Author Marilyn Peterson Haus shares an excerpt from her memoir, Half of a Whole. This passage takes us back to a moment in 1959 when Peterson Haus’ relationship with her twin brother began deteriorating as she embarked on a quest for independence.
Watch our full interview with author Marilyn Peterson Haus.
This segment originally aired on February 17, 2022.
Read the full transcript:
Marilyn Peterson Haus: I’m going to read an excerpt from my memoir, Half of a Whole: My Fight for a Separate Life. And I’m going to read from a scene that occurs in 1959.
We’re on a farm a hundred and twenty miles west of Minneapolis. My twin brother, Marvin, and I are seniors in high school. We — our very close relationship has deteriorated into squabbles, and I’ve been accepted to Augsburg College and I can’t wait to get away.
So, our family is sitting around the kitchen table; my parents, my twin brother and myself, and our younger brother Mark, for our evening meal, which we call “supper.”
Snow choked the roads, the wind wrestled with the trees. An icy draft seeped into the kitchen from beneath the door to the entryway, chilling my ankles as I held a bottle of white Karo Syrup above my stack of thin Swedish pancakes.
The syrup oozed from the neck of the bottle in a fat glob. The glob thinned into a long strand that stretched to the top of my pancakes, where twirled into a pool. The pool seeped down onto my plate, collecting in a puddle. I dragged my fork across the puddle and watched the tine marks as they faded away.
“If Marvin is — if Marilyn is going to college, Marvin should go, too,” Mom said, as she dropped another pile of pancakes onto dad’s plate. I
looked up from the puddle of syrup. Marvin, go to college? He detested having to study.
“If he wants a good job, he needs a college degree,” she said, while ladling batter onto the griddle.
Dad reached for the dish of butter as Mark lifted his glass of milk. Marvin sliced a wedge from his stack of pancakes and stuffed it into his mouth.
The next evening, after passing the bowl of scrambled eggs to dad, mom handed them to Mark, who took a large spoonful before passing them to Marvin.
“Are you going to settle for no more education than I’ve got?” Mom asked Marvin.
He said nothing as he heaped eggs onto his plate. I suspect that he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, that whatever he settled on would not require a college degree.
“By the time you finish college, you’ll have a better idea of what kind of a job you want,” she said the following evening, while pouring milk into our glasses.
Marvin didn’t respond. Neither did Dad, but I could guess what likely was running through his mind. College would shape Marvin up, give him a few years to mature and teach him some responsibility. When he returned, he’d be ready to appreciate the farm.
“Augsburg would be a good school for Marvin,” Mom said the evening after that.
I choked on a mouthful of milk.
“If he goes to the same school as Marilyn, they’ll have the same vacations,” she said. “They can drive the 50 Ford and ride together when they come home on weekends.”
I wanted to say, “Mom, it’s not going to work the way you think. I won’t be around to knock on his door in the morning because I’ll be living in a different dormitory. I’ll have my own set of friends and I won’t be hanging out with him. He’ll have to get himself to class on time because I’ll be done, finished without having to watch out for him.”
But I knew better than to say any of that. Besides, she had already made up her mind. I pushed my chair away from the table, close the door to my room and lay across my bed.
As soon as we walked in from school, Mom handed Marvin an envelope from Augsburg College. He carried it up to his room. She sprinkled Old Dutch cleanser on a cookie sheet and attacked the blackened grease of the Chore Boy scrubber. When the cookie sheet gleamed, she scrubbed another.
Marvin clunked down the steps and scraped this chair up to the table.
“What did the letter say?” Mom asked, inky water dripping from the scrubber.
He reached for the West Central Tribune and flipped through the pages until he came to the one with the comics. He pulled a chocolate chip cookie from the plate she’d set on a table and ate several bites before responding.
“It says I got accepted.”
Mom smiled. She tossed the Chore Boy into the can of scrubbers beneath the sink.
