When my son was born, 49 years ago, I remember going home from the hospital after I had been awake all night waiting for his birth. So once I saw the infant and his mother, I got in my car and drove from the central part of Chicago to our home some 30 miles away, in the suburb of Highland Park. When I got home, I was tired but somehow not sleepy. So I sat down at my typewriter and wrote him a letter. It ran about four pages.
In those years, before ultrasound, we did not know the gender of babies until they were born. In guessing before his birth, I had bought a football, and I was correct. So I told him about my successful speculation and my pleasure with him. I should interject that 2 years later, when his sister was born, I was equally happy that we had one of each kind.
In the letter, I described his birth and went on to explain his ancestry. I outlined his mother and her family, their emigrations from Poland and Russia and their attainment with American education and prosperous businesses. On the next page, I detailed my family, how the first recorded ancestor came from Scotland in 1720 to escape being drafted by the British army. I mentioned how he sired 12 children, lived to the age of 88 years, and trekked with his family from Virginia to a rural area of Kentucky, where they settled on farms. And on I went with the other families, noting about my father and mother, who were both still alive in what had been my hometown. Then I described his mother’s education, her deceased doctor father. I mentioned my own upbringing, my ambition to become a writer, my college experiences at three schools, my service in the Army, defending Chicago, then my first postmilitary job and the American College of Radiology, where I had begun work the previous year. And I mentioned the suburban house we had bought a few months earlier. And I told him how my father, a carpenter, came up to help me repair and remodel. And I noted the preparation of his bedroom, with fresh yellow paint, because I could not be certain of pink for a girl or blue for a boy.
When I finished the letter, I made some copies and put one in a sealed envelope with my son’s name on it (as we had decided what we would call a boy or a girl, as it happened). Then I called my parents. My father answered, and I told him that his fourth grandchild, after my sister’s three children, was named after him. I could hear him yell to my mother the information and “He’s named for me!”
I remember thinking, as I drifted off to sleep, that I should write a letter to my son every year. If I did so, and the letters were timely and informative, he would have a family record from his infancy to what I assumed would be his middle age and my elderly years.
Sad to say, the next birthday letter I wrote him was for his 49th year, in the fall of 2011. I got very busy in my work and in the delightful requirements of my parenthood of two children. And it seemed that I could talk to both of them, when they got old enough, to tell them about their histories and what had happened since they had become alive. But somehow, I did not devote either the written texts or any fixed lectures about family penetration. I was well aware of what I was doing and how they were growing up, since I was very responsible. When they were 6 and 4 years old, their mother died. My mother rallied around to help us, as did our neighbors and relatives. And some months later, we were blessed when my daughter asked Diana if she would marry us. She did so and took on the motherhood tasks that never went away.