I grew up in Connecticut and, at the age of 30, moved to Nahant. Flora Kerwin Walsh, my mother, grew to adulthood in Connecticut and at the age of 85, moved to Nahant. She left us in 1996 at the age of 93.
Her mother, Flora Etta Wyllie Kerwin, had thirteen kids, eight of whom survived to adulthood. Of the eight, my mother was the oldest. Her father, Jim Kerwin, followed a bumpy, difficult, and contentious path through life. His emotional and economic relationship to his family was unsteady. Simply put, he was unreliable. Beginning in her teenage years, his oldest daughter, Flora Mary, absorbed deep responsibilities for the welfare of her mother, brothers and sisters. She saw her family situation clearly and took on the unflinching duty to help assure the comfort and care of her younger siblings until they were able to go off on their own. She was a kind, loving, focused and self-sacrificing person who, I believe, found pleasure in doing good. Her brother Jack had a buddy named Harold. Flora and Harold dated and, when they were both around twenty-five years old, he proposed. Flora was unable to say “yes.” Not because she didn’t love him, but because she had those prior responsibilities which, she believed, could not be set aside. She had made a promise to her mother, and she had to keep it. While she could not give him her hand, she did put a small ring on his hand as a symbol of her feelings.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll wait.” Harold waited for almost fifteen years. He was a loving—and patient—man.
In those days women close to forty did not usually bear a first child, but Flora and Harold decided that they wanted one. It would be life-fulfilling for them both. She told me that she had great uncertainty about becoming a parent in those days. She didn’t know if she was worthy or capable of being a good mother in her forties. Were they too old to start a family? Did they have enough money?
She went to Catholic Family Services and, by the grace of God, found a wonderful woman, Mary C. Farr, who, in our family’s legend and myth, became a combination of The Stork, Ms. Santa Claus, and an Angel. Miss Farr, as she was known, evaluated them and wisely put them on a waiting list to adopt.
I became available and Mary Farr established her status in our lives.
I always knew that I was adopted. For me it was a mark of pride. I was not an easy child. “Rambunctious” is the relatively neutral way I’ve come to describe my pre-teen years. At no time did I ever feel unloved—overly restricted, unappreciated, economically deprived, and other adolescent kinds of things. Sure…but never unloved.
Being adopted felt kind of special. I wasn’t an accident or an intrusion in the lives of Flora and Harold. I knew I was considered a gift to them and they to me. Flora and Harold then ardently sought and were blessed with an even better and more lovely gift…a daughter for them and a sister for me. Mary Farr arranged the delivery. My sister’s name became Margaret Conwell Walsh. My father’s mother was Margaret Conwell. When I was five and she was 60, Flora’s mother moved in with us and my childhood was filled with aunts, uncles and cousins, in and out of the house, almost all of them living withing a ten-mile radius. This was our family. And it is with amazement that I can honestly state that I never once heard my mother raise her voice to my father, nor his to her.
Norman Rockwell, while he never visited our house, got his painting of a Thanksgiving dinner just about right…the perfect turkey, the smiling grandmother, the truly happy and thankful family and friends. It was our favorite holiday.
In January of 1942, on the Friday before the Saturday of her marriage. Flora worked till five o’clock. She had waited for her wedding day for a very long time. But that Friday was not “the day.” It was the day before the day, and she still had to complete that day’s obligations before turning her attention to her own affairs.
The Arcade Dress Shop, where she had worked for many years, was on the second tier of an enclosed arcade; the oldest, loveliest, most exclusive arcade shopping area in pre-war Bridgeport, Connecticut. It had an elegant atmosphere, filled with the finest shops in the state’s largest city. There were marble floors, wrought-iron railings around a large central courtyard below a great glass ceiling. The stairs leading to the second-tier mezzanine were also marble and wrought iron in the Beaux-Arts style. It’s easy to imagine her now, locking the shop’s door firmly and taking satisfaction in knowing that her duty had been fulfilled.
“There. Done!” she thought.
Then, as she turned and headed for the grand staircase, ready to get ready for the long-awaited wedding to her ever-patient swain, it wasn’t quite over yet.
At a prearranged signal, from every corner, came her fellow workers, salespeople and shop owners, old friends and customers. As many as fifty of them rushed to the railings and threw flowers in her path.
Selfless, steady, warm, charming, caring person that she was, as her friends showered her with fragrant petals, she descended the staircase, embarrassed, tears in her eyes, but I’m sure, with dignity and style. There were no trumpets in the air but there were cheers and applause, shouted good wishes and joy, as friends and co-workers sent her off to marry the happy man who would become my father.
As I think of her now, on Mother’s Day, as she firmly locked the door to this life in 1993, she had done all she could for as many as she could. And, when she ascended the marbled stairs to the Hereafter, I hope there were trumpets and angels showering her spiritual ascent with rose petals in the sky. My father, her husband, awaited as he, and the friends and family who had preceded her, cheered and welcomed her to Eternity.
Jim Walsh is a Nahant resident.
