Hamilton Parking

 

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As I've been fascinated by Alexander Hamilton since my eleventh year, I've always known about his contributions to the founding of the American Republic. However, I've always been aware too that most of my countrymen hadn't a clue who the guy on the ten dollar bill was.  Our nation wouldn't have survived the first twenty years without his financial knowledge. The framework he set in place at the Treasury Department was so carefully thought out and implemented that even his Jeffersonian successor finally decided to just "go with it" because his creation did the job it was supposed to do. 

In short, the original government only functioned because of Hamilton's construction. Jefferson, Hamilton's great antagonist, would never have been able to finalize the Louisiana Purchase, which brought a good chunk of the center of the country, if Hamilton hadn't made the government solvent and also respected as a reliable client among the wealthy European financial markets, which had financed the Revolution. 

However, it was Jefferson who lived long years after the Revolution, and not Hamilton. "History" is written by the survivors/winners, as everyone knows. As a result, the star of this Founder set quickly. I used to take a perverse pleasure in asking people if they knew the identity of the man on the ten dollar bill, and watching them either shrug, or tell me "Benjamin Franklin" or something else equally wide of the mark.   

I wrote my novel back in the 90's, but it was roundly rejected with a lot of "who cares" or "you can't make a romantic hero out of a Founding Father" from editors. Books We Love took it up, though, and so my long labor of love did eventually get placed between covers. In the meantime, however, the brilliant artist Lin Manual Miranda had also been at work on his musical, and so, finally, the name of "Hamilton" made a triumphant return to public consciousness. 

A few days ago, a traveling NYC company brought the musical Hamilton here to my town. The tickets for that performance were being sold at more than twice the usual price, because even though this is not brand new, it is still in vogue, especially here in the country outside the Big City. On my trip to the grocery store, passing through town, I noticed signs over the restaurants that read "Welcome Hamilton." On my way back, I also saw traffic signs, assuring the folks who were coming to the theater that evening that this was the way to "Hamilton Parking." After all those years of obscurity, it tickled me to see my childhood hero's name all over my town, and to know that at least one version of his remarkable story had put his fame back in lights.

What political party of today could claim him? Probably neither, although one in particular would have been anathema to him. After all, he died in a duel with a man who, he firmly believed, wanted to overturn the Republic and crown himself King. 

Aaron Burr, whom he'd called "An embryo Caesar," made no bones about the fact that he wanted to kill Hamilton. No one really knows what exactly Burr, who was usually not particularly easy to rile, had against Hamilton, although they had years of vitriolic political rivalry behind them. To be fair to Burr, the offense that sparked the challenge must have been keenly felt and excruciatingly personal, as he pursued it to that fine July morning, when the gentlemen were rowed across the Hudson with their seconds, to fight in New Jersey where dueling remained legal.  

~~Juliet Waldron

About Another Hamilton

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 Hamilton came to me via the free local advertiser. Scanning it idly one day I saw an ad which said, “Please Help! I have 31 cats, and need to find good homes.” I called the number, got directions and drove south through various moribund towns and up a dirt road to a run-down farmhouse. As soon as I stopped, I saw them: cats everywhere, cohabiting with a flock of bedraggled chickens in a grassy yard.

 The Cat Lady—I’ll call her “Nancy”--came out and we talked. She’d been working at the Humane Society, but she'd quit because she couldn’t bear the euthanasia of hundreds of animals that was, in those days, part of the weekly routine. She was as thin and tired-looking as her animals. I could see runny noses indicative of the highly contagious Calci virus in almost every cat. My heart sank.

 Even more sadly, most of the cats were wild. They depended upon her for food and sheltered in the tumbledown barn, but they were untouchable.  As she could afford it on a waitressing job, she'd neuter them and get them shots. She’d found a charitable vet who cut prices for her, but her burden appeared insurmountable.

 She and I sat down on the ground and waited. Eventually three scrawny half-grown orange boys drew close. You could actually count their ribs.

