The Changing Role Of Fathers Through The Decades

(I originally posted this on Father's Day four years ago but it's still appropriate today,  as the role of the father is evolving --for the better in my mind--every year.)

In 1911, when my mother was born, the father was a god-like figure who occasionally came down from Mount Olympus to offer criticism, praise and advice.

(My mother is on the far right in the back row. In addition to the seven girls in the family, there were two older boys.   My grandmother, Anna Truan Dobson is holding her ninth and last baby, who was born when Anna was 49 and her hair had turned completely white.  The father, Frederick Fee Dobson, was a Presbyterian minister in Oswego, Kansas.)

In the 1940's, when I was born, the father would come home from work and sit in his favorite chair with his scotch on the rocks and read his newspapers, and he was not to be disturbed until dinner time when he presided over the dinner table.

In the 1970's, when my kids were born, the father was more hands on, but not to the point where he ever changed diapers, took a kid to the park, or knew the names of his children's friends or teachers.

But our granddaughter Amalia, born in 2011, has the benefit of the current breed of father, who is hands-on from the moment of birth.  He changes diapers and makes breakfast and gives baths and Amalia knows a father is also for :

Going down the slide together and

Dancing on the patio together and

Looking for fish and dolphins together and

Feeding giraffes together and

Holding you up in the water and

Playing horsey and

Admiring your artwork and

Walking to the park together and

Singing in the park together.

And grandfathers, whether or not they changed diapers in their younger days, are for telling you a story every day, even if they have to do it by phone or by Skype.

Happy Father's Day to  Emilio and Nick who are now Father and Grandfather (Papou) to both Amalia and Nico!

The Changing Role of Fathers Through the Decades

(I posted this on Father's Day three years ago but it's still appropriate today,  as the role of the father is evolving --for the better in my mind--every year.)

In 1911, when my mother was born, the father was a god-like figure who occasionally came down from Mount Olympus to offer criticism, praise and advice.

(My mother is on the far right in the back row. In addition to the seven girls in the family, there were two older boys.   My grandmother, Anna Truan Dobson is holding her ninth and last baby, who was born when Anna was 49 and her hair had turned completely white.  The father, Frederick Fee Dobson, was a Presbyterian minister in Oswego, Kansas.)

In the 1940's, when I was born, the father would come home from work and sit in his favorite chair with his scotch on the rocks and read his newspapers, and he was not to be disturbed until dinner time when he presided over the dinner table.

In the 1970's, when my kids were born, the father was more hands on, but not to the point where he ever changed diapers, took a kid to the park, or knew the names of his children's friends or teachers.

But our granddaughter Amalia, born in 2011, has the benefit of the current breed of father, who is hands-on from the moment of birth.  He changes diapers and makes breakfast and gives baths and Amalia knows a father is also for :

Going down the slide together and

Dancing on the patio together and

Looking for fish and dolphins together and

Feeding giraffes together and

Holding you up in the water and

Playing horsey and

Admiring your artwork and

Walking to the park together and

Singing in the park together.

And grandfathers, whether or not they changed diapers in their younger days, are for telling you a story every day, even if they have to do it by phone or by Skype.

Happy Father's Day, Emilio and Nick!

My Grandmother’s Quilt

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The Dresden-plate-pattern quilt that my maternal grandmother, Anna Truan Dobson, made for my mother, Martha, as a gift for her wedding in 1932 was the family treasure that I coveted most of all, especially after my husband and I and our three children moved from New York City to an antique colonial house in Massachusetts in the 1970’s.  But my mother wasn’t about to part with it, even though she kept it hidden away in a closet.

I poured my longing into buying other antique quilts and learning about quilt patterns. I hung a tumbling-blocks quilt and a barn-raising quilt on the walls above the staircase and put framed squares from a very old tree-of-life quilt in the upstairs hall.

