Occasional heatwaves stilled the August air at the New Paltz, New York cottage where my husband Vincent Mancuso and I spent summer months from 2013 to 2019. Even the cicadas deemed it too scorching to chat.
In this year’s pandemic-induced staycation in Florida, I’m a character drifting through a Tennessee Williams play. Contrary to the George Gershwin lyric, the living is not easy. I pause to wipe my brow, even with air conditioning. Note: There is air conditioning.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Faced with global peril, we are learning how to chill:
- We reserve the 5 o’clock hour for playing a Casio keyboard. Music soothes and awakens a sleepy part of our brains. A book of old songs suggests one way people endured the Great Depression. Cannot help but be upbeat playing the 1932 hit, I've Got the World on a String.
Note: Within the first six notes of a session's opening tune, 1934's Moonglow, our 15-year old cat awakens to flop at our feet for treats and tunes. Treats are as predictable a motivation as the scent of tuna fish; however, she stays for the music. - As compliant citizens, we make weekly forays for groceries to, in alphabetical order, Aldi’s, Publix, Targets or Trader Joes. Note: Aldi's has the best watermelon.
- As Democrats, we smiled more at the party's mid-August convention - and all those decent human beings - than we had in months.
- This week, we are binge-watching Netflix's The Repair Shop. In each BBC half-hour episode, craftspeople at work in a thatched-roof shop at the Weald and Downland Living Museum greet Brits bearing broken treasures (and aching hearts). Toy restorers, art experts, tinkerers and cabinet makers work their magic, as genially as Santa's elves. In the end, treasures spring to life, prompting smiles all around. Ahh. Note: Yes, it is escapism. We're steeling ourselves with proof the broken may be fixed, even our nation, with statecraft.
Digging From America
The quarantine prompted us to order DNA test kits from Ancestry.Com. We are not alone. Today’s genealogy craze rivals the top contender for web searches: pornography.
As a guest member of Ancestry.com, I input details into my family tree gathered in the 1980s by my mother’s cousin Theodore. Sans Google, he unraveled a timeline of English ancestors to the 1600s. The gentleman’s collection of photocopies include ship manifests, birth certificates, census records, court records and Civil War enlistment records, many penned in elegant cursive style.
Curbing Enthusiasm
Listening to the memoir Moments of Glad Grace by Canadian Alison Wearing, who traveled to Dublin with her elderly father in search of genealogical records, I learned a family history trail on that island will likely come to an abrupt halt. Protestant-English rule meant the mostly Catholic Irish natives were bound to the life of farm labor, an occupation of no notoriety compared to gentry, professionals and shopkeepers. Note: In Morrisey family lore, Grandad’s family worked on a farm that bred English racing horses before he came to America in the early 20th Century and cared for horses at a riding stable by Manhattan's Central Park.
Who Counts?
This investigative pastime prompted me to notice publication of a 2020 nonfiction work, The Sum of the People, by Andrew Whitby (and David Piggott) subtitled How the Census Has Shaped Nations, from the Ancient World to the Modern Age.
According to the publisher, the author “… traces the remarkable history of the census, from ancient China and the Roman Empire, through revolutionary America and Nazi-occupied Europe, to the steps of the Supreme Court.”
The tale zig zags across time and space. It helped me picture a 1910 census taker, standing at Morrisey’s apartment door, counting the foreigner, his pregnant Mrs. and two of four toddlers who adored her before Bridget Delia of Cork died in 2014.
In what seemed routine fashion, the grieving widower would be naturalized. Note: I recall seeing a circa 1930s photo of him, riding in a Saint Patrick’s Day Parade and cutting as proud a figure as a country squire.
What Gives Pause
My Irish DNA and English DNA are common to American history. With threats of our 2020 census being cut short and suspect among foreign-born residents, the accuracy of the count and nationalities represented will be questionable and the results skewed to dent city budgets.
Note: My husband is the product of another beleaguered island: Sicily. As he time travels through Mancuso history, he too can picture his grandparents, duly counted in Manhattan, naturalized and allowed the chance to pursue a better life.
Painting Note: My big brother Ed Morrisey, an artist, lived in California until his passing in 2009. His appreciation for beauty led him to paint San Fernando Valley friends and neighbors, such as the woman in the accompanying image.
Portrait of a California Girl by Ed Morrisey