 “I call them the Orange Brothers,” Nancy said. “They were almost starved to death when I rescued them.” A veritable herd came in their wake as she opened the 10 lb. bag of kitty food I’d brought as an offering and dumped some on the ground.

 The cats backed off as soon as I tried to touch, so I sat and waited.  One of the Orange Brothers took a few bites of kibble, then came to me. As soon as I began to pet him, gently and carefully, he gave a roaring purr and threw himself into my lap. All was well for about two minutes, and then he bit my arm hard, twisting the skin almost to the breaking point. I didn’t resist. He let go and jumped away, clearly expecting a slap or a shout of protest.

 “He didn’t mean it,” Nancy said. “He wants to be loved, but he gets too excited.”

 I nodded and continued watching.

 A moment later, the bony little tom climbed into my lap again, purring his roaring purr. His fur was dry as straw as a result of malnutrition; his eyes were golden. Long story short, I brought him home, to a house that already had several cats. It took time to get him over the habit of reacting to petting with a bite, but with a lot of affection and enough food, he toned these love bites down to a recognizable level.

 As he was lean and bright orange and I was working on a Revolutionary War novel, I named him Hamilton. That heroic founding father had red hair and a poverty-stricken childhood.

 

Rivington’s (Tory) Gazette printed this snide comment in 1775, when Hamilton was a favorite aide de camp to General Washington:

“Mrs. Washington has a mottled orange tomcat of whom she is so particularly fond, she has named him ‘Hamilton.’ By the flaunting of his tail with the 13 rings around it the Rebels have taken the idea for their flag.”

 The name proved to fit this cat to a "T". Kitty Hamilton was a sensitive soul, and did that tomcat peeing thing whenever he felt anxious or threatened. He was also allergic to that kitty drug of choice, catnip. Until he fattened up, a process which took more than a year, he could not hold his 'nip. If he managed to find some, I soon knew, because he lost control of his limbs, fell down and peed all over himself like an old drunk. I’d have to cradle him and soothe him until he came down, because he cried in fear the whole time. 

 I never did manage to get him to stop marking. Any cat or person passing the house--even an argument with my husband--was liable to set him off. I hadn’t wanted to let him outside, but he made that motherly attempt to protect him impossible. He’d been a free kitty boy for far too long. Like his glorious namesake, he came with a severe case of PTSD which never went away—as well as a determination to be seen as a tomcat’s tomcat, even after neutering.

 

My Hamilton did not die in a duel, like our First Secretary of the Treasury, but he did fight with all challengers at every opportunity, even if he was completely out-matched. He was sometimes beaten up, but he usually attacked outsiders with such berserker rage that they avoided our house like the plague.

 He wanted to seem fearless, but his anxieties continually undermined him. He expressed this by peeing on the refrigerator door, in out-of-the-way corners, and on the backs of upholstered furniture, which I swiftly learned to keep covered with washable throws. Climactically, he slew my original CPU by peeing into the A Drive. A friend of mine said, “If that wasn’t such a nice orange cat--and if his name wasn’t Hamilton--he’d be dead.” My husband heartily agreed, but Hamilton's lover-boy self and willingness to lap sit, his smiling affability and charm aided his survival.

Hamilton always came when his name was called. He greeted my husband when he returned from work, with a raised head for a kiss, a motoring purr, waving that proud, banner-like tail. He slept in our bed, curled around my head in winter, a living, purring hat. He helped me write any number of books, lying beside--and, when he was fed up with "that damned typing" by standing in front of--my monitor.  He lived to be fourteen, and is buried with other cats of blessed memory in the feline necropolis beneath our Chinkopin tree.   

                           

                         

~~Juliet Waldron

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Nevis Story for Alexander Hamilton's January 11 Birthday

 

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Once upon a time, back in the 1950’s, I was a youngster. One, however, who was driven by the same interest in history that still brings me so much pleasure today.

