Photo of
Polly – Dan Spier, Redlands, 1950
When Polly was born, I had the mumps.
We considered Polly, who was born on Jack’s birthday, Jack’s birthday
present. Daddy threw Jack’s 7th
birthday party. I looked longingly through
the curtains at the bottom of the stairs as Daddy served Jack’s guests a bought
chocolate cake.
I was very proud about our coming baby. When I crowed about it at school, Mrs.
McLaren, the dragon kindergarten teacher and neighbor said that she hoped I
didn’t mind not being the baby of the family anymore. When I told Mother this, she said it was a
silly thing to say. I agreed with her
wholeheartedly, probably for different reasons; I wanted to be the oldest kid in
the family, not the baby.
In those days, women were kept in hospital for three weeks
to recover from childbirth. After I had
been declared non-contagious Daddy took me to Saint Bernadine’s Hospital where
he was to visit Mother and Polly.
Children were not allowed in the maternity ward. I sat downstairs in an enclosed courtyard waiting
room - open up to the hospital's roof. Two
black-garbed wimple-wearing nuns came up to me and conversed. I proudly bragged that Mother had had a baby
girl and we were going to call her Mary.
Mother told me later that she could hear me clear up in the third-floor
maternity area.
We all rejoiced when Polly and Mother came home. Nancy and Jack each were allowed to hold
Polly while they sat safely in the middle of the sofa. I wanted to hold Polly. One night I sneaked downstairs to Polly’s
room. I watched her sleeping in the crib
and stroked her soft cheek. I folded
down the crib wall and picked her up.
Nobody had told me that babies need their heads supported. Polly objected loudly at her dangling head. I was frightened at her cries. Mother rushed into the room and grabbed
Polly. I went up to bed, sad and ashamed. The next day, after many safety instructions
I was allowed to sit in the middle of the sofa to hold Polly. She was warm and soft and smelled very sweet;
I liked holding her.
Polly grew to be a charming, chubby toddler. She was just enough younger than all of us
that she was a cherished mascot. The
internecine warfare of the older siblings swirled around her, leaving her
intact. She had then, as she has always had,
a warm and sunny nature.
Nancy and Suzanne Curtis organized a circus at the Brigham’s
house, home of my bad friend, Penny, and her older brother Tony (who later got
a fractured skull by falling out the second story window). The Brighams lived north on Valencia across
the moderately busy 28th Street.
Nancy and Suzanne taught the Curtis children, the Brigham children, and Jack
and me to do very fancy acrobatics. The
circus was set for 7:00 pm on a spring evening.
Jack, Nancy and I left the house right after dinner to set up the
circus. Mother put Polly to bed a little
early in her Dr. Denton pajamas (pjs with feet and a buttoned panel at the
back). Her intention was to let Polly,
who always slept well, sleep through the performance in her own bed. The parents came to the Brigham’s, paid their
two penny admittance, and sat on the folding chairs. When the circus was well underway a sleepy
Polly appeared in the Brigham’s yard.
She had climbed out the bedroom window, at least four feet from the
ground, walked half a block, crossed 28th street, and come to the
circus! She had, of course heard of our
big doings and had no intention of being left out. She spent the rest of the circus sitting on
Mother’s lap and watching. We were all
very proud that Polly was clever enough to get there and that she wanted to see
our circus so badly.
Before Polly was out of diapers we took a trip east to see
Grandma Stiles in Wisconsin. The
children were delighted to find that we could play outside in the warm rain in
our bathing suits; this was not the case in the cold California rains. Mother told us she had sailed paper boats in
the street gutters as a child and showed us how to do that.
On the trip home, at the desert border between Arizona and
California, our car was stopped at the Border Inspection Station. These stations were established to protect
California’s crops, especially citrus crops, from invasive insects. People wanted to bring the oranges they had
bought in Arizona into California. I
believe that our family – loath to waste - had an occasional orange-eating
picnic orgy before hitting the Border Station.
