The Second Chance of Benjamin Spock

In early 1998, the wife of the famous pediatrician Benjamin Spock, Mary Morgan, appealed to the nation through the Times newspaper: "Help to pay for Dr. Spock's treatment! He has taken care of your children all his life.”
Spock’s state of health inspired doctors to worry, and the amount in his medical bills exceeded $16,000 a month.
Mary hoped that her call would be heard: after all, the popularity of the pediatrician Spock, according to surveys, exceeded the popularity of the American president.
But the reporters immediately spoke to Mary, “Tell me, why didn’t you address this request to the sons of the doctor?”
Mary shut her eyes. Of course, she has appealed several times. Honestly, she didn’t want to speak out what was answered. Both Michael's eldest son, an employee at the University of Chicago, and John, a younger owner of a construction company in Los Angeles, said they were not ready to finance his father's treatment - let the state take care of him.
The sons advised Mary to give Spock to a nursing home. She smiled bitterly: the doctor devoted his life to teaching parents to understand and treat their children, and in fact it was necessary to teach American adults to take care of older parents.
80% of Americans consider it perfectly normal to throw unhappy old people out of their lives in the nursing homes: after all, there is professional care and all that. No, Mary would never give her Ben into such a hostel.
When 34-year-old Mrs. Morgan married 73-year-old Spock in 1976, colleagues at the Institute of Child Psychiatry where Mary worked were shocked. Everyone knew it was marriage by calculation. A divorced young woman with a child grabbed a confident non-young famous doctor, looking at his money and name.
Mary met Dr. Spock when she gave birth to a daughter, Virginia. Mary literally learned the doctor’s advice. A few years later, they met in San Francisco. Mary gave Spock a lecture at the Institute of Child Psychiatry. Her duty included meeting Benjamin at the airport.
Mary, whose height barely reached fifty meters, chose the shoes on the highest heels. Because of her low height, she often wore shoes on her heels, even used to run in her as in sports shoes, which at work she was nicknamed "child acrobat". At the airport, she stood with the "Doctor Spock" sign in the crowd of meeting people.
Before that, Mary had seen him several times on television, but still surprised: a two-meter giant, stretched, very interesting and youthful approached and modestly presented himself: "I am Dr. Spock."
Attentive, kind eyes measured Mary’s low figure and her twelve-centimetre heels: “You won’t fall?”
He carefully took her for the elbow, as if supporting, “Let’s get to know. How do you rejoice?” Mary was confused for some reason and shouted, “Baby acrobat...”
He laughed with a restless childish laugh and immediately became like a shy boy: "It's wonderful that you still have a child alive! As a doctor, I tell you this.”
When the time came for the lecture, Dr. Spock was transformed: correct, strict, restrained and impeccable. Sitting in the front row, Mary sometimes caught his attentive look on her face. At one point, it seemed to her that he even blinked at her. In her head came a shaky thought: what if... No, she even forbade herself to think about it.
When the day of his last lecture came, Mary came with a bouquet and a large bag containing a gift for Dr. Spock. Being a grateful and educated person, she very much wanted to give the doctor a joke present, but worried: suddenly her gift will offend him?
A little nervous, she pushed the gift under her chair in the lecture room. He reassured her that this was their last meeting. She just gives a gift and they will never see each other again. Tomorrow he will leave San Francisco, and then he will not remember her. Has he seen a few people in his life?
After the lecture, Mary handed Spock a bouquet of red roses and thanked him for the interesting lectures, and then quietly said, "I have a gift for you. Please don’t get angry with me!”
Benjamin was confused, pulled out a large box from the package and blasted the envelope paper. “Is it for me? This is a surprise!” Only the doctor said. In the box was a toy railway, with trains, wagons, stations, rails, semafores, duty...
Image used for illustrative purposes, from open sources
That same evening, gallantly inviting Mary to dinner, Dr. Spock asked, "But how did you guess? Can you read your thoughts?”
As a child, he dreamed of a railroad. Unfortunately, his dream did not come true. The eldest of six children, Ben, was firmly taught: gifts should be useful.
Ben's father, Mr. Benjamin Spock, was a lawyer working in the railway management, and his mother, Mildred, was a housewife. During the holidays, children were given pyjamas and shoes. There were no toys in the house: they were considered an unacceptable luxury in a large family. The nine-year-old Ben for his younger brother drank boats, machinery, and humans from the tree and they played enthusiastically (until the mother saw it).
Her father was missing at work, and Mildred raised her children alone. She tried to use the guidance of Dr. Luther Emmet Holt to educate her head. Holt argued, “Children need a full night’s rest and plenty of fresh air.”
A healthy thought brought Mildred to the point of being absurd: run off at 6:45 p.m., sleeping on an unheated veranda all year round, while temperatures in Connecticut are down to minus ten degrees in the winter!
In a small kitchen, Mildred compiled and hung a list of foods that were useful (milk, eggs, oatmeal, baked vegetables and fruits) and which were forbidden sweets, baking, meat).
At every step, Ben, who became a babysitter for younger brothers and sisters, encountered prohibitions: sports are harmful to the joints, dancing contributes to the early appearance of interest in the opposite sex, visiting friends - it is not possible. For the slightest province, Mildred was punished with a necklace or belt. At the same time, the mother was a fanatical puritan and demanded full submission from the children.
At junior courses at Yale Medical College, the rector himself persuaded Mrs. Spock for more than an hour to allow Ben to join the university’s sail team. The tall, strong, athletic Ben could considerable success and Mildred, shaking her heart, gave permission.
When Ben, as part of the rugby team in Paris at the 1924 Olympics, won the "gold", his mother nodded contemptuously, "Think, a medal!" I never said a word about it again.