Me, Charlestown, Nevis, 1958

Here’s a picture which I recently discovered in the attic. I remembered it, but didn’t know if it still existed. Old and color faded, it is framed in a way that tells me my mother had it somewhere in her last little home. It has survived our journey which took us from upstate New York, to the U.K., to the West Indies then back to America again. It also survived the fire in her house, one which she inadvertently set while heating milk one night. Plenty of things disappeared during that--books, furniture, pictures, and a good part of the roof. Other possessions were water-damaged or broken after the firemen came to save the house.

I'm very happy this picture has survived, because it was taken on one of those spectacularly good days--one of those days where wishes come true. There I am, sitting on the ruins of a sea wall on a black sand beach, with the remains of a fort behind me. This is Nevis in 1958 and my Mother had taken me to see the birthplace of my hero, Alexander Hamilton.  Besotted with Alexander as I was, this made me the weirdest kid in my school. The term "nerd" had not yet come into being, so what I was did not yet have a put-down label. That's what I was all the same, especially in a world where Elvis Presley reigned, teen heart-throb supreme.

Nevis today

The entire story of our trip to Nevis sounds improbable today, but jet planes were not yet "a thing." It took nine or ten hours to fly from Idlewild airport-now, JFK--to the West Indies. The trip was accomplished in jumps and layovers--to Bermuda, to San Juan, to Antigua, and, from there, hitching up with whatever "puddle jumper" between islands was heading toward your  destination. 

To get to Nevis in those days was not exactly easy. There were a couple of flights a week from St. Kitts, otherwise travel was by ferry. We'd flown into St. Kitts the day before, traveling north again from our base in truly tropical Barbados. 

St. Kitts surprised us. What we saw of it was nearly treeless, mountainous, and cold and windy too. I remember the wind howling around our hotel that night, and Mom and I searching for extra coverings for our beds. 

At the St. Kitt's airport the next day, we arrived to discover that the small plane in which we and two other passengers were to travel was in pieces in the hanger. Would we be able to leave today? Lots of head shaking was the answer to Mom's question. I sat on a bench in the open-to-the-elements waiting room and lost myself in a book. The book was, of course, about Hamilton. Published in 1912, the story was, I've since learned, mostly fictional, though the characterization still rings true. In those days, this used bookstore acquisition traveled with me everywhere.

Afternoon passed. As the sun began to go down, the plane was working again. At last we could start the flight over the narrow strait that lay between St. Kitt's and Nevis, although not without some trepidation about the plane's mechanical worthiness. By the time we arrived at the island, twilight was almost at an end. Our landing lights were men holding torches--kerosene soaked rags on long sticks held aloft.  After a bouncy light plane's landing on green turf, we were there at last.  

This looks a bit more formal than I remember.

We were tired when we reached the guest house Mother had booked in Charlestown. The soft light of kerosene lanterns lit the windows. We'd learn that electricity was a new convenience here, one that came on from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. Past six, the power was gone and we were in an earlier age.

Charlestown in the 1950's

In the parlor, every surface --a maze of small tables --was covered with a Victorian level of clutter. All the upholstered chairs sported antimacassars. Here another trial lay in wait for us tired travelers. The landlady appeared, declaring that she'd had no idea I was a child--and that she NEVER allowed children in her guesthouse. "Especially not American children!" 

As you might imagine, my Mom reared back into her frostiest lady-of-the-gentry persona and replied to the effect that her daughter was a model child. Besides, she continued, we'd come here all the way from Barbados because of my interest in Alexander Hamilton and heartfelt desire to see his birthplace. At my mother's nod, I presented my ancient novel, and told the landlady how excited I was to be visiting Nevis, the place of my hero's birth. As much as my mother, I wanted a place to rest my head after a long day of anxiety and uncertainty, but knew I'd have to be as persuasive as possible.

