An Interruption

Suburban Chicago, December 1964. Mom takes a call while she and I bake Christmas cookies.

Rec-Room Relaxation

Suburban Chicago, January 1979. Dad sets up the self-timer for another photo. He's wearing one of the zippered cardigans Mom knitted. Mom's "stay-at-home clothes" now include trousers. Mom is on call because the phone is at her feet. Gigi has brought her favorite toys onto the ottoman.

A Bonded Cat

Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Spring 1963. Here's my Toronto Cousin with her wonderful cat, Mitsė.

"Sanka" for Irene

Suburban Chicago, 1961. I wrote earlier how we usually drank instant coffee with our Sunday-evening meal. In this photo, two brands of instant coffee appear—one for the adults, and one for me.

Finishing Touches

Suburban Chicago, October 1969. Check out the hairdo.

A Happy Classroom

Toronto, Ontario, Canada, about 1957. Toronto Al—the boy standing on the right side of the room, wearing the plaid vest—is in his Lithuanian-school, kindergarten classroom. How do I know it's a Lithuanian-school class? There's a doll wearing folkdress in the room.

Thanks to Toronto Al for making this photo available to us.

Before there was email, the phone used to ring.

Suburban Chicago, October 1963. Mom wasn't on the phone for pleasure. She's standing in the kitchen, ans it's likely a patient interrupted her meal. The rotary phone was pink (to match the walls), and its label featured the old phone-number system: "FIlmore 5- ...."

Sunday Paper: Stop-to-take-a-call Edition

Suburban Chicago, March 1963. Mom was often on the phone with patients, and a Sunday was no "day of rest."

Knitting is part of our normal routine.

Suburban Chicago, December 1978. Mom and I are in the Rec Room, watching television. Mom has set the phone within her reach because it's likely to ring. Mom works from her gold, vinyl knitting bag. Two things are unusual here: (1) Mom and I both use straight needles. I don't recall knitting (after the age of 14 or so) on anything but circular needles; and (2) was I wearing those shoes in the house?

Someone put a balloon on the phone.

Suburban Chicago, December 31, 1961. Mom dances with Vyentis, the husband of her best friend Donna, in the Rec Room. It was easy to dance in the Rec Room before my Parents had wall-to-wall carpeting installed.

The phone kept ringing, even on Sundays.

Suburban Chicago, December 1961. My Mom was on the phone often with patients. She didn't charge her patients for the calls, and she received as many as sixty calls each day.  I think she's happy, however, to have practiced medicine before there was email.

Is it broken?

I used to make jewelry from plastic, hollow "beads" when I was little. The "beads" looked like the little lozenge candies that came, stacked, in a cellophane wrapper (not "Red Dots" and not "Necco" wafers). When one undid the cellophane wrapper, all of the aspirin-sized candies fell out of their tightly wound stack.

I spent hours stringing together bracelets and necklaces. A few years ago, when Mom and I were organizing some tchotchkes, I opened a lidded, lacquer bowl from Russia. Stored inside the bowl were my plastic beads. Resting alongside the beads was a broken, plastic fish line that I had used to thread the jewelry.

You never know what you'll find when you start digging around in old boxes!

Suburban Chicago, Winter 1960. I inspect a broken bracelet. Uh oh. I've thrown the receiver off the telephone. I'd better fix that quickly, or there will be real trouble!

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Verona, Wisconsin, March 2012. I went downstairs tonight, and I found the bowl.

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Verona, Wisconsin, March 2012. Good things stay where they belong.

General Manners: Deliver gifts with joy.

Suburban Chicago, February 1962. My Mom persuades me not to hesitate before delivering a gift.

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Suburban Chicago, February 1962. There. *That's* the way to deliver a gift.

Contract

Here's Mom with Dr. Harry, her partner in the medical practice.

I asked Mom what papers she was signing when Dad took this photo.

"How am I supposed to remember what I signed fifty years ago?"

My Dad photographed many every-day events, but this is probably the only photograph of Dr. Harry that we have. Dad thought this was an important, different, moment. The signing occurred in January; that leads me to think it was an employment contract for the upcoming year.

Was Mom signing the papers that boosted her from a forty-percent partner to a fifty-percent one? Dr. Harry was very good to my Mom, and in 1962, Mom already had been working with Dr. Harry for just over five years.

Suburban Chicago, January, 1962. Mom and Dr. Harry are in the living room, at that coffee table we still use. Mom wears a stay-at-home outfit; namely, a pencil skirt and simple sweater. Dr. Harry usually wore bow ties. Those must be Dr. Harry's cigarettes because Mom smoked a different brand.

After both physicians retired, Dr. Harry called my Mom every year to wish her a Happy Birthday. We knew Dr. Harry had died when that telephone call did not come through one year.

May we see the baby, please?!

Some of the neighborhood girls came over to check me out:

Suburban Chicago, April 1959. My paternal Grandmother, Tatjana, holds me as the admiring girls from our street get excited by the prospect of a closer look.

