My dad was the youngest of eight children, my mother the youngest of four. They were 39 years old when they had me. I have first cousins whose children are older than me. There is a huge offset in the ages of the generations in my family, so the notion of “generations” is somewhat tricky. My father was very friendly with his nieces and nephews. Though I was much younger, I became so too, as I grew into adulthood.

My maternal cousins and spouses at a wedding.

I remember the phrase “don’t trust anyone over the age of 30”, but so many of my relatives fit that description and they were all great friends and wise people, so it just didn’t work for me. I enjoyed being with older people and never felt out of place with them. I looked to many for comfort and counsel.

With Harriet Prentis, wife of my dad’s first cousin and one of my “mother surrogates”, in 2011. She was a docent at the Detroit Institute of Art for 50 years, bought me beautiful clothing, lived near us and I often biked to her house just to hang out with her. She was always great company.

Feeling at ease with my elders helped me when I got into sales, as so many of my clients were also considerably older. I learned to discuss things that were of interest to them (politics and religion were always off-limits, even in the late ’70s and early ’80s; just bad business).

I made a point of befriending my children’s friends too (certainly their parents, but I also liked their children). Vicki has been out of state a long time and we are now out of touch with any of her friends, but David stays close to a group of his high school friends and I follow many of them on social media. They are a great bunch of people, engaged and involved. I love to hear what they are up to as they’ve grown into adulthood. We were thrilled that one showed up at Columbia for his thesis defensive eight years ago.

Loren after David’s thesis defense. She is tall, so squatted for the photo and joked that attaining his exalted PhD status made David grow several inches.

We were all invited when his friend Abby was married a few years ago in Cambridge. It was also a great chance for Anna to visit her American relatives (her mother is American-born).

The Pfaus at Abby’s wedding

Abby with Loren and Emily, her HS besties

David’s senior year in high school, he held a marathon “Lord of the Rings” viewing party – watching the entire trilogy. I brought in pizza for the group, but also got to sit and watch with them. Their school was in Boston’s Back Bay. Everyone came in by public transportation and went out together on Friday nights, but often I’d receive a call late on Friday. He was someplace where the train had stopped running and could I come pick him up? And maybe drop a friend off on the way home? So of course I became friendly with everyone. Abby’s birthday is August 1 and a group of them wound up staying with us on the Vineyard one year, celebrating her birthday that weekend. They are great kids. We like to hear from and about them.

Aside from acknowledging that we know little about current technology and we are dinosaurs in that realm, we find little gap between the generations.

On a recent trip to London, we discussed texting abbreviations with David. He said he’d learned some new ones from his British friends like ending a text with “CBA”, which means “can’t be arsed”, as in: “can’t be bothered to get up off my arse to join you”. That one tickled all of us. He used it in context for us: “Hey, want to go for a jog this weekend?” “Eh, seems like a lot of work. CBA, mate.” But David went on to explain that “mate” would be “m8”. So we learned new lingo and no generation gap here! LOL!

My eyes were dark brown, but the Hollywood ideal was a blue-eyed blond. Thus, I pondered what I could do to make myself more attractive in the eye department.
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My father was leaving the lecture hall when he stepped out of the doorway and a snowball—or more accurately, an ice ball—came hurling from the side and hit him directly across his open eye.
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I was a voracious reader in my day and read many books that had been banned at one some point. I read most of them just for fun, or to satisfy a quota to read “so many” books per card-marking period. I read “Huck Finn” in 5th grade. Perhaps I was too young to understand all the nuances. I thought it was a great adventure story, reading it right after “Tom Sawyer”.

I read “1984” and “Catcher in the Rye” on my own during periods of high school vacation. The first I found very disturbing (even more so now, as we creep in the direction of totalitarian government and thought police). The second was a coming of age story – a disaffected youth. I didn’t relate to it all that well. I had my own stuff to deal with, but not like Holden Caulfield dealt with his stuff.

But the book that I loved best and had the most impact on me was “To Kill a Mockingbird”. I read it in 8th grade, not for a class assignment; again I read it on my own. My thoughts about it are probably mostly shaped by the Academy Award winning movie. I thought I looked like Scout, as depicted in the movie.

Betsy, aged 3.

See what I mean? I had to look up what was so controversial that the book was banned. I gather it was the use of the “n” word. Interesting…that was how prejudiced people in the deep South spoke (the story takes place in rural Alabama from 1934-1936). It is based on Harper Lee’s own childhood experiences, whose father was a lawyer and newspaper publisher.

The novel also depicts prejudice, a lynching, poverty, the unjust accusation of a Black man assaulting a white woman. These are difficult subjects to be sure. A white lawyer is chosen to defend the Black man, so he has the hope of getting a fair trail. But there is no justice for Tom Robinson, even though it is clear that he couldn’t possibly have done the crime of which he is accused (he doesn’t have use of his right hand after a cotton gin accident, so couldn’t have struck the girl, as she claimed). The white girl committed the sin of flirting with him, her father beat her for it and falsely accused the Black man, knowing the other townspeople would back him. The jury, of course, sides with the perjured white people, the good lawyer tries to keep Tom Robinson calm, saying they will appeal to a higher court, but Tom is shot by the mob on his way back to jail.

Atticus Finch, the noble lawyer, is a widowed father of two young children, Jem and Scout, who have their own adventures. He tries to teach them morality, but Jem and Scout are attacked on their way home from a school play one autumn evening by the man who has killed Tom Robinson and is out for revenge on the family who defended Tom. Scout is in a costume and can’t really see what is happening, hears the scuffle, Jem’s arm is broken, she is picked up and carried to safety. A reclusive neighbor, who the children have tried to contact for years, actually rescues them, but wants to remain in the shadows. Scout realizes that her rescuer is none other than “Boo” Radley, her reclusive neighbor. She quietly escorts him home, understanding that exposing him would be as senseless as shooting a mockingbird, a bird who does nothing but bring joy with its song and is defenseless.

That is the basic plot. Published in 1960, the book won a Pulitzer Prize and is considered one of the greatest pieces of American literature ever published. Harper Lee remained reclusive her entire life. At the end of her life, she published a follow up novel (which was actually written first, but set aside for decades), that was not well-received. “Mockingbird” teaches moral lessons on race, prejudice, class and social welfare. I have always found it very moving and more than a few lawyers cite it as the reason they became lawyers. It is a movie I never tire of watching.

Shortly before the pandemic, we were lucky enough to see the Aaron Sorkin-adapted Broadway production of the work in New York. It obviously had to take a different slant, given the time and physical constraints of doing a live production. In it, he emphasized the role of Calpurnia, the housekeeper, who becomes more a moral center, speaking truths to Atticus, pointing out his flaws and weaknesses. He is no longer a perfect individual, but rather, trying to improve. It is a strong piece, even though it is different. We, the audience, are given a different, but equally interesting, perspective, now 60 years after the book was published.

I still don’t understand why the book was ever banned. There is much going on around the world, but particularly here in the United States that baffles and horrifies me today. How can children learn if their stereotypes are not challenged, if they are not taught to be critical thinkers, if they are not made to feel just a little uncomfortable and pushed in some ways. They need to leave their comfort zones and walk in another’s shoes, experience another’s ways, see how others feel and what better way to that than through the safety of reading and using one’s own imagination.