After flipping through the book, the woman handed it back to me and said we could stay overnight. The next morning during a boarding house breakfast where I was careful never to speak unless spoken to and to say "please" and "thank-you," our hostess said she'd decided we could remain. Later in the morning, we went down to the broken seawall in the picture, wearing clothes over our swimsuits, and carrying our towels. In those days, walking around in just a bathing suite was "not done." And there I am, instead of my usual solemn, preoccupied self, wearing a big smile.  

I remember the overcast that often came in the afternoons, as clouds gathered around the volcano. There were black sand beaches which in those days we had mostly to ourselves. I remember bathing in the hot springs in town. Again, clothes over bathing suits, we made our way to the place, led by a tall man who was the caretaker of the ruin of the once famous spa hotel. It had been visited by many famous travelers in the 19th century, but now it had crumbled away to a wall here and there. Blue sky rolled overhead as we inched our way into the hot water. 

I also remember hearing drums, high up on the volcano on a Saturday, sounding down to us from beneath a wall of fog. This was the old time West Indies, before jets made a vacation "down de way" a mere jump from North America.

  Update the car in the background of this picture to a 1940's model, and this would have been a typical scene. The elemental roar and hiss of a gigantic field of cane on a windy day, I'll never forget. I've often wondered if Hamilton ever thought with regret of the tropical world from which he'd come, one so different in climate and vegetation from his adopted home, especially at a time when the earth was going through a cycle of extreme cold. How he must have suffered in those first years in America, just trying to acclimatize, wintering in places like Valley Forge and Morristown! 

So, Happy Birthday, Alexander! It's a bit early to be doing this before January, but here goes, anyway. I've literally spent a lifetime thinking of you.  :)

Hamilton ("Mrs. Washington's ginger tomcat") and me at work, early 2000's

~~Juliet Waldron

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Earth Walker

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A powerful connection to the earth is a common theme among all 1^st Nations’ people about whom I’ve read, whether they live north or south of the arbitrary lines European colonists drew upon their home land. In every story I read written by 1^st Nations’ People, there is a recollection of a childhood where adults have carefully fostered a deep consciousness of what European culture commonly puts in a generalized lump called “Nature.” It’s that experience with which we European moderns, the “come heres” of the western hemisphere, are -- every day-- less and less familiar.

Football with my cousin, 1950's

Instead of gazing at screens all day, most folks my age (+70) remember playing outside regularly, especially during school summer holidays. My house was near a dairy farm and the surrounding fields were in hay and alfalfa. The farmer didn’t care if my mother and I roamed across them, or if I went by myself to a wonderful pond adjacent to a woodlot. In the spring it was full of tadpoles, crayfish, and blue gills. Later, in summer, it was full of multicolored frogs. Butterflies and dragon flies sailed above muddy flats, and floated over flowering plants, whose names I did not know, although I much admired their bright colors and floating seeds.  

Sometimes I’d see rabbits, fox, or woodchucks, or come across deer at their midday rest.  Red-winged blackbirds nested among the cattails; purple martens performed their fighter-pilot maneuvers over the pond.  At home, we even had a mud nest of barn swallows every year on the far end of our porch—off-limits to us until they’d finished rearing their adorable, plump, dun-breasted family.

For several years as a young teen I was sent to a summer camp--my parents' were fighting their way toward a divorce--for the entire three months. This particular camp was truly rustic, with unheated cabins, water you carried in buckets, and a bunch of retired police horses. These days it would probably be closed down as unsanitary and unsafe. You could take a bath--if you were willing to go to the owner's house--once a week. Otherwise, you "bathed" in the farm pond in the afternoon.

Some water came into it from chilly springs , but a creek flowed in at one end and over a dam at the other, so it was constantly in motion. The pond had been part of the original farm for years, so it was established. Water snakes cruised among the lily pads and cattail beds. While those reedy spots were green and inviting in the slanting afternoon light, we stayed as far away as possible, treading water and playing mermaids in the middle with friends.

