You burst forth from your mother’s womb full tilt at Kaiser-Permanente Hospital in Oakland, California on May 25, 1948.

Anne Winslow Blodgett Taub on life’s fast track—-our only daughter, mother of our two oldest and most talented grandchildren and wife of our favorite rocket scientist son-in-law, Russell Peter Taub.

As these words are being penned, you are approaching the magic age of sixty—-a miraculous achievement for an insulin-dependent diabetic of nearly forty-four years. You are slim and trim, a disciplined exerciser who eats properly and strives to keep blood sugar at the proper level.

The first two photos speak for themselves. In the third frame you are a high school senior and national merit scholar off to Oberlin College in Ohio.

The fourth frame is the bride I escorted ecstatically down the aisle of the children’s chapel at the Winnetka Congregational Church on January 22, 1972 to the lilting strains of Handel’s “Water Music.”

Frame five is your thriving family. Frame six: doting grandmother reading to grandsons Gavin Thomas Taub and Gavin Riley Taub of Mill Valley, California.

This is a brief prologue to the story of your three score years of indomitable life that continues to bring great joy and blessings into the lives of your proud parents.

Your mother and I certify that you are a miracle child, wife, mother and grandmother and that you have earned our eternal, unconditional love and admiration. I promise thousands more words to more fully flesh out your life, but I must put these few words into type as an overdue tribute.

I close with your mother’s favorite acronym—ARILY—always remember I love you.

Dad

Autobio. Week 8
Dramatic Structure

Starting Over
By Carolyn Cummings

Midway through life’s journeys…. I started over.
Beginning from the beginning …..all over again.

Women know by her intuitive gifts when a marriage needs to be examined,
and re-examined, hopefully with a recommitment to the future together.

I had reason to believe my marriage had reached that point. Upon examination and hours of conversation, my husband swore that there was absolutely nothing going on between him and his secretary, nor had there ever been anything that should cause me to question him. What kind of an ungrateful wife was I anyway?

This marriage dilemma came at the same time as another dilemma.
His company offered him two job options.
The first: keep the same job, and be the sales district rep. in the same location, or
the second: a different job within the same company as a liason with another company. The later was two thousand miles away from our home. It was a lateral arabesque move for my husband. It required a major move.

Our children, ages 13 and 14, were entering their teen years with the support of
a friendly neighborhood, terrific schools, many friends and other significant adults
in their lives besides a totally dedicated mom who attended every big event of their lives. They couldn’t imagine being torn from their secure surroundings.
My job as a high school teacher was about as ideal as one could find.
The children and I suggested that if their dad (I’m renaming him X) was considering the second option, he should investigate and begin the new job in the new state
without uprooting his family. After all we reasoned, he traveled most of the time anyway. The children and I were quite capable of leading our separate lives and seeing him on occasional week-ends when he came home.

But X would have none of that idea. “We’ll move as a family and maybe it will be OK”.
This certainly didn’t sound like a commitment to me. It sounded more like a scared response from an insecure employee and human being, drowning in the corporate craziness of change, trying to hide from the truth and from himself, and hoping, by some miracle, that he could learn to set some healthy boundaries at last, where the corporate world did not rule his life.

Crisis in the marriage
Crisis in the job change
Crisis in a major move and transfer
And more to come.

Wanting to believe the words of a husband, I let him have the final decision, reminding him of our feelings (the children’s and mine).

He let the corporate world decide his future and the future of his family.

The next few days were nothing short of traumatic for the children. My emotions were mixed. I had always hoped for the best and planned for the worst in life.

The first order of business according to X was to write my letter of resignation to the school board. He helped. My notice to my school district gave them up to six weeks to find my replacement. (They asked me to stay with them the full six weeks).
That task being completed, we moved on to the next order of business which was to give notice to our landlord. I loved the large two story home with lilac bushes etched along the back yard boundary and a garden where enormous tomatoes grew in the summer.
With that task being completed, we moved on to the next order of business.
We had to find a home in our new location, Southern California, where we would move as a family, a place with good schools, and a promising future, I hoped.
With grandparents staying with Cathy and Steve for three days, my husband and I flew to the West Coast.

At 38,000 feet in the air, in the middle of the usual Gin Rummy card game,
which we usually played when we flew together, my husband threw down the cards and
declared that this was all a mistake, that we should not be moving, but should instead be getting a divorce. It came out of left field.

If a knife had gone into my heart, it would have hurt less than his words.
The stench of unfaithful indifference and ignorant lack of commitment took away my purpose for being, for awhile.

