Storymusing: Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin

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.