Molly Adams: An Amazing Woman

These past few weeks have been rough for me. While the world was mourning David Bowie and Alan Rickman, I was making plans to put my kitten down.  At the same time, I learned that one of the most amazing people I have ever known past away. Molly Adams, 91 of Wayland Massachusetts passed away on January 14th.  This woman was as close as a grandparent to me, and I was lucky enough to interview her for a class a few years back.  Here is a piece I wrote about her and her life, that I hope will serve as my memorial to her.

Mrs. Mary Adams—“Please, call me Molly”—welcomes me into her small cozy home in Wayland Massachusetts on the Saturday after thanksgiving.  I step up into the house and follow her to the living room, the walls scattered with pictures of her family and friends.

“So, what do you want to know?” she asks me as we sit down on her living room couch. 

“Everything,” I reply.

“Why do you want to interview me anyway?” She asks with a smile and the snarky attitude of any teenager, “I’m boring.  I haven’t done anything interesting.”  She might not know it, but she’s lying through her teeth.

I explain to her my assignment to write a profile on someone I find interesting.  “I never really got a chance to learn about my grandparents.  And, well, you’re really the closest thing to a grandparent I have,” I explain.  I leave out all of the wonderful stories I’ve heard about her life— “She was a star lacrosse and field hockey player as a teen,” “she lived in Australia for a while,” “She survived breast cancer,” that’s the real reason I’m here. I want to know everything about her. 

Molly Louise Keay was born and raised in the small town of Clifton Heights, outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  There, her great grandfather had built a Woolen Mill that made uniforms for soldiers of World War I and II.  The town grew around that mill and her family stayed there.  Molly was the youngest of six children, three boys and three girls who grew up in a three-story Victorian house with their parents, a grandmother and an aunt.  Outside was a barn, where Molly discovered her love of animals.

“The only thing I wanted for my twelfth birthday was a lamb,” she says, then leans in towards me and whispers with excitement, “my mother got me two.”  Along with her lambs, she cared for pet goats, chickens, and ducks.  “And we always had cats and dogs.”  Her living room is decorated with paintings and pictures, wooden carvings and stuffed animals of every species.        “I always wanted to be a vet,” She says, pouting a bit as she recalls her unfulfilled dream. “Nowadays, if you told your parents you wanted to be a vet and they said no—well nowadays they wouldn’t say no,” she cuts herself off as she realizes the differences.  “But if they said no, you would ignore them and become a vet anyways, right?” I nod in agreement and she continues.  “Well back then that didn’t happen.  If your parents told you ‘it’s not proper for a young lady to be a vet,’ that was the end of it.”

She never became the vet she always wanted to be, but she did a whole lot more.  It was no coincidence that Molly met Dwight Adams, the love of her life, on a tour of the United Nations building.  After they were married, they travelled the world together, starting with long road trips across regions of America, then moving on to Europe, Africa, and settling for six months in Australia.  Even with three children, Molly continued to travel, climbing Mount Kenya and Ayer’s rock (before it was banned) with her two daughters, and touring the wildlife of Australia with her daughter Sarah.

“At night we’d sit and sing around this huge bonfire,” she tells me about a five-day wildlife trip in Australia.  Other than Molly and Sarah, everyone was Australian, and two of the men brought their instruments along.  “And the last night, we were next to a river and the moon was out, and they were playing and we were singing and the Kangaroos were walking around.”  She points me to a painting in the corner of the room.  I walk over to see the inside of tree bark, art by the aborigines of Australia.  The white paint against the deep brown bark depicts birds and animals in the rainforest.

But Molly’s life wasn’t always one of luxurious world travel.  She settled for a college closer to home when her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and stayed home to care for her. She survived college during World War II, worrying about two of her brothers in the Marines and the Navy and learning to live with food stamps and blacken the windows at night.  Soon after, her sister was diagnosed with polio and taught Molly the importance of caring for other people.

“She was one of those people that you never felt sorry for and she never complained and everybody loved her,” Molly says.  “I asked her one time, I said ‘how can you always be so…up?’  And she said ‘I have to always be up! Because if I’m nasty and disagreeable, nobody’s gonna take care of me.  You can’t be nasty, you’ve got to be nice.” 

“You get out of what you give and because I volunteered in this town, up to my eyeballs, I’ve gotten to know so many people here and I have so many good friends.  I always say that you get more out of it than you give.”