It was, among us campers, a badge of honor to never go to the big house and take a bath. How humiliating! How sorry we were for the girls whose parents insisted upon it! The rest of us washed our bodies and our hair in the pond. We floated bottles, half filled with air and half with shampoo, as well as cakes of Ivory soap on the surface beside us. After a day of playing games, hiking in the woods, riding and grooming horses, and entertaining ourselves with marathon games of jacks--we dismantled the ping pong table to use the smooth wooden surface--everyone was ready to wash off the sweat before dinner.

When I returned home at the end of August, at my mother's insistence, I marched straight upstairs and ran the bathtub full. Standing naked before the mirror, I could see the brown dirt residue left from three months of "bathing" in a silty farm pond. The swim suit outline was shades darker than my suntan.

Many years ago, my granddaughter was taken for a walk in the woods for the first time when she was around two years old. Her entire experience of "outdoors" up until then had been playing in groomed suburban yards, or passing through parking lots and shopping malls with her Mama. After a first walk with her daddy on a nature trail, she haughtily pronounced the leaf and stick strewn paths “messy and uneven.”

It’s a funny story, but it’s also sad, as it shows how limited a modern child’s experience often is of this world in which she lives.  Fortunately for her, Dad got the message. From then on, he spent time with his girl out-of-doors, so she wouldn’t suffer from what I’ve come to look upon as Nature Deprivation. She can now out-walk her Grandma any day.

Snow picnic, 1970's, at a favorite spot

When she went to college, this eighteen year old was surprised to find "Walking" was a physical education course. As phys. ed. was required of freshmen and sophomores, she signed up, and then she was again surprised by the exhaustion and pain of which her classmates complained.

Considering all this, I guess it’s no wonder that so many people today are disrespectful of the earth, especially if shopping malls, macadam, and the virtual world are all they experience. It’s not only a great emotional and spiritual misfortune for them personally, but I believe this disconnection is the root cause of our civilization's current mega-scale disregard for our only home, our birth mother. 

Pipeline explosion

I’ve been reading To You We Shall Return by a Lakota author, Joseph Marshall III. This is part of an ongoing attitude adjustment exercise, as I hope to broaden my outlook and see the world through another cultural lens. (The one with which I was raised seems to have ever so many blind spots.) From that book is a Traditional Lakota Prayer to Mother Earth: 

 Grandmother,

You who listen and hear all,

You from whom all good things come,

It is your embrace we feel

When we return to you.

~~Juliet Waldron

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Genesee's story:

 Red men & White, at war in the world and in her blood.

The Trials of a Fluffy Kitty

First of all, Happy Birthday to Alexander H., born on Nevis January 11, 1757. To begin, I will post a quote of his that feels utterly relevant.

"...a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that ... those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."  ~~The Federalist Papers


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The trials of a fluffy kitty...



Here is the "Fluffy Kitty" the day she came to us as a baby, a bitten-up kitten who had just been to the vet so he could drain an abscess from a bite. 

My husband and I have learned a lot about her over the years both by observation and by inference. Kimi is the only one who could call us on any of these suppositions, but she's not talking, except for the ever-useful word "meow." 

That's what she said to my friend Patti who found her on the porch of her Palmyra house on a cold December day. Kimi was hungry and cold and Patti could see her ribs through the fluff, and also see that she'd been hurt. Hundreds of $$ of vet bills and a few days later, Patti brought Kimi to me. Patti already had three indoor cats in her double wide. She was was still covered with ticks, in her ears, her paws and just everywhere. Patti and I stopped counting after we'd removed thirty.

Life for her improved after that, for, with antibiotics and wounds stitched, she was already on the path to better health. We had a set-back, though, when the abscess had to be drained again. My husband and I soon learned that this little girl had been badly handled by whoever had originally “been responsible” for her -- before they'd decided to throw her away. 

