Babs hated to have her picture taken-- this time she was caught unaware. It is a beautiful picture of her in the living room in West Whately. Babs was almost exactly twenty years older than I am and I met her when she was 43 years old. Marshall brought her to see me where I was working at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Mental Health Center. I had coffee with them in the cafeteria on the ground floor. She moved to West Whately in the fall of 1973, shortly after I moved down from Hanover. I had been reluctant to leave my widowed father on his own, so left my job at Dartmouth and took one at Hampshire College. As it turned out, I needn't have worried but it was all for the best that I left the Upper Valley for the Pioneer Valley. My romantic entanglements had no possible good ending so moving allowed things to taper off slowly.
Babs was one of the greatest cooks I have known. Nearly forty years later I remember the first meal I had at her farmhouse up in Charlemont. It was her pot roast with onions cooked in beer, mashed potatoes, peas and salad. She loved to cook and entertain and it was only when she became nearly incapacitated in her final illness that she reluctantly gave up cooking for us when we visited. Babs was a wonderful stepmother, a wonderful grandmother and a wonderful friend. She was an over-indulgent mother, whose children did not benefit from that approach. Babs and Marshall had a passionate relationship in their early years. They were both enthusiastic travelers and did a great deal of gadding about, both in the U.S. and internationally. Their marriage, after eleven years together, suggests that they had achieved an amicable and mostly stable companionship that lasted until he died in 1993. Us "Smiths" were always grateful to her for loving Marshall-- he was not a man to live alone and none of us resented her in any way (although I think she sometimes thought we did!)
I knew Babs much longer than I knew my own mother. I loved her and believe she loved me in return.
No comments:
Post a Comment