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Secrets
She was everything he wanted.
At least, that’s what I believe now. My father, a 23-year-old immigrant most recently from England, needed a job. He came with a pair of training certificates, one in mechanical engineering, one in electrical, and in the surging economy of America’s 1950s postwar boom, he found his job a few months after arriving on a trans-Atlantic ship, then bunking in as “de facto big brother” in a household headed by a very close friend of his father’s.
But first he took a summer job in the New England countryside, at Eastover in Lenox, Massachusetts. His formal British mannerisms didn’t fit well when waiting tables — the resort’s guests were there for family fun — so the boss moved him to the kitchen, where he enjoyed becoming a short-order cook.
Mom had a summer job there, too. She’d taken the course in dressmaking that her parents insisted on, then veered into training as a preschool teacher (then called “nursery training”). But she, too, needed a break, and was willing to clean bedrooms at the country inn.
She had freckles, a wide smile, and long auburn hair then, waving over her shoulders; she knew how to ride a horse, and look back over her shoulder at the charming Englishman. They courted in the back hallways of the inn, and in the grounds among tennis courts and “pet” donkeys. A true New Englander, with family that went…