At a young age, Molly took what she learned from her life’s troubles into the world, volunteering at the school, the historical society, the Depot, the polls, and much more. She also volunteered for a family in Wayland, trying a new wave of medicine called “patterning,” where she met my grandmother.  A woman in town had a child who was born with a brain aneurism.  “He couldn’t do anything,” she says, “he couldn’t walk or talk or move.”  After talking to numerous doctors, the mother found a group of doctors willing to help her with a new theory of medicine.  “Three times a day, for three days a week, a team of 5 people would come and help him move in different ways.”  Molly places her feet up on the bench in front of her, showing how the teams would help the boy move his legs to teach him how to walk.

            “The first day that he got up and walked was our day on duty,” she tells me as the joyful memories come to her eyes, “and it was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen.”

            After that, she stayed in contact with my grandmother, Janet Owen.  “We became friends as couples,” she said, “playing tennis and bridge and going cross country skiing together.”  Years passed and they stayed friends.  They came to thanksgiving and Christmas dinner when their own family was out of town, touring the world or with the other side of the family.  Dwight passed before I had the chance to know him but Molly continued to visit my grandmother, playing card games and word games like scrabble and boggle. After Gran died, Molly still came to visit, bringing her dogs to play with Granddad’s dogs and my sister and I. When Granddad died in 2009, we begged Molly to sit in the front pew with the family.  After all, she is family, and she knew him better than us grandchildren ever would. 

Before I leave, Molly takes me on a tour of the first floor, showing and explaining the pictures of her childhood home and the various photos of her children. I hug her goodbye and thank her for everything. “I would walk you to the door, but I think I need a break” she says and I nod.  “I’d like to read this, whatever it is you’re writing.”

“Of course,” I say as I stand up from the couch again.  “I’ll see you soon Molly,” and I make my way out the way I came, happy in all the things I learned and excited to write about this amazing woman. 

Kittens: Part 2

Last post I wrote about my adorable additions to the family.  But that story has a sad side.

The week before Christmas, Storm started sleeping more, and playing less.  Now I know what you’re thinking—cats sleep! That’s like, their thing, they sleep all day. And it’s true that kittens sleep about 18 hours a day. But during those other 6 hours, my kittens were very active little guys. So we noticed. Whenever Shadow tried to play with him, he would just walk away and go lie down somewhere else. When we dangled a fun toy in front of his face, he barely raised his head. I rolled a yarn ball (his favorite) past him a couple times, and he slowly watched it pass by without moving his body.

We hoped it was just a cold or something, but after a few days, nothing had changed. We noticed he wasn’t eating very much, so we called the vet to make an appointment. Of course, this was Monday of Christmas week. Two of the vets were out on vacation, and all the other slots were filled up. But the Vet-tech promised she’d call if anything opened up.

Storm got his appointment and the Vet said he had a slight fever, and had actually lost about a pound since we got him. He took a blood sample and said he would run some tests. 250 dollars later, we had no answers for what was wrong with our kitten. They gave us an appetite stimulant and sent us on our way, and the vet called every day to check on how Storm was doing.

The day before Christmas, nothing had changed, and the Vet asked to bring him in early the day after Christmas to do some more tests.  Christmas was wonderful, and we got lots of toys for our new kittens. Unfortunately, Shadow was the only one to play with them. The next morning I woke up early and got to the animal clinic ten minutes before they opened.  We went in and found that Storm has lost another half a pound, and still had a fever. An X-ray showed that he had fluid in his abdomen, and when the vet extracted it, they discovered a straw like color, which could only indicate one thing. He told me that Storm most likely has FIP, and he seemed so sure that he said we probably didn’t have to do a test. FIP, he told me, is a fatal disease for which there is no treatment.  It’s a disease where the kitten will slowly waste away, sometimes days, sometimes longer.

I called Jim and of course started sobbing on the phone with him.  He said to do the tests, just to be sure.  A few days later, the tests came back.  Storm was diagnosed with FeLV, basically Feline Leukemia.  Although the test came back inconclusive for FIP, the vet assured us that it was the only thing that could cause the straw liquid in his belly.

But Storm didn’t seem like he was in pain. He wasn’t enjoying kitten life as much as Shadow, but he would walk upstairs and eat some tuna juice or chicken broth.  He stopped jumping into the sink. In fact, he stopped jumping anywhere, instead opting to slowly crawl onto the chair, or walk from the couch over my dresser and onto the bed. But some days were better than others. The Vet called to check in, and Jim told him with a pinch of hope, that he seems like he’s doing better today.  But the vet chalked that up to the fever dropping, and that it would probably spike again soon.

