Dessert First

'Keep Calm and Carry On' (see yesterday's post) makes me think about my mother-in-law Ruth Payne Marotta who worked at the forward-thinking Tufts University lab school I mentioned yesterday. During her time there she would try to get me to  bring my first baby in. I'd do it sometimes, bring her dressed in a little baby bonnet  – she was balder than the Buddha – and sometimes even leave her for a while at Ruth's request. I was never sure just what happened while I was gone but I knew it had to be good.She was the most open-minded adult I have ever known, this Ruth Paybe Marotta. "There's no reason not to have dessert first," I heard her say to my kids more than once as she spooned ice cream into small Bert-and-Ernie bowls. You also couldn’t shock her so you didn’t try. She regarded children, and all young people,  as spiritual equals to adults and she spoke to them in grave matter-of-fact tones. That baby of mine graduated from the great high school she attended some 17 year after her visits to that Child Development Center, and her cousin Katy and her old pal Alden came all the way into the city to attend the ceremonies. At the special lunch we went to afterward Alden sat beside Grandma Ruth. He asked her what it was like to be old. He always had this childlike curiosity Alden did and he asked this in the most respectful way.She didn’t flinch or rise up in all haughty in her chair or rap his knuckles; far from it. She welcomed the question and answered it carefully and thoroughly. I remembering wishing I could sit just a little closer to better hear what she was saying.Ruth had a gay roommate back when they were both members of the Class of ’39 at Tufts and was  a loyal friend to her for their whole long lives. And she didn’t bat an eye when one of her own family members and then another revealed that they were gay themselves.I feel so lucky to have met her at age 19; to have had her as an 'extra mother' - even before I married her son at 21. For years I watched her calm way of dealing with life and learned at her feet, because my family’s way was so different. (We yelled, we laughed, we sobbed - sometimes while laughing. (We were Irish what can I say?))  But now all these years later I am actually more like 'Grandma Ruth' than I am like my own mother.Anyway I’m quieter than I was and calmer too, slow to take offense, and impossible to shock and all of this I lay at her doorstep. Or maybe on what promises to be this sunny warm Thursday I will go find her gravestone and lay it there, with some spring tulips for my thanks.

She was the beloved younger child of a couple of New Hampshire Unitarians. This is Ruthie now, peeking shly at the camera. I have to say her son is just like her.