The Pittsburgh Press (November 24, 1944)
I DARE SAY —
I remember, too
By Florence Fisher Parry
There’s a play which you and I must see when we go to New York. It’s called I Remember Mama, and from what I gather from those who have seen it, it has in it something of the nostalgic tenderness of Our Town.
A young woman sits offstage near the wings and tells us about her Mama, and the different things she remembers about her. And as she reminisces, the past comes into life there on the stage, and we see Mama and Papa and the children reliving the life that once was theirs and is now gone forevermore.
Sometimes I think the greatest gift which God provided us is the gift of memory. Who of us, who had a happy childhood, does not retreat into the past as Thanksgiving approaches, and in our minds relive that beautiful day when we all gathered around the long dining room table, Papa at one end and Mama at the other, and Savor again the viands and goodies piled high on the roomy table! It is on this day more than any other that the past comes back most clearly; the image of us, all, young and brisk, and, oh, so busy blessed with a security we shall never know!
How innocent and unknowing, Papa and Mama then! How mercifully spared the awful portent of our times. And thinking of them thus, so young, so confident, we feel ourselves immeasurably older; older than they, older even than they ever became. For who can be said to be wholly happy and confident today, compared with those who lived in that safer yesterday?
Safe day
It was a meager day compared with ours, hard work and ceaseless vigil was the portion of parents. It was a struggle then “to get along,” one had to earn one’s own security by long, uncounted hours of hard work. What we have now, ours for the asking, they would have counted princely possessions!
Yet, when I think how infinitely richer were their lives than ours today, I am filled with such loving envy that my heart could break, just in remembering! For favored indeed, blessed indeed, is he today who would have his dead Papa or Mama know what has befallen him!
Indeed, I have no image of the hereafter, or what the incorporeal world of heaven offers. But this, I hope: That those now dead, now waiting there for us, need never know what has befallen this unhappy world below.
This Thanksgiving there were many pilgrimages to the graveyards where lie these dead; and is it not a terrible commentary upon the botch we have made, that none of us, standing there, would dare wish to have them back?
What’s wrong, I say, what’s wrong, that we have come to such a point of desperation, shame and bewilderment, that we must needs stand at the graves of our dead and acknowledge ourselves glad they have been spared all this?
Bright certainty
Tormented, the world – so all the greatest need of Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving not only for what we still have, but abundant thanks for what we have had, and the great boon of being able to remember it! Thanksgiving for our memories! Thanksgiving for our own dear past! Thanksgiving, over all, for our parents!
I remember Mama; I remember Papa. This day brings back the image of them when they were young, so young – younger than I, far younger – ardent, busy, full of plans, working and planning together as one, raising their little family. Each year adding an extra leaf to the Thanksgiving table, each year being able to add another item to the menu, an item worked for, saved for, planned for ahead, with that certainty that was their right then, the certainty that if they worked hard enough and saved enough, they would be able to raise their family right, give them the things they had not had.
What a day! Able to dream long, long, safe dreams, make long, safe plans ahead.
Yes, that was Papa and Mama; yours, mine.
These things we had, and even though now lost, they are forever ours!
For the past, the present and tomorrow are one, if we but think them so. Is yesterday less actual than today, just because it is gone? Today more real than tomorrow just because we cannot see around its corner?
Why, they are one! There is no time, and life itself is an unending dream.