The Cusworth Family By Anne Scheck
The most famous quote ever written about families came from Leo Tolstoy. “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But, in my opinion, the great Russian writer didn’t take that brilliantly perceptive comment far enough. So, here’s my follow-up advice: if you find a happy family, grab on like superglue. Because imitation may be the only way to wriggle out from the hard shell of a challenging childhood and break the bad habits of the past. I have been finding good examples for better living for nearly the past half century, since I packed my bags and headed off to college. And for instructional purposes on how to create lightning-in-a-bottle love, nobody -- and I mean nobody! -- ever demonstrated it like the Cusworths of California.
By the time I met, Nellie, the matriarch of this family of five children, I think I’d become a pretty good wife. But my parenthood was still in question. As a spouse, I was earning a decent income, and I never complained about working. Mostly this was because I was from a generation in which outside employment was still being frowned upon by some and I was just grateful that I could go forth into a job I found soulfully satisfying. But as a mother? I wasn’t so sure. My two school-aged kids were being raised in a household that a district administrator once described – in writing! – as “chaotic but stable.” Also, I was at such loose ends most of the time that twice I was mistaken for the school custodian because our faded-sweatshirt attire and harried manner made us look, from a distance, like twins. In fact, I once told her this while she was scurrying with a big stack of brown paper towels. (I don’t think she saw it as a compliment.)
In fact, this is how I met Nellie. I dropped off a bunch of books one day for the school library, with my pajama top tucked under my windbreaker, and an energetic woman became intrigued by some of the titles, which apparently seemed a little high-brow for a bunch of grade-schoolers. She thanked me profusely nonetheless and informed me that her two youngest children were the same ages as mine. She had three more. And she worked at the district pre-school.
Does this make you want to go lie down? That’s the effect it had on me.
In all honesty, I don’t think our friendship bloomed until the great-mom checklist could no longer be ignored. There was the time my son’s art project was shown in the school cafeteria along with others, and the museum-like display was created by upending the tables – a “Nellie” idea. Music from a brass ensemble played a nice background, courtesy of Nellie’s second daughter, who had brought along some friends from the high school band. It looked like a mini-Met event.
Then, as a co-leader of the girl scout troop that included both of our daughters, I decided to have a holiday dinner for the homeless—only to have the troop leader pitch what I remember as an alpha-mom fit. To placate her, I said I would call someone knowledgeable about the process and was given a phone number that I thought looked familiar. “Hi, this is Nellie,” came a voice I knew. And this is how I ended up in a community center one night serving soup to about a dozen men who seemed to appear out of nowhere, as I acted as an apprentice for the girl scout version of a similar dinner scheduled a few weeks away.
The Cusworth family, including dad Harvey, interacted in a way nothing like the family I’d grown up, where empathy seemed to be considered a sign of weakness and barbs often flew fast and furious between siblings. As a child who was an avid reader, I’d comforted myself in knowledge I gleaned from science books, which showed that from snow monkeys to ground squirrels, it was normal in the animal kingdom for mothers to prefer younger offspring.
As the oldest of four sisters, what seemed normal for me appeared to be the extreme opposite of what occurred among the four Cusworth girls, who never lobbed razor-sharp criticisms at one another. Their second youngest, a son, helped his sister with math, for goodness sake! Spending time with this family was like being happily marooned in our suburb with Disney’s version of Swiss Family Robinson, everyone pulling together and beating the odds.
And maybe that’s the thing to know about great families. They beat odds they don’t even know they’re up against. One Christmas season, I began arriving home to find presents on my doorstep. I couldn’t figure it out, until it finally dawned on me that a gift-giver was anonymously helping our family celebrate the 10-day lead-up to Dec. 25, without actually delivering maids-a-milkin’ and pipers piping. I knew who it was – the girl scout leader who had been so persnickety about the homeless dinner, feeling badly about her reaction. But when I confronted her in an aha-like way, she convincingly assured me … nope, not her.
So, I sat down to make a list of all the people for whom I had done a chore: looking after a pet, providing spur-of-the-moment babysitting. It took me a while to go through it. And then I thought of a second category. Not people who owed me a favor, but people most likely to have carried out such a kind act. And I got out a piece of poster board and tacked it onto plywood, and it said: “THANK YOU” and “MERRY CHRISTMAS” and my family and I planted it on the Cusworth lawn on Christmas eve. I don’t know about my husband and children, but those Cusworths gave me the best Christmas I’ve ever had.
