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Show 280 struggle during and after her career preparation. "When I returned from college I was the mother of five beautiful bright, intelligent children. In the following years my kind Father of gracious love sent to me five more of His spirits. I marvel how I ever lived the dual life of a mother and a conscientious obstetrician."8 This is a common reaction of people who have reared a family and done something else along with it. There is a certain wonder-and a disbelief-which attaches. One contemporary mother, nowhere near her eighties, says she always feels like a liar as she tells someone that she reared a large family for, now that they are gone from the house, it seems as though it couldn't have really happened: especially when it comes to remembering how the costs were met. Perfectly honest people who have been parents, sometimes remember facts from their own lives incorrectly or attribute certain traits or occurrences to the wrong child. We can certainly forgive Ellis then, as (many years later) she remembers having five children as she got back from Philadelphia, when it was really four. And we do not fault her for giving the impression that she reared ten children when, in fact, only five of them survived early childhood. She did invest herself heavily in all of her children, even those who died; and she was, most truly, their mother. She saw her five surviving children all reach academic goals, one son as a lawyer, another as a doctor, and all three of the girls as college graduates-no small feat in itself. Indications are, through vague references in her few remaining manuscript letters, |