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Suburban Chicago, April 1959. My crib is in the living room; you can see the funky curtains at the bay window. There's a goldfish bowl on the end table on the right, at the back of the image. Mom must want me to follow in her footsteps because there is a play phone in the crib.

Balancing

I wrote earlier that my Mom spent a lot of time on the telephone, talking with patients. I'm not surprised that we have dozens of photos of my Mom chatting on the phone.

Mom usually knitted when she spoke with patients. She kept a phone rest on her shoulder so that she'd have both hands free.

This photo is a little different from the others because not only is Mom balancing her knitting—and a two-color project, at that—on her lap, but she's also managing the non-stop motion machine that is a pet hamster.

Suburban Chicago, April 1964. Mom's on the phone, and she's sitting in the master bedroom chair. It was an ugly chair with blue, floral upholstery and a gilded frame. Mom's in her "stay-at-home" clothes, namely, a simple, paisley blouse and a pencil skirt.

Mom was always on the phone, coming or going.

When the phone rang at our house, the person who answered it most often was my Mom. The call usually was for her. Mom practiced medicine in the "old school" days, when there was no email, no electronic record system, and no pager. In the early 1970s, Mom rented a primitive answering machine from Illinois Bell. It was a large grey piece of equipment that took up about two feet of space on an old counter top in the basement (I can't find a photo of it.) Mom didn't rely on the answering machine very often because she rarely took time off from work.

Mom also made house calls. Patients telephoned her, at home, at all hours. Mom would pop into "The Swan" and drive to the destination. House calls taught Mom how to navigate around Chicago. She also saw the interiors of some pretty nifty houses, including a few built by Frank Lloyd Wright. Mom's partner asked her to make a house call the night before I was born, but she declined the request. Her belly was so large that if she made room for it behind the wheel, then her foot could not reach the gas pedal.

Mom's day started out by 8:00 am when she made rounds at three hospitals. After visiting those admitted patients, Mom drove to her suburban office. There, she often saw up to thirty patients a day. While Mom examined patients, a receptionist answered the office telephone, writing down the names and numbers of the callers. When Mom finished her office visits, the receptionist handed that list to Mom. The list usually had sixty or so names of patients on it, and the patients expected Mom to call them back that same day.

Mom headed home at around 7:30 pm. She ate the dinner that my paternal Grandmother, Tatjana, heated up for her, and Mom sat down in the Master Bedroom chair to start calling those sixty or so patients. She usually knitted while she was on the phone, but she typically was tied up for several hours with the call backs.

At the end of each month, Mom and her partner split up the office earnings. He got sixty percent, and she got forty percent.

The partner did, however, agree that Mom take a full month's vacation every summer.

Suburban Chicago, 1959. I don't know whether Mom has just come home here, or whether she is heading out the door. She's sitting next to her nightstand.

When will you teach me to knit (1962)?

I usually spent evenings in our Rec Room watching TV while my Mom knitted. Mom knitted most of the time. She knitted when she talked on the phone, she knitted when she rode in the car, and she knitted with her friends when they came over for coffee.

I can't imagine what it would have been like to grow up with a Mom who didn't knit.

Suburban Chicago, 1962. I am so anxious to do something, that I nearly jump out of the little painted chair. Mom sits in a naugahyde coral lounger that moved to the basement soon after Dad took this photograph. There's an ironing board behind Mom. My paternal Grandmother, Tatjana, used to iron in the Rec Room while she watched the afternoon broadcast of General Hospital.

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Mom must have thought that crochet would be a good "gateway drug" for knitting. That idea didn't float well because I never took to crocheting.

Suburban Chicago, 1962. Mom uses an inexpensive skein to teach me to crochet. Mom has changed into her stay-at-home clothes after a day at the office.

Finally, Barbie

Older girls surrounded me when I was growing up. My Best Friend was one year older than I. Her sister was four years older than she. Other friends, with whom I attended Lithuanian (Saturday) school, were three years older than I.

Older girls had more interesting dolls. Everyone, it seemed, played with Barbie. When I was about four years old, I begged Santa Claus for a Barbie. When we opened our gifts that Christmas Eve, I was shocked and disappointed to see a "Tammy" doll, not a genuine Barbie. My Parents explained that Santa had concluded that I was not old enough for a Barbie. I was so bummed!

I attributed the arrival of Tammy to one of two things. My Parents either selected Tammy because she was less anatomically charged than Barbie, or, because they were not Americans, they didn't quite "get" the branding thing and thought that one teen doll was isomorphic to another.

Suburban Chicago, 1964. I got my Barbie! Barbie is wearing the pink gown and red velvet cape that 1960s girls will recognize. I sit on my Parents' full-sized bed. An aqua-blue chenille bedspread covers the bed. Visible on my Mom's nightstand is a rotary phone with a shoulder rest. Mom used the shoulder rest so that she could talk to patients, hands free, while she knitted.