Ladies

Friday, November 14, 2008





All day today I have been thinking that it is Friday, the 13th. Nothing bad has happened, not even close. Hmmmmm. Wonder if it could be that it is all just a hoax or could it be that it is really Friday, the 14th?





Last night four of the women who live on my block were here for a Lady Knitters' Night, A Ladies' Knit, a Whatever Night.





This is the second time we have met. Last month it was pretty nonproductive as we just pretty much sat and chatted. Understand that most of us don't know each other very well at all, talking in the backyards, meeting on the street, etc. I had read a book a few years ago about a woman who owned a yarn shop and every Friday night the women met and knit and enjoyed the company. They always were working on a "community blanket", everyone working on it at some point during the night and when it was done they gave it to a woman who was battling breast cancer. This summer I heard about a woman who lives around the corner from all of us, whom none of us know, who is around our age, and who has been battling ovarian cancer for a year and a half with no family, no one around her, just alone. That seemed so sad. I kind of connected the two ideas and came up with this group. We have met twice now and I am thinking it is time to start the blanket at our next meeting. We will talk about it and everyone bring yarn and we will figure out a pattern and how to proceed from there.













I am probably about a third into this book and it is basically so sad. A family with so much money, so much talent, so much personality, so much everything and so dysfunctional. Rose Kennedy was totally wrapped up in her religion and her children but felt that you only touched a child to bathe them, never to show affection because that would make them weak. When her second oldest daughter, Kathleen, married her long love in a quick civil ceremoney during the war, Rose sent her a letter telling her that she was condemned to hell because she was not married in the Catholic Church. I don't know if they ever make amends but they haven't at this point in the book.

Joe Kennedy was extremely proud of his oldest son and was pretty close to the other kids but definitely more so the sons. He was a terrible womanizer but Rose and the daughters ignored it while the sons thought it was great and saw it as an example of how to live their lives.

Probably the most tragic part so far is the story of Rosemary, the mentally challenged daughter. She was born at a time when doctors absolutely demanded that the baby wait for them to deliver it and often that meant the nurse holding the woman's legs together until the doctor arrived. That is what happened in Rosemary's case. This results usually in the umbilical cord being compressed and little or no oxygen getting to the baby's brain for periods of time, resulting in all kinds of damage. The Kennedys chose to not recognize that Rosemary was challenged, putting her into regular schools, etc. Eventually she was privately tutored but as she got older she apparently had a more and more difficult time controlling her emotions, especially her temper. Joe Kennedy unilaterally decided that she was to have a lobotomy to the absolute disagreement of his wife and all of his children. Rosemary was left with no emotion, nothing, no personality, nothing. The family placed her in a home with nuns and were never allowed to speak of her again.

The same thing happened when Joe Jr. was shot down during WWII. Once they were initially told of it, the siblings and parents never spoke of it again and never cried, except in private.