"The Burden Of Being A Mulroney!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

                               Girls, I relate so to Stephanie Mulroney, because I know what it is like to carry a burden.  Stephanie Mulroney had hers, but I am here to talk about mine. I am here to tell you all---

                                  "The Burden Of Being A Hearn"

                                    It all begins with my mother's back story.  She was born on October 19, 1914, in Key West, Florida.  At the age of three, she moved to Highland Park, New Jersey, where she remained until her death on April 2, 1979.  During her life she trained as a nurse at the Muhlenberg Hospital School Of Nursing, in Plainfield, New Jersey.  She graduated, and either while training or working at the hospital, met a young medical resident, Alfred Scaccia, who was from Red Bank, New Jersey, and was in residency to become a doctor.  They fell in love and got married.

                                    However, my maternal grandfather did not exactly approve.  He was appalled my mother was marrying a Catholic, --they were Protestant-- but they acquiesced.   My mother and Alfred got married, and in May of 1939, she became pregnant with who was to be my older sister.  They had gone and bought a house in nearby Bound Brook, NJ, where he was setting up his practice.

                                       Four months later, on September 18, 1939, Alfred died, at 29 of a brain tumor, which had been diagnosed earlier, but back then nothing could have been done.  When my sister was born, (on February 29, 1940, which was a leap year!) she was christened Beverly Ann, but, from infancy on, everyone knew her as Penny.  Even I, in early childhood, did not know that Penny was a nickname.  Just before he died, Alfred said to my mother, "That child is like a lost penny to me."  Recalling that, she was given the nickname Penny, which I still call her to this day.

                                      There was my mother--a widow at 24, and with a child.  She had a job, working as a nurse in the office of Doctor Frederick Lathrop, in Plainfield.  He would be both Penny's and my pediatrician.  But what about living arrangements?  My mother sold the house in Bound Brook, and with that money, plus help from her father, bought the house I called home--166 North Tenth Avenue in Highland Park, New Jersey.  At the time, my maternal grandparents moved from their two-family house on South Fourth Avenue, in Highland Park, to North Tenth Avenue.  At this time, it became a two-family house.   My mother and sister lived downstairs, and my grandparents went upstairs.

                                          Things continued in this way, until the late 1940's, when my mother's younger brother, Everett Peck, who was working in New York as an insurance agent, met another fellow insurance agent, Michael J. Hearn, and thought he and my mother would be a perfect fit.  They were introduced and began a courtship.  My mother, years later, would tell me that she married my father for two reasons, as well as loving him, --he was the only one she had gone out with who was not, what she called "sex crazy," and he always insisted on including Penny, then just a little girl, in many of their outings.

                                           So, they were married, on November 26, 1947, which was the day before Thanksgiving.  My maternal grandfather voiced disapproval; it was like something out of "Moonstruck."   "You're marrying a Catholic again?" he said.  Still, they went through with it.  His family was thrilled, as he was one of the last of his siblings to marry, and the last one to have a child.  More on that topic later.

                                              Because my mother was not Catholic, they could not have a church wedding.  They had to marry in the sacristy.  It was an intimate ceremony--my mother's friend, whom I always called Aunt Edna, was her matron of honor, and my father's friend, Ben Kemper, was his best man.  They honeymooned in Washington, D.C.

                                                  They settled into the house on North Tenth Avenue.  My father's parents, and his siblings, all accepted the union, save for one viper in the mix--my Uncle Bill Liddy, who thought my father was marrying above his station, and was now a snob for living in Highland Park, which was better than the North Brunswick house they were living in.  But that was that.

                                                      Until April of 1954, when my mother, who, after marriage quit nursing to become a Fifties housewife, and seemed fine with it, began experiencing symptoms, which she thought was a fibroid tumor.  She was also six months from being 40, and the baby was due in January 1955.  Oh, right, my mother thought I was a fibroid tumor or going into menopause.  But surprise!  The doctor told her she was going to have a baby!

                                                         My grandparents were thrilled, especially my paternal grandparents, who thought my father, the eldest of the boys, the last of the boys to get married, and the last to have a kid, would never do so.  So, my expectancy was a big deal.  To all but Uncle Bill, who never even congratulated my parents upon me being born.  And I had not done anything at this point, save cry, wet, and sleep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                             One thing about my mother.  I was raised Roman Catholic, and she came to all the main events, but not mass.  It took me till adulthood to understand why.

                                                               First, when Alfred died, my mother was in the middle of instructions on converting to Catholicism. Upon his death, that ended, and because of that, he was not permitted then to be buried in the Catholic section of the family cemetery, with everyone else.  My mother was embittered over this, extending it to the Catholic church.