I've come to believe that this is her story. As little kitten, she must have been a yellow fluff ball, looking more like a stuffed toy than a living being. This had led some cat-ignorant people to treat her like one. They'd probably allowed their children to tease her, chase her, and handle her far beyond her ability to endure. If Kimi was already a shy kitten, (and some kitties are emotionally fragile) this man-=handling must have pushed her beyond endurance. She became the hissing, clawing, fearful little girl who first came to live with us.



Kimi was definitely not a fan of being touched, not unless she initiated contact herself. If you reached out to pet her, you'd better come at her slowly and touch gently. Otherwise, there there'd be a steam-kettle worthy (dragon worthy?) hiss and she'd speedily decamp, glaring over her shoulder at the clod human who'd displeased her. She distrusted our other cats too, unsurprisingly, as she'd been beaten up and bitten while trying to get food at some stray cat feeding spot. 

None of the other cats who lived here liked her. She wouldn't play, she wouldn't accept an introductory sniff or lick; she wouldn't play or share the food bowl or space on the couch or be any fun at all. She was just plain scared, and her obvious fear made her a target for our top cat, a large streetwise male. There were periods when she spent most of her time hiding out in a grungy pile of rags in a basement box. In fact, she came darn close to becoming known as "Basement Cat."  




I began to coax her to come upstairs and sit with me, and then into accepting grooming, which her long hair definitely required. I bought a wide-toothed dog brush to start, so that it would pass easily through her thick, matted fur without tugging.  This way we began to break the ice. 

Gradually, she began to believe my intentions were good. After all, her  fluff was too dense for her to care for by herself. As all cat owners should know, hairballs are a standard problem for cats. Nature obliges felines to groom thoroughly every day. All that hair goes in, but if it doesn't come out one end or the other, then the cat will be sick, sometimes fatally. Brushing and combing are a daily must, especially for such a fluffy kitty. 



We'd brush until we'd get a growl. Nail clipping was the same--a few at a time. At first, these beauty treatments were all trials for Kimi, but slowly this necessary handling became routine. 



We still wait until she approaches us for attention and then obey the message of the tail lash which signals "ENOUGH." Her only significant daily trial is Anthony. He arrived last year, absolutely certain that all the other cats must be dying to play with him—and if they refused, he’d chase them all over the house mercilessly. I think, however, that "still he persisted" might win the day, even faced with her determined suspicion.  

Who can say? She may yet learn to enjoy the company of the other cats.

~~Juliet Waldron

Day after Turkey

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Day after Thanksgiving here. We've reached the life stage where family lives far away and there are no youngsters nearby. Down to bare minimum family now. A brother-in-law who visits from Maryland. We cook less every year, but it's still too much. Husband & his brother have gone down to Lancaster County to go knife shopping on Black Friday, so here I am--tardy--but here.


Anyone who writes about Mozart has to have a love for opera, and if you've been reading me for even a small time, you know I truly adore this old, peculiar western art form. I'm beginning to break free of the tried and true repertory. (How many Madame Butterflys can you absorb?) The wonderful innovation of Met performances showing at the Movies allows me to go with a fellow devotee to see a performance from NYC of Philip Glass's opera, Akenaten.

Usually, you "hear" an opera more than "see" it. In the case of this production, however, the visual was a partner to the music.  As a result of the one-two punch, the performance stunned us.  Juggling has been added to the staging, and it provided another way to enter into entrancement. This composer is sometimes accused of creating what  has been called "Philip Glass Time," in which the audience is left spellbound. The popular genre this music is most clearly related to is Trance. 

And that's where I'll leave this, because words fail me. I can't do justice to this performance which combines choreography, music of orchestra and voice, and spectacle filled with color and symbolism.

Karen Almond / Metropolitan Opera) as seen in Opera Wire

Nefertiti & Akenaten

Karen Kamensek was the conductor; good to see a woman take the podium and do exactly what the work needed. No outsize stars here, just an astonishing piece of teamwork, craft, professionalism and ART. 