Shadow kept trying to play with Storm, wondering why he didn’t want to wrestle. He seemed to be going crazy not having anyone to play with. Storm continued to walk slowly around the house, following me upstairs just to go back to sleep again. Whenever I would pet him I would lean in close and look him in the eyes. “You tell me when you’re ready” I’d say… knowing it would have to be my decision.

He continued to lose weight, and last week he wet the bed. I didn’t even notice it until I got ready to go to sleep. Jim and I stripped the bed and did the laundry, and Storm slept on the couch that night. The next morning, the blanket on the couch reeked of cat pee.  Maybe he couldn’t feel it, or maybe he was just too weak or too tired to get up to go to the bathroom. We started putting a towel under him and trying to get him to sleep on the small (machine washable) cat bed. But sometimes Shadow wanted to sleep in Storms bed (he’s gained some weight from eating all of Storm’s leftovers) and they didn’t both fit, so Storm would move back on the bed and the next day we’d be stripping the bed and overworking the washing machine.

“I keep telling him to let us know when he’s ready,” I told Jim. “Maybe this is his way of telling us.” We agreed that it was time to let him go, and I called the Vet to make an appointment. Tomorrow morning we are taking him, and hopefully sending him to a better place… whether that’s cat heaven or reincarnation, I don’t know.

So this is my public goodbye to my kitten storm, all of seven months old. I hope those three months that you were with us were wonderful. And I hope you will be happy wherever you end up.

Fail

I have failed my new year’s resolution already.  And it’s only March!

For some reason, I haven’t felt up to writing the past couple weeks—partly because there’s not much to write about, and partly because I’ve just been completely unmotivated to do anything.  I have felt so unproductive these past few weeks and it seems like things just keep getting worse.  Being an adult is not what I had hoped it would be.

I take you back to one night in college when I was deep in the boring studies of Literary Criticism (I’m sorry, but it was boring).  I remember thinking to myself how much I wish I had a boring desk job (even if I hated it) where I could at least be making money for spending my life tediously passing the time away with useless meaningless tasks.

I look back on that moment frequently now, as I make transfers and withdrawals for customers at the bank—things that could easily be done online or at an Automated Teller Machine (that’s an ATM, in case you—like it seems of our customers—don’t understand what it stands for).  But I’ve learned a one important lesson since becoming “an adult”—even though most days I don’t feel worthy or wanting of that title.  All of that “extra cash” I earn while repeating the same menial movements day after day just disappears—rent, groceries, insurance, electric, internet, etc, etc, etcetera…

And then tax time rolls around and oh, how excited I was to treat myself to some new mugs and maybe go out on a date.  But sure enough, life caught up with me. Apparently, past-Jamie (pre-adult-Jamie) made a mistake when filling out my W4 paperwork for work.  And now, instead of my new mugs and a date night, I owe a chunk of money to the good old U S of A.

But if that wasn’t enough to get me annoyed with adult life, my brand new (to me—certified used) car decides it doesn’t like to start in the cold weather. Personally, I think that’s a load of horsey doo-doo. I grew up in Mass and have been through my share of bitter cold winters and never heard anything like that. Then I move down south to the slightly less bitter Virginia, and people talk about it like it happens all the time… seems a little fishy to me.  With my car not working I’ve been late to work a couple times and Jim had to skip a few hours of work one day when I took his car (he also used it as an excuse to get out of class early, so at least someone is benefiting).

When I finally got my car to the shop, after it had been working on and off (and jumped when not) for a week and a half, the mechanic told me there was nothing wrong with it.  Frustrated, I explained to her that it had not started multiple times now and had needed to be jumped.  So there must be something wrong with it.  She told me it was probably because of the cold.  I got audibly upset with her, but she insisted they had tested the battery and everything and they couldn’t find a problem.  I left the shop and parked across the street to call my mother and leave her a half-screaming/half-crying voicemail.

And now, almost a month since my last blog post, I am failing at the one thing that might actually bring me happiness someday.  Other than a semi-monthly technical editing gig, this blog is the only way that I keep myself writing.  I say that I want to be a writer and that I love writing, yet I can’t even force myself to write a weekly post about the nothingness that is my life.  If being an adult involves following your passions and trying to make a living doing something you love, I am most definitely failing at that.

But I haven’t stopped trying.  This post is proof of that… and I have already emailed HR to fix my tax withholdings.  So, as long as my car starts on Monday, hopefully I can work myself up to a C- on the adult report card.