Ben was so accustomed to feeling insignificant that he fell in love with the first girl on his way that showed interest in him. The cute black-haired Jane Cheney, the daughter of a lawyer, listened kindly to how Ben talked about competitions, how the blue sea fuses with the horizon, how important teamwork and understanding is. Jane respectfully looked at the sympathetic guy's biceps: "Nothing for yourself, this is the muscle!"
Mildred perceived the passion of her son. But it wasn’t that they attacked. Intense and arbitrary Jane in stubbornness could compete with the future mother-in-law. In 1927, Ben and Jane married Mildred.
“Getting married is not the worst thing in life, some people get on an electric chair.” My mother commented.
In the early 1930s, Ben opened his first private practice in New York. These were difficult times: the height of the Great Depression, millions of unemployed, wages that collapsed by forty percent, prices that were artificially bounced. Dr. Spock had patients at least withdrawal.
There were always fifteen people in his reception room, when his colleagues had two or three people. The whole secret was that Ben took ten dollars per reception as colleagues, and seven. Jane was angry, “Why is this charity?”
Maintaining the family was not easy: Ben was at the reception from seven in the morning until lunch, and until nine in the evening he wept on calls. Coming home, he still had time to answer the calls until midnight: what to do if the baby sneezed, sneezed, etc.
Soon their firstborn was born. But, unfortunately, Jane's birth began prematurely, and the baby lived only a day. The joy of young parents had no limits when Michael appeared in 1932.
The friends envyed Jane: “You’re lucky. “Your husband is a pediatrician!” There is no prophet in his homeland. Jane brought up Michael on her own method, and this reminded Ben of the nightmare of his childhood.
Michael was taken to the kindergarten and was crying, Ben rushed to the child, and Jane barred the entrance to the room with the words, "You can't beat him!"
In his famous book, Baby and Care, Spock writes: “Mothers are sometimes capable of surprising cruelty towards their own child.”
In his wife, Ben recognized his own mother: stupidity, stubbornness and irritability. If the baby had a stomach illness, Ben recommended him a rice decoction, and in the evening Jane proudly that she had drunk the baby with carrots juice, which she thought was "much more useful."
If he didn’t tell him to curl the baby, Jane did exactly the opposite: she wore a hundred clothes on him. If Michael got a cold, it was Ben’s fault.
Ben thought it was best not to interfere with his son’s upbringing. In addition to practice, he began teaching. By the end of the first grade, it became clear that Michael was not taught: he could not understand the difference between the letters "p" and "b", "d" and "t"... For the hundredth time in vain explaining the difference between the letters, Dr. Spock turned to a child psychiatrist. He delivered the verdict: "The boy has dyslexia and he must study in a special educational institution..."
Ben transferred the child to a special school and carefully hid this fact from colleagues. A couple of years later, Michael’s dyslexia almost disappeared, but the character became angry and cluttered. The separation between Michael and his parents grew.
When publisher Donald Gedes, the father of Ben’s little patient, asked Spock to write a book for his parents, he was confused, “I’m not a writer!”
Onald encouraged him, “I do not demand anything supernatural from you! Just write practical advice. I’ll publish a small edition.”
Geddes planned to publish the book in a maximum of ten thousand copies, and sold seven hundred and fifty. The book was immediately translated into 30 languages. The post-war generation of parents, tired of restrictions and strict regulations, accepted Dr. Spock’s book as a new Bible, and critics called it “a bestseller of all times and peoples.”
Prior to this, pediatricians recommended tightening babies and feeding strictly on the clock. Dr. Spock wrote: “Trust yourself and your child. Feed him when he asks. Hold him in your arms when he’s crying. Give him freedom, respect his personality!”
In the year the book was released, Ben had a second son, John. Unfortunately, the relationship with John did not go well either. Jane, as in the case of Michael, removed him from education: "Teach other children, and I know what is best for the child."
Spoka printed popular magazines, invited to television. Dr. Spock spent large sums of money on charity. One day, during a live broadcast, a man broke into the studio: "Spook's younger son committed suicide!"
Fortunately, the message was false. Seventeen-year-old John had problems with drugs and was drowned. After being discharged from the hospital, John stated that he would not live with his parents: "You have shunned me!"
Was age the fault or character? The eternally absent silent father and the screaming, irritated mother did not seem to him an authority. John left the house and Jane became addicted to drinking. Burdened and overwhelmed, she was ready from morning to evening to squeeze Ben. Several times, Dr. Spock sent her to the best clinics, but in vain.
Jane’s alcoholism and depression progressed. Family life collapsed. The couple decided to separate in 1975. After the divorce, Jane claimed that it was she who dictated Dr. Spock his brilliant ideas for the book. He left Jane's apartment in New York, helping with money. She needed a nurse more than her husband.
And now, sitting in a restaurant with a young woman named Mary Morgan, Dr. Spock suddenly asked her, “Are you, of course, married?”
Mary thoughtfully looked out the window: “One. “No,” he said, “I am divorced.”
They lived with Mary for twenty-five years in love and harmony. They spent twenty-two years on a yacht. Their floating house drifted in the winter in the vicinity of the British Virgin Islands and in the summer in the state of Man.
To her surprise, Mary discovered many unusual traits in her young husband. This old man in jeans has missed a lot in his life. She laughed, “You are not alive!” A young woman shared his passion for sea travel.
Her daughter, Virginia, tried to tame her mother: “You’re both mad! This is the weather at sea! But Ben was a born captain and Mary was not afraid with him at all. At the age of 84, Spock took the 3rd place in windsurfing competitions.
She gave him a second youth, happier than the first. When he became impotent, she did not give him to the nursing house, but cared for him as a child. Dr. Spock lived ninety-four years and died on March 15, 1998.