My friend and I were hypnotized. It took us a few minutes to collect our wits and walk with great care out of the theater with all those multi-plex (disorienting!) carpet patterns. Hours had passed; when we finally saw a clock, we were surprised by how late it was.     

Here's a link--barely a minute of your time, if you are curious.
  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSn_UAquOfw

~~Juliet Waldron

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Poop Detail

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"Women's work is never done" goes the old saying. Women's work also, seems to me, to be heavily oriented toward cleaning up stuff that comes out of other people (or pets) in one form or another. Tina Faye told Jerry Seinfeld on a recent "coffee date" that at her house "I am in charge of feces." 

I burst out laughing when I heard that, as it's all too familiar to me, and, I'm sure, to women everywhere. At least, familiar to the kind of ordinary women who don't have servants.

Back in baby days, I was the caregiver--as the task is now called. Husband at work, Mom at home, that's the way it was for some years. I cooked, cleaned, washed dishes and clothes and wiped away spit-up and freshened adorable baby butts--which become far less adorable when they are covered in you know what and need a good wash and dry before you can begin to contemplate putting a diaper back on. In the meantime, the boys might also send a high pressure jet across the room, a hazard I (an infant care novice) learned about the hard way.

These days it's just the usual housework--babies and their cute butts are long gone from my life--but that doesn't mean my woman's work poop detail has ended. There are still bathrooms and more particularly toilets that require not-that-pleasant close up work. As I scrub, I often remember working as a waitress long ago in a little restaurant where we had to clean the bathrooms after closing. The ladies who didn't sit could make quite a mess. The gentlemen's room, though, could be extra special sometimes, despite a sign over the hopper which admonished: "We aim to please. YOU AIM TOO PLEASE." 

Long ago

Besides human clean up, there's cat clean up too, at our house. We have three cats, all indoor these days, for their safety and for the safety of the local chipmunks, squirrels, moles and birds. There are other outside cats around here devouring everything in sight, but at least my three are no longer part of the general extermination. Our newest, Tony, is a small healthy young cat, but, I swear, this guy counts as at least two cats when it comes to his box filling abilities. I may miss days at the gym, but as long as I have to lug kitty litter into the house and then back out again on a daily basis, I think I'm nevertheless keeping up with my weight lifting.

Whenever I'm inclined to feel sorry for myself, I tell myself to imagine what the "good old days" must have been like for women. Today, most of us have hot and cold running water in good supply; we have washers and dryers and laundry products galore. But in the 18th Century this was not the case. A diaper change is the kind of day-in-a-life task a middle class woman might have to regularly undertake.

So here's a little slice of A Master Passion, where Elizabeth Schuyler tends the newest Hamilton baby, James. It's already a busy day when her sister Peggy visits unexpectedly.

The whining from the next room suddenly grew to a wail. James, when his first grumbling summons hadn’t been answered, was angry now. With a sweep of skirts, Betsy marched into the room, scooped her howling son from his cradle and plumped herself down in a comfortable wing chair. Her mother would never have undertaken such a task in the good parlor. After all, with a new baby, the risks of spills from one end and leaks from the other were high, but Betsy couldn’t bring herself to walk another step. As a piece of insurance, however, she snatched up his flannel wrap.

Unbuttoning her dress, she got bellowing Jamie in place, experienced the sharp tug and the answering flesh gone-to-sleep prickle of the let-down. Then, one end of the cloth pressed to stem the flow from the neglected breast and the rest tucked strategically around James, she watched her newest son’s jaw work as he mastered the initial tide. He was round and fair, even balder than Angelica had been, but a similar halo of red fluff had begun to rise upon his pink skull. As different in some ways as the children were, there was a certain sameness in the general outline: gray eyes, long heads, a kiss of red in their hair.

Betsy leaned back, relaxing into the comforts of nursing, when she heard a knock at the door.

“Davie!” When she called out, James startled. “Una! Gussie! The door!”

In stretching for the bell on the end table, she dislodged James. He promptly set up a renewed cry at this sudden, rude interruption of his dinner.