Trying to be the responsible parent and wanting to make the best of a bad situation for my children, I realized that we couldn’t go back.
I’d resigned my job, we gave notice on our home, our neighbors had given us a farewell party. We had to move forward. I prayed a lot.

I suggested that X find his own living quarters in our new city
and the children and I would find ours. But this solution did not please this husband.
In spite of his suggestion of divorce, he still wanted us to move as a family.
(It’s nice security to go into a new territory and a new job as a family man).
Was he afraid of moving alone? He vacillated. His confusion sometimes spilled over into my head. After I flew back home alone, he made a security deposit on a huge
house in South Orange County, his materialism guiding his decisions.

Securing a moving van, packing and saying good-byes filled the next weeks.
Uncertain thoughts and questions filled my mind.

We drove to the West Coast in our new Buick (my husband’s false security in materialism caused him to want a new car more often than our budget allowed).

Trying to make the necessary adjustments to our new surroundings, working through a depression that I had never known before, trying to be there for my kids, we began our lives in Southern California. My husband, alias X, was home for three days when the moving van arrived, then he left for three weeks, back to the company headquarters. “On business” he said.

But he lost the job after five months. He claimed he didn’t know why.
He was using alcohol, Uppers and Downers, trying to keep a cloud around himself that isolated and separated him from the world and reality.

During those five months, I attended interior design school, considering prospects of a new career, met the kids new friends and their families, drove them to lessons,
music commitments, sports practices and events. I made new friends, one who was going through the same things with her husband, and she is still my long time friend, I signed up for substitute teaching, took tennis lessons and lost thirty pounds, mostly because I couldn’t eat. Food was not my friend. My stomach was in a permanent knot. I became bulimic for awhile, until ‘I got both oars back in the water.’

In believing his lies, my life and my children’s lives were changed. We began a journey that I never imagined for myself.

And so…. midway through life’s journeys I started over.
Beginning from the beginning all over again.
This time with two children, an enormous red Buick that I never wanted (Car payments came with the Buick), two thousand miles from friends and family, in another state (California), a rental home that I hated ( X’s choice) and couldn’t afford, no job, and very little money. (Fortunately, I had invested some in my own name where X couldn’t get it)

When it seemed that things were about as bad as they could get, I learned that my husband ‘wanted’ his secretary again. (Note that the first six letters of secretary spell SECRET)

X left our rental house in California one morning… destination: two thousand miles away to move in with Secret, who was still in the process of leaving her husband.
The most unbelievable part of all was that X expected me to drive him to the airport. I told him that taxis were available.

The kids and I were comfortable without him. We had nine years to get used to his work schedule which meant ‘never home.’ Then one night he called to tell us that he was coming back to California (on the pretense that he wanted to get to know his children). The kids were rather ambivalent. I couldn’t blame them.

A few weeks after his call, X returned to California, but he neglected to tell the children that he secretly brought SECRET with him. His plan was for life to go on as though nothing was different, that our children would find this plan quite wonderful.
A new beginning of living happily ever after, in blissful oblivion, and having his children near him. Like an ostrich with his head permanently cemented in the sand.

Just one little matter left undone: he was still married to me and was too cowardly to ask for a divorce. With his refusal to see a marriage counselor and with no desire to work on our marriage, I was left with no choice. I filed.

I received no alimony in our court appearance which my attorney
called “An order to show cause.” The minimum child support was given.
I received half of the furniture, two terrific and confused kids, one lovable but overweight dog, and the Buick.

By this time, my children and I had found a smaller affordable house, away from the high, cold walls that had been our home for almost a year. The kids did not have to change schools. They had made a few friends and had met with some successes in their classes and community activities. I wanted them to keep moving forward.

I interviewed for teaching jobs in five counties. From thirty applicants for one job, I was hired. A God-managed thing, I’ve decided. The job was for one year only as a long term substitute. I took it. And I loved it. The first day on the new job, I met a guy who grew to love my kids, and me. We had a three year fun-filled journey together. He came into my life for a season and a reason. I believe God was really watching over us.
I finished my course work on a California teaching certificate at night at UCI.
I declared a new minor. At the time I didn’t know why. The California State Department of Education, in evaluating my classes and hours, stated that I was closer to a Social Science minor than a Science minor, as I had thought. I had a new focus.

The following year when I had to find a permanent job, the first one that became available required certification that matched my major and (who would have guessed?) my newly declared minor…..a rare combination. Coincidence? I don’t believe so.