Over the years, Nellie and I have had our share of differences. She finds my lack of competitiveness vexing at times. Once, our families split into teams to navigate a corn maize, agreeing that the losers would pay for burgers at In-n-Out. But I got interested in our botanical surroundings, and while trying to identify a plant, Nellie urged me to hurry along, with the reminder that this was a contest! We needed to win it! Lunch was at stake!
As our children grew, we shared the milestones of both families, weddings and births. So it’s no surprise that when our son finally got married, the Cusworths were first on the guest list, even though we now lived so many miles apart between our home in Oregon and Nellie’s and Harvey’s, in Southern California.
I mailed my own family individual invitations to my favorite Portland spot: The Tilikum Bridge, a feat of cabled engineering that spans the Willamette River and bans cars, allowing only mass transit, bicyclists and pedestrians. It is a thing of beauty, with million-dollar views and a coffee shop at one end, where a nice gathering of my sisters and their families might provide fodder for a family portrait after the wedding.
I sent emails; I mailed postcards of the Tilikum bridge; I gave directions to Tilikum Crossing; I advised where parking would be best.
There was no happier morning in my life than the one where I saw my son exchange vows with his new wife. And, once again, the Cusworths proved an underlying reason why the day remains special for me. I remember mentioning Tilikum Bridge to them, but I don’t recall emphasizing it in the way I did to my own sisters. Yet, as I waited at the crossing site on the bridge that day, it finally occurred to me -- after one by one, the Cusworths arrived – that none of my family was going to be there. My husband had predicted this outcome.
We walked across the bridge, with the newest little Cusworth, baby Glen, sleeping all the way and one of the Cusworth canines, Bill the Bulldog, trotting along. The sun was casting diamonds the river below. Portland stretched toward the horizon on both sides. We reached the coffee shop and got bubbly soft drinks. We sat and sat as the sparkling river roiled beneath.
And when we all walked back, I had a fleeting moment of sadness for what my sisters had missed. But it was gone in an instant. I can’t think of a better family to have walked with me over the bridge I love so much. So, take that Mr. Tolstoy. Even if all happy families are alike, some are singular, too – with a special brand of generosity that welcomes other folk warmly into their fold. -end-
The most famous quote ever written about families came from Leo Tolstoy. “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But, in my opinion, the great Russian writer didn’t take that brilliantly perceptive comment far enough. So, here’s my follow-up advice: if you find a happy family, grab on like superglue. Because imitation may be the only way to wriggle out from the hard shell of a challenging childhood and break the bad habits of the past. I have been finding good examples for better living for nearly the past half century, since I packed my bags and headed off to college. And for instructional purposes on how to create lightning-in-a-bottle love, nobody -- and I mean nobody! -- ever demonstrated it like the Cusworths of California.
By the time I met, Nellie, the matriarch of this family of five children, I think I’d become a pretty good wife. But my parenthood was still in question. As a spouse, I was earning a decent income, and I never complained about working. Mostly this was because I was from a generation in which outside employment was still being frowned upon by some and I was just grateful that I could go forth into a job I found soulfully satisfying. But as a mother? I wasn’t so sure. My two school-aged kids were being raised in a household that a district administrator once described – in writing! – as “chaotic but stable.” Also, I was at such loose ends most of the time that twice I was mistaken for the school custodian because our faded-sweatshirt attire and harried manner made us look, from a distance, like twins. In fact, I once told her this while she was scurrying with a big stack of brown paper towels. (I don’t think she saw it as a compliment.)
In fact, this is how I met Nellie. I dropped off a bunch of books one day for the school library, with my pajama top tucked under my windbreaker, and an energetic woman became intrigued by some of the titles, which apparently seemed a little high-brow for a bunch of grade-schoolers. She thanked me profusely nonetheless and informed me that her two youngest children were the same ages as mine. She had three more. And she worked at the district pre-school.
Does this make you want to go lie down? That’s the effect it had on me.
In all honesty, I don’t think our friendship bloomed until the great-mom checklist could no longer be ignored. There was the time my son’s art project was shown in the school cafeteria along with others, and the museum-like display was created by upending the tables – a “Nellie” idea. Music from a brass ensemble played a nice background, courtesy of Nellie’s second daughter, who had brought along some friends from the high school band. It looked like a mini-Met event.
