Article May 3, 1999 Issue

Preserve the family

What keeps families afloat?

By Robin Jagel Berg

WE BECAME KNOWN AS A HEALTHY FAMILY.

I spent every summer while I was growing up at my grandmother Polly's summer cottage. Polly was the matriarch of the family —of the whole community, really. Everyone in the family called her Polly, from her own children to her great-grandchildren, but people outside the family called her Aunt Polly. I can't explain it; that's just the way it was. Polly wasn't even her real name; it was Isabel! Family lore has it that she was so talkative and expressive as a teenager that her friends nicknamed her Polly, after the talking parrot.

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