Sometimes the border guards, knowing the evil that lurks in the hearts
of men, were as officious as they thought real policemen were. The guards looked in several suitcases in the
car’s trunk. A guard asked Daddy what
was in the final suitcase. Daddy replied
truthfully “dirty diapers”. The
skeptical guard asked Daddy to open the suitcase. Daddy, whose word was important to him,
did. The guard was disgusted and waved
our car on. Daddy chortled all the way
home. This may be the only time in
history that dirty diapers gave a father such pleasure. This was the age before disposables.
On another trip to Wisconsin, when Polly was 5, she had a
cherished teddy with a music box in it that sang her to sleep each night. The music was Old King Cole. After we had traveled half a day from our
Colorado motel we discovered that the teddy, an essential member of the family,
had been left behind. Daddy phoned the
motel and drove back to retrieve the bear.
We traveled on to Wisconsin where our large, warm-lapped Grandma
lived.
Polly continued to grow, charming and competent. She was a fund of precocious and profound
sayings. Our English cousins came to stay
with us after the war, when Polly was about 3.
Ros and Gordon lived with us for about a year. The almost adult English cousins pacified the
rowdy dynamics of the Surr children. The
day Ros and Gordon came to our house they brought a house gift. Mother put it on a high bookshelf, saying
“Let’s just put this out of harm’s way.”
As we introduced ourselves to our English cousins, Polly said, “Hi, I’m
Polly. I’m also known as Harm.”
When Polly was about 5 we moved eight miles from 2850
Valencia Avenue in San Bernardino to 6 East Sunset Drive, South, in
Redlands. Daddy had owned the property
since before the war, but every year waited for construction costs to diminish,
to build his dream house on it. He loved
the property for its spectacular view of his beloved mountains. We sometimes went to inspect the site on family
outings. At the time there were no
houses between our property and Dr. White’s large Spanish-style house. In the sagebrush behind that house stood what
looked to be a real Indian teepee. The
teepee magnetically drew Nancy, Jack and me to it. Mother, carrying Polly, followed, to keep us
in sight. We peered cautiously into the
teepee. Suddenly three screaming
children emerged from the White’s house and chased us throwing rocks, even at Mother
and Polly. Of course we ran. The older White children, Nelson and Roberta
later became friends of ours - Roberta was even, for a while, my best friend/enemy. We never again encroached on their property
uninvited.
The move from San Bernardino was difficult for me. I had just established my place in Woodrow
Wilson School’s fourth grade social world. I felt very much alone and very much a
stranger In Redlands. Polly and I shared
the same room. Polly’s part of the room
was a nook at the back of the larger part that was mine. Although I had come from sharing a room with
Jack, I grew very possessive of my things, which were attractive to the
five-year-old Polly. Ultimately I made a
path with taped lines directly to her nook and bossily told her that she was
not to cross those lines. This,
reasonably, didn’t sit well with Polly, who, after all had the smaller portion
of the large room and her part held the jointly owned closet. This is the first conflict I remember with
Polly.
I grew very involved with my life at Kingsbury Elementary
School and in the sixth grade at McKinley Elementary. When she started school, Polly went to Smiley,
a brand-new elementary school, and later to the brand-new Cope Junior High
School. Our parents had friends with
children her age, and she became very close with them.
The summer that I became a senior in high school, our family
took a trip to Mt. Robson, a Canadian Rocky in British Columbia. Jack and I got a rise out of Polly talking
about wolves. Cruelly, we took it
farther and talked about wolves biting horse’s rumps. Polly was then a great horse lover. We stayed in a house for a night or two at
the foot of Mount Robson and then packed up on horses to Berg Lake at the top
of Mt. Robson. Three young people came
along to help. Calvin was the horse
wrangler, a cocky, arrogant cowboy of about Jack’s age. There were two girls to cook and help with
the animals. Though I had been going
steady with Charlie back in Redlands, I found Calvin very attractive. One afternoon he took me for a long ride in
the hills and meadows around Berg Lake.
He kissed me while we were on horseback, which I thought was
wonderful. We went up into a beautiful
high meadow, with streamlets and wildflowers and stopped to look. A herd of caribou ran by. I had never seen caribou. Their run was so smooth they could have
carried cups of tea without spilling.