                                                                   Nevertheless, she married my father in the sacristy, and agreed to sign a document stating any children of the marriage would be raised Catholic.  Which I was, but as I got older, began questioning, and now I am, I suppose, what is called lapsed.  Another reason for some family members to exclude me.  And which is why she always refused to allow me to attend Catholic school.  But I was allowed to make my decision when it came to college; how ironic that my selection was a Catholic institution--Seton Hall University!  Or was it not ironic, at all?

                                                           Here were the burdens.  As the accepting worried about my mother's pregnancy. as she was so older--a big deal, in those days! --it was expected that "Mike," the oldest of the Hearn sons, the go-to person in his family, would have this great, athletic son, who would replicate my father's triumphs therein--he was a four-letter man at Fordham University--football, baseball basketball, and track.  In fact, I think he made it for a time, to the minor baseball leagues.  I once asked him why he never went for the majors, and he said he realized he was not that good, and second, back then, major leaguers did not make the money they do now.

                                                             But Fate would deal my parents a blow, which, in retrospect, I say they were the only ones in the family strong enough to handle.  I was in good hands. During the pregnancy, my parents were in a car accident.  My mother was thrown forward, against the dashboard, and, as she recalls, she could feel the embryo drop.  A doctor's visit confirmed all was fine.  But then, on November 18, 1954, all hell broke.  And so did my mother's water!  She called my father, who was working in NYC at the time, and he sped home, got my mother to Muhlenberg Hospital, where I was born two months premature, on that day.  The time was 11:45PM.  I weighed four pounds.  I had to spend two weeks in an incubator, before they could bring me home. 

                                                                  So, I was bought home, with Christmas coming up.  In the time before my birth, the layout of the house had changed.  My mother's father had died, in 1952, something, along with her husband, Alfred Scaccia, she never got over, and which made her depressed. I think my arrival was a way of helping her focus on something else.  The house became a one-family; the upstairs kitchen was turned into a bedroom, for my sister, while a new one was added on for me, upstairs.  When my sister moved out of the house permanently, I took over her room, down the hall, right next to the bathroom.  Where I slept till we moved out, in 1980.

                                                                  Both my parents, then, indeed had something to focus on. Because I was diagnosed early with a hole in my lower left ventricle, and sent to Dr. Mary Allen Engle, at New York Hospital, (now Columbia Presbyterian) then the best pediatric cardiologist in the country.  This took care of all the athletic expectations, which my parents really did not care about; they just wanted me to have a full life.  But the Liddy side again poo pooed us, and so I was always regarded by them as damaged goods, culminating in that awful letter my mother received in the hospital, when she was dying with cancer.

                                                                          They also thought me a spoiled brat.  Maybe I was spoiled; I was the board game king of the neighborhood, owning most one can name.  Some thought I was rich.  I thought myself lucky.  And I was, but, as I look back, there was a sadder tinge to all this.  Once the operation was completed, I asked my mother what would have happened, had I not undergone it.  She said my body would have given out, and I would have died at the age of 14.  How awful.

                                                                           But at the time I was diagnosed, no one was sure the operation would succeed or not, so I think the abundance of games was my parents' decision to give me as happy a time on earth as possible, fearing they may lose me as I got older.  Which makes those games more precious to my memory.

                                                                             In return, my mother lived to see me graduate from college, with honors!  Both were important to her; and to me, when, less than two years later, she died from lung cancer. And during this time, our dog had to be put down.  It was a horror show, compounded by relations on my father's side, deriding me for not having an established job yet, and preventing my father from moving to Florida, as they have.

                                                                            Can the burdens be seen now?  All of this was hanging over me, and I certainly wanted to get out of town, and eventually I did.  But the specter of all this hanging over me at the time never left.  And because I was outside the box spectrum of my other cousins, no one talks to me to this day.  I have reached out, gotten cursory responses, but nothing after that.  Nothing to establish a continuation or connection.

                                                                             So, when Stephanie Mulroney is referenced as facing the burden of being a member of such a family. I can relate to her.  I also struggle with epilepsy, which has been controlled my whole life, and now Type 2 diabetes.

                                                                             I am not saying my burden is greater or less than anyone else.  But it has defined me my entire life. I get it, with Stephanie.

                                                                              If only those who truly loved me were here to see me now.  Today happens to be the birthday of my favorite aunt.  The maiden Hearn, Kathleen, whom we all called Katty.   She was also my godmother. I feel happy and sad.

                                                                                I have borne these many years the burden of being a Hearn.  I think I have come through it rather well.

                                                                                As The Raving Queen, my message is, girls--Families make demands on you once one is out of the womb.  It is you who have to have the passion and courage to forge your own path.

                                                                                   I guess I did.