My dear friend Carole’s mother passed away on Sunday, June 19, 2011, at the age of 82. Carole’s family moved into the house three doors up the street from us on Willow Drive when I was about 10. Our first encounter was when I went outside to tell her to stop swinging on our tree. We had a split rail fence along the side of the yard and there was a swamp maple growing next to it that had a large branch growing at just the right height for a child to jump off the top fence rail and swing on the tree branch. My father, however, was vexed to see children doing this and would always tell me to go outside and tell my “friends” to get off the tree before someone got hurt and sued us. Didn’t matter that not all those children were my friends, nor even that I had no idea who some of them were. My father would yell at ME, so I would trudge outside to the tree as directed and ask everyone to lay off the swinging.
Carole and I became childhood friends, and are still friends over 35 years later. We enjoyed marathon Monopoly games, watching the Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Comedy Hour, playing with Barbies, going to the beach, listening to music, drawing, writing, walking to Cumberland Farms to buy cigarettes for our parents, and scouring the TV Guide for Marx Brothers or Gene Kelly movies, and setting our alarms for 2am so we could get up and watch those movies. We spent weekends sleeping over each other’s houses, staying up late to watch Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and the Midnight Special, and going to each other’s family get-togethers. We had our moments of friction because there is a 3 year age difference between us, and when you’re very young, 3 years can make a big difference, but we managed to maintain a solid friendship.
Carole’s mom, Doris, was a unique character. After high school, she studied drama in NYC and appeared in some off Broadway plays before she married, and she never lost that acting persona. Conversations with her involved hand gestures, chest clutching, dramatic pauses, and a nearly southern-like drawl. I would not have been surprised if she had invited us out to the sun porch for a mint julep (or more likely, a lemonade). In fact, my own voice developed as a result of impersonating her. I used to pretend I was Doris and call Carole out sick from school and cancel her dentist appointments. Now, people always remark on my telephone voice, and some suggest I should work for a 900 number.
Doris was a tiny woman, and lovely in her Scandinavian blondeness. She never learned to drive and rarely left the house, other than to chat over the fence with the neighbors. Her home was decorated in blues and whites: white slipcovers, blue bottles and clear bottles filled with blue-colored water on the windowsills, blue and white accent chairs and pillows. Carole and I used to joke about how much blue and white was too much blue and white (and how we laughed at the irony many years later when she decorated her own living room in blue and white). Doris was obsessed with magazines, and would sit for hours reading and “getting ideas”. I don’t think she ever threw a magazine away. She kept her clothes under tables draped with fabric so that she could keep her magazines in her dresser drawers. She was crafty, and the house was full of craft projects that she had begun but never quite finished. She also kept a vacuum cleaner close at hand and whenever a wayward bug or spider would appear, she would swoop down on it and suck it into the vacuum.
The Wall kitchen held a small bistro style table with a white Formica top. There was no need for paper because phone messages and notes between the family members were simply written in pencil on the white tabletop. Sometimes Carole’s father would draw funny pictures as well. You never knew what you were going to see on that table. The kitchen also had a radio that was usually tuned to “Bob and Ray”. You could always hear laughter from the kitchen when they were listening to this comedy show. When family members traveled out of town, once they arrived at their destination, they would phone home with a collect call for one of the characters on the Bob and Ray radio show. Doris would just reply, “I’m sorry, Mr. Whoever isn’t here right now” and hang up. It was their way of letting Doris know they had arrived safely without the expense of a long distance call.
Sometimes when Carole and I were in her room, Doris would open the door to ask us a question, and Carole would scream at her “GET OUT OF MY ROOM!!” and Doris would get this wounded look on her face and shrink her already tiny self into a smaller person and say to me, “she’s so fresh to me”, before closing the door. (This is really funny now because Carole just recently found a letter from her grandmother to her mother from when she was about 3, stating what a “fresh brat” she was.) One time Carole and I were in the back seat of her parents’ car on the way to visit her family in Kearny, NJ, and a car passed us holding a big head of curly hair that I was positive belonged to some guy I had just met at a party a day or two before (at 18, it was all about the guys for me), and I begged Carole’s father to catch up to that car so I could get a better look to be sure. As he was a conservative driver that normally didn’t hit the speed limit, we were surprised when he stepped on the gas. Then Doris started with her “Oh, Bobby, please don’t drive so fast!!” and curled up in a scared little ball in the front seat. Needless to say, we did not catch up with the other car.
When Carole was pregnant with Michael, I picked Doris up to take her to Carole’s baby shower. Doris came to the door and looked in horror at my beloved Z28 with the T-tops removed. She ran back inside for a scarf to tie over her perfectly coiffed hair, and later she told Carole proudly, “I rode in a convertible!”
Carole’s parents often came to my house for my parents’ parties. (Martinis for everyone!) Doris was a big hit with my mother’s sisters with her entertaining stories. My Aunt Ann once asked her if she was an actress. When Doris said no, Aunt Ann replied (with a few martinis under her belt), “Well, goddamn it, you should be!” I remember the day my own mother died, and Carole’s parents were the first neighbors to come over the house along with all our relatives.
Although you wouldn’t think it at first, Doris possessed an admirable inner strength. I remember being so surprised when Doris accompanied Carole, her first husband Gabe, and their son Michael, on a visit to Lebanon to meet Gabe’s family and see his homeland. I would never have imagined in a million years that Doris was capable of that. Doris also had to cope with a son and daughter in law that were not the best of parents to their own children, and helped raise those children. She endured the deaths of her husband Bob, her son Robby, and her granddaughter Aja.
When Carole remarried and formed a blended family under one roof (Carole & Tom, her son Michael & mother Doris, her nephew Damon & niece Aja, and Tom’s sons David and Anthony), Tom christened Doris “Dotsy”. It became the perfect name for her personality and unique quirks and will be the name we all remember her by.
I am so saddened by Dotsy’s death, not only because of the great loss this is for Carole, but because thinking of her brings me back to such a different place and time. Back to a time in childhood when everyone was still there. No, we weren’t perfect families. We weren’t even functional. But we were intact. Before parents, brothers, sisters and children left us, in body or spirit. Before we had to grow up and live in the real world.
Goodbye, Dotsy. Though you were small in stature, you were grand in presence and you have left a hole in our hearts.