On the morning of August 22nd, my attorney and I met at the Orange County court room with X and his attorney (an old friend of ours) who apologized for us having to meet again under these circumstances. The purpose of our meeting was to appear in
an Interlocutory decree. I received no alimony because I wanted none. My attorney believed my interview that same afternoon would result in only good things. I received only minimum child support until age 18, which meant no promise of help with college expenses (he paid nothing toward his children’s college) and visitation hours were up to the children.

On the afternoon of August 22nd, my new life began. I signed a contract with the school district. I had a permanent job, one that I kept for the next 21 years until
my retirement. My attorney was right…..only good things resulted.

When the ‘dissolution of marriage’ document arrived in the mail
I was stunned to read the date. Our divorce was filed on the same day that had been our wedding day seventeen years before.

X and Secret married a week later. The children were neither invited nor told, neither were his parents (who remained loyal and in a close friendship with me until their dying days.)

Somewhere along the way,
I wish ………someone had told me that the Doris Day movies of the 50’s were only fairytales, that the kiss in the closing scene with the handsome leading man did not mean happily ever after in real life, and that marriage takes real work and commitment.

I wish…….that there was a law requiring premarital counseling and a costly marriage license BEFORE the ceremony to help avoid a costly divorce at the end of the marriage.
I wish…..that kids never had to see their parents in any situation other than a solid family unit.

I learned so much, too.

I learned…..what I’m able to handle without crumbling and falling apart.
I learned….that there are inner strengths within me, of diehard determination,
patient persistence and an unfailing faith: ‘ I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’(Phil 4:13)
I learned that …the trials may be unspeakably insane and painful at the time, but those are the same journeys that make us strong.
And through my life’s journeys I was made aware of the needs of others
because I have journeyed down those paths myself.

I like naps. No, that's not quite true. I love naps! I've loved them my entire life. Even as a small child and young girl, my mother said I never complained about the required afternoon naps, and I can still remember coming home from junior high and high school and climbing into my glorious double bed for my nap; sometimes to the criticism of my German father who thought I should be doing something more worthwhile, like homework or household chores, instead of wasting time slumbering.

Not much has changed since my youth. I still love naps. They're a time for taking inventory of things done and things yet to do; a time for quiet reflection on hopes, dreams, plans, schemes; a time for re-energizing, for filling the well, so to speak; a time for escaping life's problems, at least temporarily.

I can actually nap just about anywhere. I've slept on planes, in cars, and I've even dozed off in movie theaters. Sometimes my naps are quite short --under 30 minutes; other times they've run over the two hour mark and, to tell the truth, I'm not sure if they truly qualify as naps when I have basically passed out for so long. Generally, however, I try to keep my naps under 90 minutes so as not to interfere with my night time sleep. I find that I am in a better mood all around if I get a nap in, no matter how brief.

I don't answer the phone during my nap time and my children know not to call me unless it's an emergency. Even my closest friends save their phone calls until after my nap (usually about 4:00 p.m.). I normally handle household chores and do the majority of my teaching in the a.m. and if I make afternoon plans, I get "itchy" to get home by two-thirty (three at the latest) so I can get my nap in.

I believe that my naps have helped me to stay healthy. Indeed, I am not plagued by the usual colds and flu that seem to regularly visit my friends and family members and I have managed to escape most of the common illnesses and health complaints of my peers as well as my young college students. In fact, when the end finally comes, I think I want my tombstone to read, "Quiet, she's napping."

Something is terribly wrong! My 20-year-old son, Jack had called me when leaving the Bridger Wilderness in Wyoming. He and a friend were going into the Teton National Park and they expected to leave for home on Monday or Tuesday, July 9th or 10th. As soon as he got to the Ranger Station, he would call to give me a list of food to buy for his arrival home.

Today is July 10 and I haven't heard from him. Now I'm afraid to leave the house for fear of missing his call. The anxiety is overwhelming. This morning I called in to work and told them I'd be late, and I drove to my Mother's apartment. She was recovering from a minor stroke and had a caregiver. I wrote out checks for the care-giver and therapists and then shared my concerns about Jack with my Mom. Then I drove to my office with anxiety increasing by the second. Needless to say, I didn't sleep that night. Still no call.

Now it is July 11th, and I actually went to work, but accomplished nothing. I called Jack's friends, siblings and relatives to make sure that no one had heard from him. All are equally concerned.

