from baby dolls, bottles and diapers and into the world of high fashion, like I saw on TV and sometimes in advertisements for Revlon or Max Factor make-up.  No matter these dolls were glamorous, Mom said, she thought they were very odd with their little girl faces, pre-teen bodies and grown-up lingerie, shoes and stockings.

I wondered why Mom was so annoyed with me.  Patty Playpal was a little girl, just bigger than most dolls.  Aunt Maureen and Uncle Alex gave her to me for my birthday.  At my party Mom and Dad were smiling and so happy about the gift.  But now that I was getting so much attention Mom kept reprimanding me.  She called me a stranger and asked where “Her EmilyAnn went?”  When I said “Here I am!” she replied, “No, you’re the show-off.  I want to see my EmilyAnn again.”

Whatever Mom was trying to get me to do had no effect.  I was too elated with all the attention Patty brought me.  On one Saturday, our neighbor Mrs. Koslowski from 3 doors up rang our bell after seeing me with Patty through the window.  I’d picked her up so Mrs. K could wave to her.  Mom let Mrs. Koslowski in.  She said she just had to see this doll that everyone was talking about.  She thought it was a great learning experience for little girls to have a doll that taught them how to dress and care for someone else.  When she’d finished looking at Patty Mom asked if Mrs. K wanted to stay for coffee.  She declined but said she’d be back in an hour or so with something for the doll.

Mrs. Koslowski came back about an hour later with a box filled with dresses she had made her daughters when they were about 3-4 years old.  She had been holding them for her future granddaughters but thought better of it.  Her daughters might have boys, she thought, then what?

The dresses fit Patti perfectly.  Mom and I looked at the dresses and the beautiful finishings on the inside.  I couldn’t get over the hem tape and enclosed seams and all the trims used.  In the days that followed I went to school and found settling down to homework somewhat easier but not enough.  I still wanted to go out to play and then out with Daddy for drives on the weekend.  The only time I sat still and forgot about everything else going on inside and outside was when I looked at the dresses Mrs. Koslowski made.  All the mothers on the block cooked.  Some crocheted.  Others gardened.  Some decorated and cleaned better than others.  They all had a talent to make and create in ways I just started becoming aware of.  Mrs. Koslowski amazed me with how she sewed.  Grandma Josie sewed, too.  Yet I never paid much attention to what it was she was making.  All of a sudden I had to learn what it was my Grandma Josie did and if she made the kind of magic Mrs. K did when sewing.

Mom watched me as I became more interested in the dresses than I did in Patty.  I continued to brag about Aunt Maureen, Grandma Blanche, Aunt Betty every chance I could.  I was so proud of what they could do, their cooking, their entertaining, the grand time I had with them.  Mom watched this and one day sat me down.  She asked me point blank, “Who am I?”  I said , “Mom, what a silly question.  You’re you.”

“No I’m your mother,” she replied.  “The others think they know you.  I know the real you.  Mothers know their children like nobody else can.”  She then added, “Well God knows best and the most.”

When I continued to delight in the dresses Mrs. Koslowski gave for Patty Mom told me we were going to visit Grandma Josie.  “Maybe you should learn how to sew,” she said.  “Grandma and I will take you on a whole new adventure. “