“Temper, temper!” Betsy rubbed his open mouth—and the yell—against the nipple. She noticed, with amusement, that his bald head instantly went scarlet with rage.

She decided to ignore whoever it was. If they wanted in badly enough, they’d go around to the kitchen. Then she heard rapid footsteps in the hallway, the sound of Davie running, followed by voices. Soon, the parlor door opened and Peggy poked her head in.

“May I?”

“Of course, Peg. Heavens! I didn’t know you were in town.”

“It was spur-of-the-moment. Stephen is having trouble with Mr. Beekman and decided to come down and straighten it out face to face. I thought I’d come too and see what’s in the shops. The first of the London fashions are arriving.”

During this speech, her younger sister settled on the facing sofa. She was very much the lady of leisure, in a gown of peach satin layered over an ivory petticoat upon which hundreds of tiny birds in flight had been painted. As she removed the long pins which held her broad-brimmed straw hat, she revealed a wealth of chestnut hair.

“Davie says I just missed Colonel Hamilton.”

“Yes. Not half an hour since he rode off with John Jay and Cousin Bob Livingston. I confess I’m worried about what will happen in the legislature. There are only nineteen men who are for the new Constitution.”

“I am concerned, too, though I’ve never really understood politics. Still, we’ve all had an education in the science of government. Papa, for one, is absolutely relentless on the subject.”

“Yes, that’s all Alexander ever talks about, too, either to me or anyone else.”

“Well, thank heaven there are women to keep the day to day world going ’round.”

Peggy moved closer to get a good look at the new baby. He was now happily gulping again.

“What a big strong fellow! I swear, Sis, you’re as good at this as Mama ever was.”

Although their eighth anniversary wouldn’t come until Christmas, James made the fourth little Hamilton. Peggy, on the other hand, had carried only one, Stephen, the precious son and heir to the ancient line of van Rensselaer. There had been nothing afterward but a sad string of miscarriages.

The very elegant Angelica Schuyler Church, maid and baby

Mindful of her sister’s feelings, Betsy simply said, “Thank you, Sis.” She sat Jamie up and patted his back. As he slumped into her hand, his big eyes goggled.

“That one is going to take after Mr. Hamilton for sure. Look at those blue eyes.”

“Well, perhaps. But our babies seem to come fair and then darken up, all except for our Angelica.”

“Are she and Phil upstairs?”

“Yes.”

“Well, in a minute send one of your girls to bring the darlings down to their adoring aunt.”

Tea came in, with Una’s thoughtful addition of some fine English sweet biscuits that had recently arrived from London, sent by Angelica Church.

“Shall I take James, Missus?”

“No, he’s quiet and you’ve got enough going on. Where is Alex?”

“He be watchin’ Gussie scrub.”

“I’ll take care of Jamie,” Betsy instructed, “but if you hear Fanny squawk, let me know.”

Peggy poured tea while Betsy laid the flannel upon the upholstered sofa and then proceeded to quickly change James atop it.

“You are a lucky girl, you know.”

Betsy looked up from wiping a pasty yellow smear from Jamie’s cherub’s bottom.

Peggy giggled. “Why, I mean Alexander the Great, of course. He’s a kind of knight of the round table in our benighted modern age. Papa is quite tiresome on the subject.”

“True, but being the wife of Alexander the Great isn’t easy. I mean, look.” Betsy gestured at the little parlor with its few furnishings.

“Money isn’t everything.”

“Only to those who have enough.” Betsy wrapped the diaper up carefully before setting it on the floor. “And I don’t think I shall ever get used to living in this city. There are times when I do so envy you. Your husband is with you almost all the time instead of riding off on crusades. Even when Hamilton is at home, half the time he’s tied up in knots and might as well not be here at all. Day and night are the same to him when he’s working. This whole winter and spring it’s been nothing but those Federalist Papers..."

~~Juliet Waldron

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