Part of the magic of my mother’s quilt was its story (or “provenance”, as they say in the antique world.).  My beautiful grandmother Anna, born in Tennessee to a French-speaking Swiss-immigrant family in 1872, finished collage with two degrees before the turn of the century—a rarity for a Southern girl. The first time my grandfather, Reverend Frederick Fee Dobson, proposed to her, she turned him down, probably because she knew that accepting would mean she’d have to travel with him to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma and help him convert the natives to Christianity and establish churches and schools there.

 But some time later, Frederick came back to Tennessee and proposed again, and this time Anna accepted.  She was 24 when they were married on January 16, 1896 at Tahlequah Institute, Indian Territory, Oklahoma. In the photograph above she stands on the right in the back row on the “porch of the dormitory” with the other faculty members. The women were her bridesmaids and the man with the mustache was Reverend Hamilton, the minister who married them.

 Between the age of 24 and 49, Anna gave birth to nine children—two boys and then seven girls.  My mother Martha was number six.  She remembers hearing her mother weeping when she realized that she was pregnant with the last one.  In the photo above, Anna is holding that daughter, Betty, and you can see that her hair has turned white.  My mother is at right in the second row.

 In Oklahoma, Anna taught Native American children at the Tahlequah Presbyterian school and instructed their mothers in tatting, crocheting and quilting. Later she taught Sunday School and augmented the budget by giving piano and French lessons. Every Saturday night she would supervise bathing the children in a tin tub in the kitchen and would prepare the Sunday meal so that the whole family could attend all three Sunday services. (My mother told me that they were not allowed to play cards or even read the newspaper on Sunday.)  The photo above shows the family after church, at a time when there were only seven children.  My mother is the moppet in front next to her father.

For the weddings of each of her nine children Anna made a quilt in the pattern and colors they chose.  My mother told me that her father, the minister, also made one square of her quilt so he could participate in the gift.

I always admired my grandmother for her beauty and her intellectual curiosity. After her children were grown and her husband died in 1948, she traveled and lectured about birds, wild flowers and biblical subjects. She also found time to keep on researching and learning until she suffered a stroke in her eighties.  She died in 1964, aged 92.

My own mother died of heart failure in 1985 and the wedding quilt became mine at last.  From my research into vintage quilts I’ve learned that at least some of the fabrics in it came from patterned cotton flour sacks, and that the Dresden plate pattern was very popular in the 1930’s.

Along with the wedding quilt, I also inherited a brooch from my grandmother--shown above in front of another photograph of Anna.  The lady with the scarf was an immensely popular beauty in Victorian times, and her likeness could be found on plates, dolls, brooches and even cigarette tins.  Long before the day of the internet search, I learned from a hobby magazine that she was Queen Louise of Prussia, born in 1776 in Hanover. She married King Frederich Willhelm III and was much beloved for her goodness to the poor.

I’ve even started collecting Queen Louise embellished objects, using on-line auction marketplaces like Invaluable.com. They have a great collectibles section. 

 Neither my grandmother’s quilt nor her brooch are as valuable as other pieces I own, but so often, when a collector is asked which of his pieces he treasures the most, the collector will name the one that has the most personal meaning because of the story that comes with it. Naturally my Dresden plate quilt is my favorite, because my grandmother (and grandfather) made every stitch with their own hands.

My Folks, Rocking Fashions of the 1930's

The other day I came across a folder of old family photos that I had filed in the wrong place and hadn't seen for years.  Many of the snapshots showed my parents as they were in the 1930's. (They were married in 1932, but I, their first child, didn't come along until 1941.)
The thing that struck me was how dressed up everyone was in the 1930's.  Even in the 1950's, when I was growing up, I remember my mother would always put on a hat, even to go next door.  And when it was a tea party or church, both she and I would wear a hat and white gloves.  (Please click "read more" to see the other photos)

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The Changing Role of Fathers Through the Decades

In 1911, when my mother was born, the father was a god-like figure who occasionally came down from Mount Olympus to offer criticism, praise and advice.

