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a weakness for alcohol and on her days off
she would return with
a goodly supply and hide it in a cache in the pasture where she could
spend an undetected evening celebrating by herself. My mother discovered
this and on the next day off seized the cache and emptied all the
bottles. The laundress resented the inter- ference and was thereupon
discharged.
My mother's ideas on religion were quite dogmatic and al-
though she slept through a good part of the service, she went to church
nearly every Sunday. She was a Unitarian. All other religions were wrong
in their basic conceptions, she said, except the Quakers who had
the purest form of religion known to God or man.
However, not everyone could be a Quaker — only the very finest people
qualified — people like the Hallowells whom she had grown up with
in West Medford — and she didn't con-sider herself in that special
category.
She was never known for being tactful, and although there
were times when she tried, her attempts were apt to do more
harm than good. One of her unwanted wedding presents was a plaster bust
of Psyche which had been tucked away in a corner of
the attic. There it stood for many years, covered with dust
and cobwebs. One day when the donor happened to be coming to
a lunch party, my mother thought it would be appropriate to
put it on display. So she brought it downstairs, cleaned it and
set it on a bookcase in the front hall where it would surely be
seen.
Of course the donor was overjoyed to find her gift so appre-ciated
and, no doubt, my mother added a few words of grati- tude
which proved to be ill-chosen in the light of subsequent events.
It so happened that just as the ladies were passing the |
