Galveston

Sometime after that, Mama’s family apparently decided that Daddy wasn’t doing enough for her, so they became proactive in trying to help her.  They arranged for her to go to Galveston.  She was admitted as a patient at John Sealy Hospital which is a teaching hospital  for the University of Texas.  As I recall, I think she probably stayed about a couple of months.

Actually, that was a very good time for her.  She was being seen for psychiatric help, but they also were very thorough in diagnosing any medical symptoms.  They discovered that she was anemic.   By the time she came home, her physical health had great improved.  She had gained weight, and I believe she was probably the happiest that I have ever seen her.   The care of the physicians in residence was enormously personal.

She entered the longest period of rational thought that she would ever again have in her life.  She talked about walking along the sea wall at Galveston.  She loved the doctor who treated her.   She was in good spirits, although she was quite homesick.  We were glad to see her come home.  Daddy’s cooking had not improved.  I don’t know why it never occurred to me that I wasn’t too old to learn how to cook.  I do a pretty good job of it, but I really had an opportunity to learn when I much younger.

I was approaching the eighth grade about this time.  In those days we had 8 “grammar school” grades (I never know why they called it that. Maybe it was because we had to diagram sentences, but then on the other hand we had to learn long division).  Once you graduated from grammar school, you entered high school as a freshman, and four years later you expected you formal education to end. 

Those were pretty happy years, and I had come to believe that the mental illness battle was behind us.  I heard the adults talking about women going through a “change of life.”   We thought that was the cause of her mental illness. When she came home I figured she had successfully navigated the change.

Three years later any illusion of being “healed” of mental illness was completely shattered.  By this time Daddy had come to the conclusion that he was not going to be able to make a living by farming alone.  He took out a union card, and began working as a carpenter.  Work was slow in Abilene, so he and Murl found work in Odessa. That left Mama and me to take care of the place in Clyde, but conditions deteriorated at home.  I called Daddy and he drove all night to get home.  That story’s next.