Lifescapes
Memories
Virginia Condict von Phul Beer
Chapter 2
Sunnycrest:
1916 - 1922
The summer that I was four years old, we spent a month or two at Saranac Lake, to be close to Mother, who was back at Dr. Trudeau's sanitarium. At theend of summer, Daddy came to help pack and escort us back to Madison on the train. We would be moving into the new house, which Daddy had named "Sunnycrest." Alfred, the family chauffeur, was waiting for us, a welcoming smile gleaming white in his dark face. The touring car was loaded with piles of baggage, and I sat on Daddy's lap for the ride up the hill. We drove past our former home, on up to Crescent Drive which was a curving street, lined on both sides with big elm trees. I could see orange and black birds, flitting in the branches that arched overhead. Around the curve, Alfred pointed to a big, comfortable looking house on the crest of a rise
"There's your new home, little lady," he said, grinning proudly.
It was rosy brick, with white trim, andwings of two-story porches at each end. As we turned up the driveway, I could hear the tires make a crunching noise in the gravel.
What fun it would be to explore that spacious new house! I stepped across the threshold into a light, airy hall that seemed to welcome me. "Our new home!" I murmured. On my right was a living room. I saw oriental rugs and deep sofas. "Not for running and jumping," I decided. To the left was a dining room with a chandelier, and beyond that I glimpsed a porch. Was that our play porch that Daddy had told me about?
"What's upstairs?" I asked. Glad took my hand. "Come on. I'll show you." She led me up the carpeted stairway. Your room is right over the entry. You'll be able to see all the way down to Crescent Drive. You can watch cars coming up the driveway, or someone mowing the lawn, or the milkman going around to the kitchen." It was a pretty little room, with frilly curtains and a child-sized dressing table.
"Where is your room, Order?" I was still holding her hand, and I didn't want her living too far away in this unfamiliar house.
"I'll be just across the hall, and Yeaman will be sleeping next door to your room. Your mother's and father's big room and bath is next to yours on the other side.
"Where is our bath? I think I have to go."
So Glad took me. "I think it's just about time to wash our hands for lunch," she said, and when we went down the wide stairs, every body was sitting down at the dinning room table. My chair had a fat cushion, because I was getting too big for a highchair.
What fun it was exploring that new house. I pestered everyone with questions: "What's this? What's that for?" On and on. But everyone was awfully busy, and after Yeaman left to go back to school, I felt lonely, so Daddy got me an Irish Setter puppy named Jack, and we became inseparable pals.
Finally, Mother was well enough to come home, but I never had the chance to feel really close to her, the way most girls do. She seemed like a beautiful, distant figure, upstairs in her bedroom so much of the time. She wasn't able to do the cooking or cleaning or sewing, like most mothers did, so I never did learn how to do those things. The servants didn't teach me. They were too busy to want me under foot. (Years later, when I was a bride, I had to learn by trial and error, and I made plenty of errors!)
Although Mother's doctors prescribed lots of bed rest, they couldn't keep her active mind quiet! She always kept a yellow pad beside her, and a supply of extra soft pencils.
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| The new puppy between me and "Order." |
She designed her garden, creating different color schemes for each season.
Mother's color schemes were so striking that a magazine sent photographers, and many of my photos of Sunnycrest are copies of those old professional photographs.
Mother wrote fiction as well, and some of her stories were accepted and published in women's magazines. One of her longer stories, called "My L'il Angelo" became a slender book.
Perhaps I inherited my mother's creative genes, although for most of my life, I directed those energies to art. It wasn't until my eighties that I found out what fun it is to write!
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