Portrait in Pen: Edith Marshal

Edith Marshall- I met her when I was about 11, began babysitting for her when I was 12, and then became a “mother’s helper” for her that summer.
 Edith grew up on a large farm in Missouri where she helped her mother feed the harvest crews. Edith was what I would describe as a typical Mid-Westerner- warm, friendly, welcoming. She was plain, not really pretty, had dark hair, wore glasses. Not thin, not overweight, but solid in her body and in her person. She’d always been a hard worker and she exuded an air of competence and maturity.
 She met her osteopath husband Bob when he went to medical school in St Louis where she was studying to be a dietician. They ended up in Portland, Maine working in a hospital there.
 By the time I met the Marshalls Bob was a general practitioner in our small town in Maine. Edith was the mother of three boys, Keith, Roger, and Robert in quick succession, then a few years later Jennifer, their only daughter, came along.
 She tried to teach me all her skills –how to cook, how to sew, how to manage dinner time with three little boys. On our down times we pored over the Sears and Roebuck catalog and chose fabrics for our sewing projects.
 She loved having someone stay up with her to watch Jack Parr. Long after the kids were asleep we would fold laundry and laugh and talk while her doctor husband got his sleep. During one of these late night gab fests, she told me how a week before her marriage her father had a massive heart attack driving home and died before she could say goodbye. That her wedding day had not been a happy time; that she was still sad her father did not get to see her married.
I spent three summers with the Marshalls being part of their family life- going to camp for a week on Lake Weld, boating on Rangeley Lake, enjoying the short Maine summer. I got $7 a week.
My freshman year in college Edith had a massive heart attack standing at the counter in her kitchen, fell to the floor and died. There was never any hope of reviving her. Jennifer was six years old.
For Jennifer:

Mrs. M
How many weekends and summers
You took me in
Gave me your children to love and protect
-at twelve years old!
How you trusted me!
You taught me how to make pies
With a cut out circle
Set in to ride the crest of fruit,
Cutting the dough with a crimper
So it had pretty ruffled edges.
And how to make that Orange
Chiffon Cake with those 12 extravagant eggs,
“Always begin and end with the flour”.
You taught me how to cut on the grain of the fabric,
To match the selvedges
And sew a matching blouse and skirt,
that I am ashamed to say
I was too embarrassed to wear
to my eighth grade class.
You could have been my mother
For all I learned from you.
[Jennifer- how could your mother imagine that
she would never know you at 12 years old.
Please forgive me.
I was a daughter you would never get to be.]