Tonight I took a sleeping pill, but awoke to the phone ringing at 11:30 PM. "Thank God" I said to my husband and screamed "Jack" into the phone. A strange voice answered "Are you Jack's Mother?" "Yes, who is this? Was there an accident?"

"This is Bob Boeticher calling from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Jack died peacefully in his sleep."

He stood, silently, beside the window, the lace curtain pulled aside no more than an inch, and stared down the street to the west. Dixie’s friend myrtle always came from the west, so she could drop her off right in front of the house. Dixie had laughed when she told him, “She says it’s safer than letting me out across the street. You’d think that I came home at midnight, instead of four in the afternoon. What could happen?”

Eldon turned away from the window and moved restlessly past the green sofa with its lace antimacassars and stopped in front of the fireplace, looking at his reflection in the mirror above it and the image of the room behind him.

Knickknacks! Dixie loved knickknacks and gewgaws of every description. ‘She don’t know the difference between jewels and junk’, he thought. There, on the mantle, was that German figurine he’d bought her last year that had cost him a hell of a lot more than made any sense, and, right next to it was the Kewpie doll his son, Dean, had won for her at the carnival. Every flat surface in the room was filled with the like, and he’d bet there wasn’t more than six of those things that were worth a damn in the whole house.

He looked at the face in the mirror. Ordinary, that was the way anyone who looked at him would describe. He was just ordinary. Ordinary hazel eyes, ordinary thinning hair, ordinary size. But, Dixie was something else; she was anything but ordinary. Dixie was gorgeous. People were all the time telling her she looked like that movie star, the one married to Clark Gable. What was her name? Oh, yeah, Jean Harlow.

Dixie was a real honest-to-God blonde. Her eyes were so blue it almost hurt you to look at them, and her features were all perfect; even teeth, beautiful nose, gorgeous mouth, and a figure to knock your eyes out. There wasn’t a flaw in Dixie. He spun away from the mirror and walked back to the window, again moving the lace curtain to the side no more than an inch. There wasn’t a flaw in Dixie, physically. He never had figured out why she had agreed to marry him.

They had met a Grange dance in Keota. He’d gone with a guy he knew from work, thinking that thirty miles or so out of Greeley, he wouldn’t be risking running into his ex-wife. The divorce had only been official for a couple of months and he sure hadn’t been looking to get married again, but there she was.

She was square dancing with some guy that was drunker than a waltzing piss ant, and she wasn’t happy about it. She stood out like some kind of priceless jewel in that crowd, and, even mad, she was gorgeous.

He’d figured she’d turn him down when he asked her to dance, and he wasn’t exactly sure how he ended up giving her a ride home. She’d been complaining about having to ride home with a ‘sloppy drunk’, and Eldon figured he must have offered to take her, because there he was with her riding alongside him in the front seat of his Packard. Then, everything just seemed to happen. In no time, he was bringing her home to meet his sons, not that they were all that happy about it. They were still angry that he wouldn’t let them see their mother.

His hand fisted in the lace and he heard a tearing noise. Quickly, he loosened his grip and tried to brush the curtain straight again. Every time he thought about Gretta the rage came up in him like a fire and liked to burn his heart out.

That bitch! She could deny it all she wanted to, but he knew damned well she’d been cheating on him. He didn’t have to catch her to know, he could tell by the way she got colder and colder with him. Then, one night, when he was getting ready for bed, she just said it right out, “I want a divorce!”

He could have killed her. Who the hell did she think she was? Did she think he’d let her humiliate him like that? Screw around on him and then take his kids and leave. He’d told her that he’d never give her a divorce, but she’d filed anyway.

Well, he’d showed her. His lawyer had made sure the judge knew that she didn’t have a job and no home she could take the boys to, except her half-sister, Sammy, and her family. There were already six of them living in a place that wouldn’t comfortably hold two. The judge had asked her why she was leaving and she’d looked across the courtroom at Eldon and said, “Cruelty”.

God, he’d wanted to kill her; to lunge across the room and tear her heart out, but, he’d stayed calm, at least on the outside, and had sat and listened to her whine to the judge about the way he talked to her and how he didn’t give her enough money to get by on. The judge didn’t have any truck with her complaints and had given him the custody of the boys, telling Gretta that she ‘could petition the court again when she had a stable environment for the children’’; as if that would ever happen. Now, here he was, again, another damned woman was messing up his life.

He moved restlessly around the darkening room. He’d forgotten how early it got dark in December. He passed the door that led down the hall to the bedrooms, then, hesitantly, he walked to the door of the room that he and Dixie shared.

