Jan's Vision

 

Jan was ambitious.  She strove hard for increased status, money and respectful acceptance of herself and her family.

Jan urged Bob to vye for more lucrative drafting assignments.  Perhaps she urged him to go back to college and finish the engineering degree their family and the war interrupted.

Bob didn’t want to vye. He was satisfied with his engineering work and he liked having time for his solitary hobbies too.  Jan kept trying, but never could change him much.

I’ve always thought that Jan was born a generation too early.  She had energy and drive.  She was smart and determined.  She was eager to take on the world.

Had she been my age in the 1960s and 70s, instead of her age then, she would have been a dynamo in the women’s liberation movement.  Her picture would have been on the cover of Ms. magazine.  She had that kind of dynamism. But she was too early.

Jan had been convinced all along that Chris was a brilliant young prince.  When Chris was seven or eight, she heard about recruitment to the Quiz Kids radio program.  Her prince would be perfect.  She filled out a questionnaire and Chris was called in for an interview.

The first time he was on the program, he got tricked into answering.  He hated it.  He didn’t want to go back but Jan talked him into it again.  At his second appearance on Quiz Kids, Chris resisted their tricks to get him talking.  He kept to himself all his clever answers to the natural history, native American and mental mathematics questions.

Jan was disappointed.  Chris preferred to climb trees, read books and track forest animals rather than earn savings bonds and compete on radio.  It was similar to his father. Bob preferred art and building large motorized model airplanes out of balsa wood rather than concentrating on big-buck  contracts.  

Jan didn’t give up on her vision though.  She took good care of her family.   She made sure that Bob and the boys had healthful, tasty meals.  She took the boys to the library every Saturday and church every Sunday.

Her family was growing.  Jan was pregnant again.  She liked the idea of having three children.  Many years later, Jan told me how lucky she felt to have married Bob when they were both young, and to have had three pregnancies that resulted in three children.

When she said it, the phrasing seemed puzzlingly odd.  It took a few minutes to realize she was talking about infant mortality.  She felt lucky that all her infants survived.

I was young.  I took successful pregnancies, with Western medical care in modern hospitals, for granted.  As it happens though, only Jan’s first two sons had the advantages of a hospital.  Both were born in California and Jan’s parents were nearby.

Things were different in Chicago.  The family was managing in the dreadful apartment, but just before the new baby was due Jan got the mumps.  She wouldn’t be allowed in the maternity ward at the hospital.

On May 17, 1950, the doctor came to the apartment on Agatite Street. Chris doesn’t remember anything about the birth except that he and Gregory were not allowed anywhere near their parents’ bedroom.

Afterwards, there was a tiny little brother, Matt.  Jan’s family was settling into Chicago.