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The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, published in 1974, combines biography, journaling and fascinating Southern family history, as L'Engle chronicles her mother's decline into senility and death. But far from being depressing, this is a book that celebrates a wonderful life, as well as a family's loving support for taking leave of it. In this excerpt, L'Engle writes of her great-grandmother Madeleine, called Mado, whose extraordinary life ranged from the riches of the Spanish court to post-Civil War poverty. Mado died a year before I was born, and yet I feel that I have always known her, the stories about her are so vivid. I have never heard her name mentioned by anybody in our enormous Southern clan without its evoking a smile. There have been several Montague-Capulet schisms in my mother's family, but I have never heard an unloving word about Mado. In a day when grandchildren were supposed to revere and be formal with their grandparents, her many grandchildren adored her, and no one remembers being scolded by her. One of my favorite cousins reports that the closest her grandmother ever came to reproving her was once when Tracy referred to President Theodore Roosevelt as "Teddy." Mado said, "My child, I wish to hear you call him Mr. Roosevelt. He may be a Republican, but, after all, he is the President of the United States." Another time while Tracy was a student at Wellesley and was home for vacation, her grandmother slipped into French, as naturally as though she were speaking English, and Tracy could not understand, and stopped her. She said that Mado "only smiled gently, and with a little twinkle in her eye replied, 'I beg your pardon, since you are going to college I thought you were being educated.'" |