When she moved in, she changed everything; told him she didn’t want anything in the house to remind him of Gretta. She’d done the most work on the bedroom. When he looked at it now, it didn’t even look like a man had ever passed through the door. His clothes were in the closet and everything else in the room screamed, Dixie.

She’d gotten one of them fancy ‘dressing tables’, the kind with a skirt and a big mirror. Oh, yeah! With Dixie it would have to be a big mirror. It had a skinny little chair in front of it that wouldn’t hold a grown man, even if he wanted to sit on it, which no real man would. The curtain, the bedspread, the rugs on the floor, they were all Dixie. More and more, she’d come in here at night and hide out from him. She never wanted to listen to the Mercury Theater, or any of the other shows he liked. When they were first married, that was one of the few things they all did together, was listen to the radio. Now, the boys were seventeen and eighteen, and Carl, the oldest, was working, and Dean never had warmed to Dixie, so he stayed in his room at night. Hell, he might as well come out and enjoy the shows.

Eldon whirled away from the door, and, moving with a more determined stride, walked back to the living room window, again, carefully edging the curtain aside.

There! Suddenly, there was Myrtle’s car, right in front of the house. She’d driven in from the east. He wondered where she’d picked Dixie up. He’d called the department store and asked to talk to Dixie and they’d told him she hadn’t come in to work today. He’d suspected for weeks, but, now he knew. Just like Gretta, the bitch was with someone else. Why did they always think he wouldn’t find out?

He watched as Dixie slid out of the far side of the car and leaned in to say something to Myrtle. Myrtle threw her head back and laughed. He gritted his teeth in rage. They were laughing at him. Damn all women to hell. He dropped the curtain a moved to the middle of the living room just as he heard Dixie opening the front door.

She was humming. Twilight Time, that was the song. Sounded just like a woman in love. She turned on the hall light, then stepped into the living room.

“Oh!” She was startled. “Eldon, what are you doing home this early? My God, you usually don’t get home until six or so. Is anything wrong?” She turned on the lamp by the sofa.

He turned away, so she couldn’t see his face, and asked, “Why? Should there be?”

She laughed, “No, I guess not, but you really startled me.” She moved off down the hall toward the bedroom, and he moved slowly after her. She hadn’t stopped talking, “For a moment, I thought that someone had broken into our home. Why didn’t you have a light on in there? You couldn’t have been able to see much.”

He spoke through clenched teeth, “I can see everything I need to.”

They had reached the bedroom, and she sat down on the dressing table stool, just as he spoke. He could see her back tighten up, and, over her shoulder, he could see her face in the mirror. Her eyes shut, and she got that ‘long-suffering’ look’ on her face.

“Oh, Eldon, you’re not going to start that, again, are you? Anymore, you’re always talking in that mysterious way, like you know something I don’t. Why don’t you just tell me what’s bothering you?”

“Actually, Dixie, nothing’s “bothering me” anymore. I’ve figured out that things can only “bother you” if you don’t know what to do about them, and that’s no longer the case.” He smiled in the mirror at her and watched as she got a puzzled, anxious look and then seemed to relax and smile back.

“Well, that’s great. Do you want to talk about it?”

“In a minute; you go ahead and take your hair down out of that bun. I know it gives you a headache and I always like to see you brushing your hair.” For a moment he stood watching as she removed the pins and let the golden flood spill down her back to her waist. She smiled at him in the mirror and picked up the brush.

He moved back down the hall to the linen closet, opened the door, and picked up the shotgun that was leaning there, just inside the door; the twelve-gauge. He paused for a moment, looking at it. He hadn’t fired it since duck season, but, he always cleaned his guns after using them and he’d just loaded it this afternoon. He shut the door quietly, and started back down the hall. There she went, again; she was humming. This time he couldn’t remember the title, but it was something about passing the time away and love letters in the sand.

He reached the bedroom door just as she began to sing, “You made a vow that you would always be true, but, somehow, that vow meant nothing to you.” She didn’t seem to hear the click of the hammer pulling back, but, something made her look into the mirror, and right into his eyes. She definitely didn’t hear the hammer fall.

The neighbors told the police that there wouldn’t have been more than thirty seconds between the first shot and the second. There’d been no time to find out what was happening, let alone time to stop him.

Both of the boys came home less than half-an-hour after the shooting, and the police made them walk into the room and identify the bodies.

The next day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Dean got his mother to sign for him to join the Navy. Carl joined the Marines and was sent to the Pacific. Neither of them ever talked about their father or Dixie and what they saw in that room.