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I didn't feel very good when I got on the plane from Boston to San Diego in October 2005. I didn't know what to do about my life, and only knew that I would be safe somewhere other than by myself in Boston. When the plane landed, I got a cab to my ex-husband's house, where his mother took me in for the night. The next morning, unbeknownst to me, she called my parents, who live in Las Vegas. They undertook the long trek, six hours by car, from Las Vegas to San Diego, to come pick me up. I had to start over again with doctors, etc. once we arrived back in Vegas, and now I have been here for a year. This article is dedicated to my mother and father, for being so good to me and helping me when I needed them to. Ruby DeMarco (ne'e Shaboo) is over seventy now. She isn't able to do as much as she used to, and gets tired rather easily. Arthritis prevents her from doing much walking at malls or anywhere else. When asked about her life, she comes forth with a testament about how the world has changed in the past century, and of how different today's adults are from yesterday's. Her words give evidence to the changes in women's roles, and also in society's expectations of people. Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1933 was a mill town with various ethnic enclaves. There was an Arabic neighborhood, a French-Canadian neighborhood, an Irish neighborhood and an Italian neighborhood. My mother's father was Syrian; his father had come over on the boat from Syria in 1908. Her mother was French-Canadian, with her family originating in a small farming village in Quebec. There was quite a stir when they met and married, in 1932: My grandmother's family had wanted her to marry a French-Canadian Catholic. Only my grandfather's family approved the match; my great-grandmother did not speak to my grandmother until my mother was born, nearly a year later. One of my mother's first memories of growing up in a tenement in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a mill town thirty miles north of Boston, is hearing the clip-clop of horses' feet as she lay in bed in the morning. The "rag man" used to come by with his horse and wagon once a week, and he would buy old clothes from the residents for a few pennies, to be turned into rags and then sold again. At St. Rita's Catholic School, where she went to elementary school, sometimes the nuns would hand out large cloth squares and pinking shears to all the kids. They would then cut the cloths into smaller squares, then sew them together with a large button on top. The finished ink blotter would be used in class, where students still used fountain pens, often ending up with ink-stained fingers. As a reward for good grades, one lucky student would be allowed to go from desk to desk, filling the inkwells. Ruby and her brother, "Jack" (John Shaboo, Jr.) used to walk to St. Rita's every morning. The school was segregated by sex, with the boys on one side and the girls on the other. In the winter, the local children would walk over to "the Playstead," a large field that the city would flood with water when the weather turned cold. Children and teenagers used to ice skate on there, playing games such as "Crack the Whip." When it snowed, some of these children would bring shovels and boards to remove the snow, so that they could go skating again. My mother says that sometimes, some "mean" boys would deliberately take pickaxes and saws and destroy the ice overnight, ruining the fun for everyone. Usually, though, she and my uncle would walk home, rubber caps on the blades of their skates, and be welcomed with hot cocoa from my grandmother, Alice Shaboo. During the warmer months, Ruby and her brother would tool around the neighborhood on scooters or on bikes. They would bike to an apple farm in nearby Methuen, buying apples for my grandmother. Sometimes she would send them over to Lawrence Street to buy Italian bread to go with the spaghetti dinner she was making. Or, they would bike over to St. Joseph's; nearby was George's Bakery, (Arabic) where you could get Syrian (pita) bread and hot spinach and lamb pies. Until my mother was twelve, the family did not have a refrigerator; they had an ice chest, or icebox, and every now and then the "ice man" would come by, using big metal tongs to lift a block of ice out of his cart and put it into the icebox. On rainy days, when they couldn't play outside, Ruby and Jack used to get together with Sonia and Raymond Smith, and Bobby and Rosemary Kadel, who also lived in their building. They would meet in the hallway, where they would play card games, jacks, Monopoly etc. Rosie and Ruby used to play paper dolls, such as Shirley Temple or Sonia Henie (the figure skater), or Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, from "Gone With the Wind." "In those days, there was only the radio and sometimes a movie. We could listen to "The Shadow," "Red Skelton," "Fibber McGee & Molly," "Jack Benny," "Inner Sanctum," "Bob Hope," and "The Green Hornet." There was no TV or any of the electronics that we take for granted today, such as computers, the Internet, or digital cameras. We had an old "Brownie' camera, but for the most part, we had to entertain ourselves. It meant we had to be pretty creative at times." One means of being creative was scrapbooking. "We would take pictures from magazines, drawings and family photos and scrapbook them. We would also scrapbook our school papers. When we were around five, my mother started taking us to the public library. First to see storytellers, then to check out books." Every summer, long before going to the beach was "cool," the family would join with Alice's sister, Irene (Croteau) and her family, and rent a cottage at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, for a week or two. "My Aunt Irene and Uncle Roland, with their children Pete and Pauline, would always go together to the beach. We would load up the car with pots, pans, balls (to play with) and blankets. My mother would make a huge pot of grapeleaves (sixty to eighty dolmades) and Aunt Irene would make a pan of her specialty, chop suey. We'd pack them into the car, so we'd have enough food for a few days. My brother and I would each borrow six or more books from the library, to take with us and at night or early in the morning, we would settle in a nook somewhere and read. If it rained, we would either read or play cards with our parents. This was great fun." My parents have said that one of the things they notice about modern life is how everybody is in a hurry. Granted, the elderly usually do drive very slowly; please remember that these are people who remember when 20 mph was considered speeding. My Aunt Irene is dead now, as is my grandmother; so are Uncle Roland and my grandfather. My mother still cannot learn the computer. My father, who is 71, does better with it. I attended a conference on children's literature a few years ago where it was said that the greatest threat to children's reading is video games. And it does seem that people need more than they used to, to be satisfied. I grew up in the 1970s, and I remember playing outdoors with my brother and sister - no one had to tell us to! - and playing games such as "Life" and "Monopoly," as my mother did. It's very sad what we lose when these older people die. I know people even older than my parents and I can tell you that for some people, the ability to continue changing to suit society's pace diminishes as they get older. It's nice to think that you can exercise every day, but not everyone is able to. I could tell you exactly what foods my parents (and myself) would have to stop eating, to lose the prescribed amount of weight; not only do I not consider it my place to tell them, I would not ever want to do that to them! My mother still cooks Arabic food and, on New Year's, she is going to make a turkey. I can't take away their - and my - kibbee, grapeleaves and hummus. I've seen the diets published in magazines, showing you what, and how much of it, to eat to stay thin; my question is, where is the ethnic food? What about people with certain ethnic backgrounds? Soon, the generation that lived through World War II will be dead. According to Tom Brokaw ("The Greatest Generation"), this generation of people is the one that built the society that we live in today. You've seen one example of how those people grew up, here in this article. Are we doing as good a job for our children as they did for us? I was happy to write this article, because I am so fortunate to have such good parents. I've been extremely blessed. My grandmother refused my requests to write down her life memories for her, when she was alive. My mother was more cooperative. Thanks, Mom and Dad; I just wish we had a better society to present you with. Thank you, and Merry Christmas.
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