(My mother is on the far right in the back row. In addition to the seven girls in the family, there were two older boys.   My grandmother, Anna Truan Dobson is holding her ninth and last baby, who was born when Anna was 49 and her hair had turned completely white.  The father, Frederick Fee Dobson, was a Presbyterian minister in Oswego, Kansas.)

In the 1940's, when I was born, the father would come home from work and sit in his favorite chair with his scotch on the rocks and read his newspapers, and he was not to be disturbed until dinner time when he presided over the dinner table.

In the 1970's, when my kids were born, the father was more hands on, but not to the point where he ever changed diapers, took a kid to the park, or knew the names of his children's friends or teachers.

But our granddaughter Amalia, born in 2011, has the benefit of the current breed of father, who is hands-on from the moment of birth.  He changes diapers and makes breakfast and gives baths and Amalia knows a father is also for :

Going down the slide together and

Dancing on the patio together and

Looking for fish and dolphins together and

Feeding giraffes together and

Holding you up in the water and

Playing horsey and

Admiring your artwork and

Walking to the park together and

Singing in the park together.

And grandfathers, whether or not they changed diapers in their younger days, are for telling you a story every day, even if they have to do it by phone or by Skype.

Happy Father's Day, Emilio and Nick!

A Tale of Three Wedding Gowns

 

 

The other day, on the track of some photos I took when we were living in Greece in the seventies, I dragged out of the closet two sealed cardboard boxes containing all our un-sorted family photographs from that decade.  Although I didn't find what I wanted, I unearthed a treasure that I didn't think existed -- a photo of my parents dressed for their wedding in August of 1932.

I had heard stories of the sweltering day when my Minnesota-born father arrived–landing in a Kansas cornfield in the small private plane flown by his (rich) brother-in-law Millard, who was to be his best man.  The wedding took place in the church of my mother’s father, a Presbyterian minister, in Oswego, Kansas, and then the reception was held in the church hall or in the rectory next door where my mother had grown up.

I was always told that the amateur photos someone took didn’t come out, so the bride and groom had to re-stage the event. But many details in this photo seem authentic to the wedding day—the three white calla lilies my mother told me she carried, and the look of terror in their eyes.  My mother (Martha Dobson Paulson) is wearing a Juliet cap, I think it’s called, a drifty veil and a bias-cut long white satin dress that looked like a slip or a nightgown.  The photo doesn’t really show the gown, but I remember, when I was about 10 or 12 years old, finding the dress in a trunk.  Naturally I tried to put it on but, even as a child, I was too wide to pull it over my hips. (My mother struggled all her life with being underweight.) 

I assume that this dress was made for Martha either by one of her sisters (there were seven girls in the family—all talented at sewing) or by her mother, Anna Truan Dobson, who gave quilting and sewing lessons as well as teaching French and piano.  There was not enough money, I suspect, in the salary of a minister with nine children to buy a wedding gown, even if there had been an appropriate store in Oswego, Kansas.

 Finding that photo reminded me of buying my own wedding gown in New York in the summer of 1970.   I was making about  $100 a week as a journalist, and shopped my way down Fifth Avenue, until I got to Lord & Taylor on Fifth and 38^th.   The matronly saleslady in the bridal department brought out what I recognized as The Dress as soon as I tried it on.  It was a sample, worn by a model, in a size six. (In those days models wore sizes six and eight. It’s not that models have become thinner over the years, it’s that the definition of a size six and eight have changed.  Now models wear sizes zero and two.)

This dress was everything I wanted—it had lots of lace and a modest neckline and long sleeves. (In those days no bride would dare to wear a strapless dress in church.) It had a lace-edged train and buttons all down the back. And because it had been worn, I could buy it at half price--$250 instead of the original $500!

