Wait Till Next Year
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
I picked up this book as a sports memoir for my
thematic book club. It begins with Goodwin talking about how she used to listen
to baseball games on the radio as a child and record information about the game
to share with her father after dinner. It was a warm memory of bonding time
between the two of them and clearly profoundly influenced her love of baseball
and therefore her life.
Wikipedia says, “A sports journalist as well, Goodwin
was the first woman to enter the Boston Red Sox locker
room in 1979.[22] She
consulted on and appeared in Ken Burns'
1994 documentary Baseball.[23]”
The author is very careful to write her perceptions
from the perspective of the age she was at the time. She doesn’t intrude with
“looking back, I now know….” It makes the book read much more like a novel than
a history book.
This is the story of an almost idyllic childhood of an
upwardly mobile white community on the south shore of long island during the
fifties. Goodwin puts all the neighbors and owners of stores in the framework
of whether they rooted for the Dodgers, Giants, or Yankees.
However, the memoir quickly moves into broader reminiscences
in the story of her father and the tragic loss of his family when he was young –
one brother died at 15 months, another died of tetanus after a street car
accident, his mother developed complications from the stress and died in
childbirth, then his father seemed to die of a broken heart leaving he and his
sister to be divided between relatives. At eighteen he got a job and apartment then
brought her to live with him. A year later she died of complications after
anesthesia during a dental procedure. For all that he was a very involved
father, he never spoke with her about this until much later in life.
There were also the very scary episodes of Angina her
own mother suffered while Goodwin was young. She had to watch without being
able to do anything but comfort her. It seems to be something she learned from
her mother, who was quick to comfort her in the night during thunderstorms.
Sadly, her mother had an early complete hysterectomy which aged her body and made
her appear old before her time. But her mother read a lot and shared that love
with her daughter. Another profound influence on the author.
Goodwin also shares fond memories of her much older
sisters who seemed glamorous and worldly, almost more like aunts. She gives a
broad view of all the people in her family, on her block, and in her community.
She places her almost idyllic childhood in the larger context of the 1950s and
gives us the perspective of what was going on in society through the lens of
her childhood and baseball. From civil rights struggles to the advent of the
atomic bomb bringing drills at school and home, plus the struggle of trying to
keep children safe from polio, it was a time of upheaval. There are family
trials and tragedies as well.
When it comes to polio, there was a great deal of
concern at that time because they didn’t know how it was spread. She depicts
public service announcements and parents making restrictions to try to keep
kids safe. One sister had it when she was three and was nursed at home by hired
nurses around the clock and eventually recovered with only a leg brace for a
year, while a playmate ended up paralyzed.
There were lighter developments as well, such as the
arrival of television. The first family to get a television became the host of
block watching sessions. Then, as bigger televisions arrived, the children and
families went to different houses for regular viewing sessions.
This book is utterly fascinating, so well written,
evocative of time and place, as well as the history of our nation through the
lens of Goodwin’s childhood on Long Island. It is an extremely engaging and
illuminating weave of elements. I don’t think I can recommend it enough. A five
star read.
