Those of us who are mothers, grandmothers, matriarchs of active families will know that reading, like everything else, requires scheduling. Time must be reserved for Dr. Seuss and E. B. White; but Kingsolver’s and Ehrlich’s latest novels, which were difficult to set aside, took me months to finish. However prioritized, recreational reading is realistically seasonal, with spring consumed with gardening and other cleaning tasks, and fall with one holiday after another. Summer and winter afford a little more time.

This summer I treated myself to Janet Robertson’s memoir, It Looked This Way to Me. This is the third of Janet’s books that I’ve read. I fell into the first, the coming-of-age novel Journey Home, “a bittersweet saga of the immigrant experience”. My copy remains on one of our shelves, yellowed with age. The second, All Our Yesterdays, “A Century of Family Life in an American Small Town”, which I read cover to cover, is now book-marked for the several references I’ve used throughout the series “Our Rural Heritage”.

When a signed copy of It Looked This Way to Me arrived in the mail, what I first felt was inspired. You see, Mrs. Robertson, at least as much, and perhaps more, than anyone else, encouraged me to write. And as I finally begin to pen my novel at the ripe old age of 66, holding a book that the 90-year-old Mrs. Robertson had just published, bestowed me with the belief that she conveyed to me when I was only fifteen.

I can think of many reasons to recommend her memoir to others – but here are three.

If you knew the Robertsons

Some of us grew up at the Robertsons, literally; marks measured our growth from one year to the next on the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. Many took Latin lessons from Mrs. Robertson, and learned a whole lot more. Played basketball in their driveway, relied on their library shelves to supply college required readings. Some of us were fortunate to have traveled with them to Nine Gables, their friends’ magnificent place on Cape Cod, and to their own humble cabin in the New Hampshire woods, and we all vicariously experienced the family’s trip around the world when their son Jonathan presented a narrated slide show at Parish Hill High School upon their return. These, and many other times you will remember, along with many of the neighbors fondly recalled.

If you love Hampton.

Moving here in 1967, the family fell in love with the house that they would eventually write of, co-authoring All Our Yesterdays, in spite of the fact that the “wonderful house on Hampton Hill ate money for its breakfast, lunch and dinner”, a sentiment with which all owners of old houses in Hampton will empathize.

They also “learned to love Hampton and all the people in that small town”. Residents will recognize the way the town welcomed them, especially since, Janet writes, they were neither WASPS, Yankees, Congregationalists, or Republicans. She shares the story of hearing a “Hooooeee” in their home and finding in the living room “a lady in an attractive print dress with grey hair done neatly in a style out of the 1930’s”. Dorothy Holt, recording the newcomers’ birthdays for the town’s calendar and encouraging participation in the Congregational Church, the Republican Party, and the Little River Grange.

Of this last suggestion, Janet writes, “I found myself at the first meeting, after I passed my initiation, sitting in an uncomfortable chair in the circle against the walls extending all around the Grand Hall, counting off to determine attendance, and wondering what on earth I, a Jewish girl from New York City for goodness sake, was doing there, actually enjoying myself in that tiny wooden Little River Grange Hall.” The remarkably warm embrace she encountered here was not lost on her. Hampton, she writes, “is truly the home of my heart”.

If you’re a mother.

I suppose there are some mothers who consider themselves perfect, or nearly so. I’m not one of them, nor have I met any of them yet. Lord knows we try, though, and perhaps this is why we’re so hard on ourselves when we feel we fall short while performing the world’s most difficult of responsibilities. Mrs. Robertson is no exception. To read her words of insecurity, perceived incompetence and failure, from the moment we first hold our newborns, is validating. She wasn’t my mother, but there were some times that she stepped in, and I remember the way she mothered me until my own returned home. She was comforting, as are her words – they’ll make you feel less alone.

In this memoir you’ll find, along with adventures around the world, the warmth of our small town; remembrances of the Robertsons, and no matter how well you knew them, like all families, things you didn’t know, some of which could cause your heart to break – mine did; and women’s themes – their roles in that era, the road to self-actualization with all of its societal obstacles, elements of the “me too” movement, ourselves as daughters, mothers, grandmothers, and as friends to one another.

Pick up a copy of It Looked That Way to Me at Fletcher Memorial Library. Your winter will be warmer for it.

Dayna McDermott