When we returned to the cabin I thought I might be in love. However, the next day Calvin took Polly for a
wonderful ride. He kissed her on
horseback. She was smitten. My nose was seriously out of joint. I finally realized my little sister was
growing up.
In High School, Polly was a very popular student. She was elected a cheerleader, something
Daddy, possibly because of difficulties with cheerleaders in his own youth,
made fun of. At RHS being elected a
cheerleader was the apogee of popularity.
I had friends at RHS, but we were only second string. In my heart of hearts I envied Polly her
popularity and more, the warmth of her friendships.
When I went to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College for two years,
I lost touch with my busy little sister.
I fell in love, and when I was kicked out of R-MWC, returned briefly to
Redlands to learn to be a secretary. I
returned to Virginia to be near Ox, whom I eventually married.
Polly fixed my hair beautifully for my wedding. After the ceremony in our living room,
performed by Daddy’s friend Jesse Curtis, on the last day that he could marry
people before becoming a federal judge, Ox and I flew off to make our lives in
the army. We were sent, after a month in
Washington State and the rest of the year in Monterey, California, to London,
England, for three years. While we lived in London Polly came for a visit. I think she was taking a summer abroad during
college. One of her exciting adventures
was riding around Europe on the back of some guy’s motorcycle.
Polly attended Beloit College, where mother had finished
undergraduate work. There she met Mike
Wolfe, an extrovert who I’m sure had the campus well organized with Polly’s
help.
While we were in London, Jack was married to lovely Rauna in
Helsinki, Betsy was born, and Polly married her wild and wonderful classmate,
Mike Wolfe.
I couldn’t afford to fly to California
for Polly and Mike’s wedding. I made the
first trans-Atlantic telephone call of my life to the Surr house. The reception was in full swing and I felt
very very far away as I told my love and joy for them to the newlyweds.
We returned to the U.S. with much culture shock. Polly and Mike lived a short train ride away
from our Indianapolis home. I went on
the train with Betsy to see them. While
we lived in Indianapolis I started to miscarry a child, according to the
Indianapolis doctor. I went home with
Betsy to Redlands to spend some time resting.
Polly was visiting as well. I
remember one night we made my first and last beer float. Polly was a great emotional support to me in
this difficult time. The Redlands
doctor, who did a D&C on me, assured me that I hadn’t been pregnant.
The year that Ox was in Vietnam, two things happened with
the Wolves. As a treat the Surr parents
took Polly and Mike and me to Los Angeles to dinner and to the musical Hair. We had good seats on the aisle. When the cast danced, naked, into the aisles
and invited members of the audience to dance with them, one of them asked
mother to be his partner. She declined
with grace but great embarrassment.
Daddy was doubly embarrassed by this.
We were agog to see this juxtaposition of staid Surr parents and lively
naked young people. The show was energetic
- a cultural turning point and to Polly and Mike and me a personal turning
point.
Christmas of that year Mother and Daddy drove Betsy and me
from Redlands to the Polly and Mike’s in Arizona, where Mike was working on his
Ph.D. The Wolfe children were well dressed
for Christmas. Mike’s mother, Ruth,
helped make the Christmas dinner and I listened when she told Polly how to make
giblet gravy. The turkey was baking, the
potatoes were being mashed, and I think I was helping set the table and make
the salad. Ruth joined Mother and Dad in the living room. Suddenly Ruth shrieked when Tommy, darling in
the Christmas suit Polly had made for him, got the suit and himself sooty by
poking his head and shoulders up the chimney to look for Santa Claus. On the drive home Betsy played with a
wonderful compound pen of many colored tips.
I had not seen it before and as Betsy clicked the colored tips in and
out, asked her suspiciously, where she had gotten it. She replied that it had been a prize for
reading at school and I believed her, as this was not uncommon in her kindergarten
career. Years later Betsy and Tommy
compared notes on the fate of Tommy’s pen and I realized the truth of the
matter.