The headpiece—a circular lace-covered ring with a short veil of tulle with unfinished edges—cost me only $30 because I had it made by one of those milliners working out of a cubby hole somewhere in the fashion district around Seventh Avenue.  The sort of open pill-box shape was my private homage to Jacqueline Kennedy

I already knew which photographer I would use for the formal wedding portrait--Jay Te Winburn, a society photographer who became famous for his shots of Brenda Frazier, the debutante of the year in 1938. Brenda eventually became so notorious for her social status and peculiar beauty-- her white-powdered face and crimson lips--that she and her debut appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in the midst of the Depression.  She lived a tumultuous life as the epitome of the “poor little rich girl”, and before she died at the age of 60 in 1982—in fact when she was only 45 years old—photographer Diane Arbus took a photo of her propped up in bed with a cigarette in her hand and a fur wrap around her shoulders, looking haggard and old:  a cautionary tale for all debutantes.  

I chose Winburn because he took only black and white photographs, using only natural sunlight that poured through the windows of his second-floor studio on 57^th street.  When I posed for him in my princess-style dress (everyone had a princess-style wedding gown in the early ‘70’s) he said to me, “That headpiece is not worthy of the dress.” I knew he was right, but I couldn’t afford a better one.   He also told me that I was to be one of his last brides, as he was retiring. True or not, I always like to say I was the last Jay Te Winburn bride.  

In those days The New York Times wedding pages would use formal portraits of the bride, not snapshots of the happy couple in a casual pose.  And when I collected mine, I was proud to see  “Jay Te Winburn Jr.” on each one in his miniscule script.

When daughter Eleni broke the news to me in June of 2010 that she was planning to be married in Greece, and that the wedding was only four months away, she added that we had an appointment to go shopping in Manhattan at one of the only two places in New York where a bridal gown could be bought off the rack. It was called The Bridal Garden and we found it on the ninth floor of a grim industrial-looking building on 21^st Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

The gowns in the vast suite were all samples, most of them worn once by models and then donated by the store or by the designers themselves.  All of the gowns are sold for a fraction of what they’d cost at retail, and all the proceeds go to charity—to a charter school in Bedford Stuyvesant.

There were two other bride-plus-Mom couples there, shopping with the efficient help of salesladies Winona and Vivienne. Eleni found The Dress within ninety minutes, a vision in point d’esprit lace with a halter neckline and a beautiful lace-edged hem and train (like mine).  And on her wedding day on 10/10/10, she carried calla lilies --as did my mother in 1932-- but Eleni’s were miniature and flame-colored.  Her lace mantilla was a vast improvement over the headdresses that her mother and grandmother wore.

When Eleni made her selection, the salesladies told her the dress was unique—it had arrived from Barcelona, Spain, only a week before, donated by the designer, Rosa Clara, and it was immaculate, having never been worn.  (Dresses that have been soiled are cleaned by the Bridal Garden’s special dry cleaner for $250—a bargain price today, but back in 1970, $250 was what I paid for my whole dress.)

Winona said that most brides, when they find The Dress, get a particular expression, a “bride face”, when they see themselves in the mirror.  Eleni was wearing her “bride face”, and when she twisted up her hair and Winona placed a simple veil on her head, I felt my eyes fill with tears, just like all the other MOB’s who come to The Bridal Garden.

Eleni wrote a check to pay for her own dress—less than half the price it would have cost in Barcelona, and all for a good cause.  Then we headed off to a French restaurant nearby, to have lunch and raise a glass of wine to the One Perfect Dress. 

Soon it would be flown back across the ocean to Corfu, where it would be topped by a Spanish- style mantilla, posed on a red staircase, and worn in an open, horse-drawn carriage to a Catholic Church for the first wedding mass, then paraded around the town square, escorted by musicians and costumed troubadours, to a Greek Orthodox church for a second ceremony. Then it was walked down cobblestone steps to the edge of the sea, below an ancient fortress, to the Corfu Sailing Club, where it would  twirl to “You’re Just Too Good to Be True”, and finally, lit by sparklers and a shower of good wishes, would sail away from the shore into the moonlit sea of the future.

Three generations of wedding gowns, each with its own tale.