My mother was the first “Jesuscizer” in the family; But it all really started with Dr. Seuss.

We moved from Ayer when I was three. Adam worked carpentry  in those days and had become something of a tool specialist. When an opportunity came to buy a small hardware business in the town of Winchedon forty-five minutes north, he packed us up and followed the call of Abraham. Mother was not so happy to move away from all she had known. Ayer was home and a fairly prosperous one for her. While Adam scraped and grabbed all his life for every morsel he could salvage Polly Dahlstrom grew up with at least a brass spoon in her mouth. My grandfather on that side was a banker. His wife was the proverbial stay at home mom who engaged in bridge and woman’s club. My mother  was sweet sixteen all through high school: Captain of the cheer leading squad, home-coming princess and then queen.

My father was not her first pick but when high school ended so did my mother’s magical control over the world. She went from being the big fish in a small pond to being the shrinking violet at Fitchburg State College where she went to become a kindergarten teacher. She met Adam Dahlstrom after she graduated from college Cum Laude. The September after graduation she was working at Marshalls to keep her father happy. Adam was working at Marshalls on weekends, The Sentinel and Enterprise  as a press man during the week and cleaning office buildings nights to keep the other bankers happy. My grandfather liked Adam’s industry. So Polly married Adam the following fall just as she began a career in the Ayer Elementary school system.

Adam was magically hired on by one of the leading builders in the Acton area. Mother was ready to settle into an idyllic life in the shadow of her parents. Adam it turned out liked full sun so when his opportunity came he moved himself out from under the spreading chestnut tree that was my grandfather and headed north. Winchendon was a town with no small reputation. Polly’s parents protested. Adam ignored them.

I remember my third year mostly because my mother spent the better part of it crying. On my fourth birthday my grandparents came to visit and they brought me a new book by Dr. Seuss, who it turns out was a friend of an acquaintance. Gramps managed to procure a signed copy of The Cat in the Hat and presented it to me after the chocolate cake.

That night as mother was putting me to bed she brought the book to my bedside. Smoothing down the covers she seated herself next to me and cracked the spine of the big book and read the dedication to me.

“Dear Nathan, Always remember no matter what happens in life Don’t be sad that it’s over. Smile that it happened.” Theodore Seuss Geisel. 1979

Mother read the whole story to me. I remember she had to blow her nose several times  interrupting the shenanigans of  Thing One and Thing Two. The next morning she towed me and Paul to the Baptist Church across from the drug store uptown.  She set us up with coloring books and crayons and set herself down to speak with the pastor, a gray-haired woman who called herself Doris.

Paul and I finished two coloring books a piece and several peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which Doris produced from her over-sized black purse as if by magic. The shadows were growing long before Mom and Doris said their final a-men and from that time forward Mom was a Christian, a true- blue Jesuscizer. With her it was never really an insult though. Polly meant her faith. It didn’t smack of the tin can rattling beggary I was later to see in so many others. I think that’s probably because she made the choice for herself not for someone else. She owned her faith and in the end that made all the difference.