Polly and Mike gave us refuge time after time on our travels
across country to new assignments. Our
children became dear friends. The Wolves
had first Sarah, a year younger than Betsy, then Tommy, then Julie. All three children were, partly because their
grandpa Saul was a swimming coach, and also because they were natural athletes,
great swimmers. Sarah was bouncy, Tommy
irrepressible and Julie, a happy and serious child.
I think that it was when we were traveling from Ft.
Leavenworth to Washington, D.C. that we visited the Wolves in Michigan. I remember attending swim meets and how
carefully the Wolfe parents timed their children’s swim times. The pools were festive with strings of
triangular flags flying over them. Polly
and Mike took us to their small cabin on a lake, where Mike happily gave us
boat rides. While we were at the lake,
the Wolves took us to a country and western bar with a powerful beer smell,
dancing and country and western music. I
hadn’t expected such a place in Michigan.
While Michael taught, Polly became a splendid potter. She had a studio above the garage, and made
turned pots with graceful necks and well-fitting lids.
When we were at West Point, we visited the Wolves in
Plattsburg, New York. A life-sized
wooden painted cow cut-out then lurked on their front lawn until they could
sneak her onto the next friend’s lawn.
Polly and Mike took us up to Montreal, a beautiful city. This was the only time I was ever in eastern
Canada.
The Wolves moved back to Indianapolis for Mike to become Executive
Director of a Kappa Delta Pi, a college education fraternity. Polly took advantage of the time and place to
win a Ph.D. at Perdue. After, she taught
at Ball State University, a huge commute, then later, at the Herron School of
Art in Indianapolis.
Mike came downstairs one morning at 6:00 a.m. to find Polly
unconscious. Polly had suffered a
cerebral aneurysm. After surgery,
everyone worried about how her mental function would be affected. On awakening, Polly gave her family comfort
by jiggling the finger with the oxygen-sensing light up and down and intoning,
“This little light of mine; I’m going to let it shine!”, showing that her sense
of humor was intact, and her speech, and her perception. She became a poster child for Traumatic Brain
Injury when she was filmed teaching her college class at Ball State.
After Mike retired, Polly and Mike moved to our area. They bought a beautiful house on Lake
Monticello. The house, on a spit into
the lake, gave Polly joy with views from every side. Mike entertained himself lobbing acorns at the
pestilent squirrels, playing golf, and best of all, messing around with a
pontoon boat. The house became a hub of
extended family parties, with room for Polly to house her children and their
families. The boat rides were a favorite
of all. This pleasure in living on the
lake was broken when Tommy, who had been an Olympic class swimmer, and who had
later had an artificial heart valve inserted, fell ill. His heart was failing and he was put on the
list for a heart replacement. Polly and
Mike went to Colorado to be with him in hospital and were there when he died. The cruelty of losing a child, beloved, and
known and loved as an adult, broke their hearts.
They sold the house at Lake Monticello to buy
smaller houses in Arizona and in Northern Virginia to be near their adult
daughters and grandchildren. After a few years commuting between children in Arizona and
Haymarket, the Wolves bought a house on a golf course in Glenmore near
Charlottesville. I cannot tell you what
pleasure the Wolves presence in our old commonwealth has given both old
Burtons.
Polly has, at times turned her hand to sculpture and to
poetry. This poem by Polly (under the
name Michaelangelina) beautifully describes the process of making things.
It was my third or fourth choice, the
Rock –
But it might have a nice color, a nice
grain.
So there it sat intimidating.
Beginnings . . . . An impossible idea,
and yet. . .
Smooth and chop.
It won't fit the original metaphor, I'm
sure.
Go with the medium, chop, smooth.
The rock is winning.
Finally, one place emerges,
Begins to flow into another.
The metaphor, so long submerged to
rockness,
Begins its slow birth
I give up.
One place does not make a whole.
Sometimes I see it so clearly, and then
it takes flight
with the chips.
Work, work, work.
But where am I going?
Millimeter by millimeter, the metaphor,
the flowing,
the rock,
Emerges as my creation.