Then, as a co-leader of the girl scout troop that included both of our daughters, I decided to have a holiday dinner for the homeless—only to have the troop leader pitch what I remember as an alpha-mom fit. To placate her, I said I would call someone knowledgeable about the process and was given a phone number that I thought looked familiar. “Hi, this is Nellie,” came a voice I knew. And this is how I ended up in a community center one night serving soup to about a dozen men who seemed to appear out of nowhere, as I acted as an apprentice for the girl scout version of a similar dinner scheduled a few weeks away.
The Cusworth family, including dad Harvey, interacted in a way nothing like the family I’d grown up, where empathy seemed to be considered a sign of weakness and barbs often flew fast and furious between siblings. As a child who was an avid reader, I’d comforted myself in knowledge I gleaned from science books, which showed that from snow monkeys to ground squirrels, it was normal in the animal kingdom for mothers to prefer younger offspring.
As the oldest of four sisters, what seemed normal for me appeared to be the extreme opposite of what occurred among the four Cusworth girls, who never lobbed razor-sharp criticisms at one another. Their second youngest, a son, helped his sister with math, for goodness sake! Spending time with this family was like being happily marooned in our suburb with Disney’s version of Swiss Family Robinson, everyone pulling together and beating the odds.
And maybe that’s the thing to know about great families. They beat odds they don’t even know they’re up against. One Christmas season, I began arriving home to find presents on my doorstep. I couldn’t figure it out, until it finally dawned on me that a gift-giver was anonymously helping our family celebrate the 10-day lead-up to Dec. 25, without actually delivering maids-a-milkin’ and pipers piping. I knew who it was – the girl scout leader who had been so persnickety about the homeless dinner, feeling badly about her reaction. But when I confronted her in an aha-like way, she convincingly assured me … nope, not her.
So, I sat down to make a list of all the people for whom I had done a chore: looking after a pet, providing spur-of-the-moment babysitting. It took me a while to go through it. And then I thought of a second category. Not people who owed me a favor, but people most likely to have carried out such a kind act. And I got out a piece of poster board and tacked it onto plywood, and it said: “THANK YOU” and “MERRY CHRISTMAS” and my family and I planted it on the Cusworth lawn on Christmas eve. I don’t know about my husband and children, but those Cusworths gave me the best Christmas I’ve ever had.
Over the years, Nellie and I have had our share of differences. She finds my lack of competitiveness vexing at times. Once, our families split into teams to navigate a corn maize, agreeing that the losers would pay for burgers at In-n-Out. But I got interested in our botanical surroundings, and while trying to identify a plant, Nellie urged me to hurry along, with the reminder that this was a contest! We needed to win it! Lunch was at stake!
As our children grew, we shared the milestones of both families, weddings and births. So it’s no surprise that when our son finally got married, the Cusworths were first on the guest list, even though we now lived so many miles apart between our home in Oregon and Nellie’s and Harvey’s, in Southern California.
I mailed my own family individual invitations to my favorite Portland spot: The Tilikum Bridge, a feat of cabled engineering that spans the Willamette River and bans cars, allowing only mass transit, bicyclists and pedestrians. It is a thing of beauty, with million-dollar views and a coffee shop at one end, where a nice gathering of my sisters and their families might provide fodder for a family portrait after the wedding.
I sent emails; I mailed postcards of the Tilikum bridge; I gave directions to Tilikum Crossing; I advised where parking would be best.
There was no happier morning in my life than the one where I saw my son exchange vows with his new wife. And, once again, the Cusworths proved an underlying reason why the day remains special for me. I remember mentioning Tilikum Bridge to them, but I don’t recall emphasizing it in the way I did to my own sisters. Yet, as I waited at the crossing site on the bridge that day, it finally occurred to me -- after one by one, the Cusworths arrived – that none of my family was going to be there. My husband had predicted this outcome.
We walked across the bridge, with the newest little Cusworth, baby Glen, sleeping all the way and one of the Cusworth canines, Bill the Bulldog, trotting along. The sun was casting diamonds the river below. Portland stretched toward the horizon on both sides. We reached the coffee shop and got bubbly soft drinks. We sat and sat as the sparkling river roiled beneath.
And when we all walked back, I had a fleeting moment of sadness for what my sisters had missed. But it was gone in an instant. I can’t think of a better family to have walked with me over the bridge I love so much. So, take that Mr. Tolstoy. Even if all happy families are alike, some are singular, too – with a special brand of generosity that welcomes other folk warmly into their fold. -end-