Sunday, January 03, 1999
Families, love bridge the 20th century
BY KAREN SAMPLES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FLORENCE — In this year Lisa and Jeff Arehart will have their first child, and Edith Lydon will celebrate her 101st birthday.
They are separated by a century, this woman and this child-to-be — a miracle century in which Mrs. Lydon watched, amazed, as a car clattered through Bellevue for the first time.
She is tiny and bright-eyed now, pushing her own wheelchair around Carmel Manor nursing home in Fort Thomas. It is a clean, beautiful place with a deck overlooking the Ohio River.
One county away, in Florence, the Areharts are building a new home. Lisa Arehart, 28, is 11 weeks pregnant.
Mrs. Lydon doesn't know the young couple. As it turns out, their hopes for 1999 are not so different from hers.
She prays her family will make it, that her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be spared the pain of losing anyone they love. There is so much divorce these days, Mrs. Lydon says.
She also has experienced many more final separations.
During the Great Depression, her husband went to California to look for work and died
of meningitis within two weeks. She got the news by telegram and paid $10 to have his body sent home.
He was 36. The couple had one son.
Mrs. Lydon's sister died soon after, of complications from an appendectomy. Between them, she and her brother-in-law raised four children. They became bright, productive adults, although Mrs. Lydon insists it wasn't her doing.
“I just took care of them,” she says. “They followed their own instincts.”
She has never used a credit card. She remembers the thrill of a man walking on the moon and recalls the pulsing crowd that swept her off her feet when World War II ended. Her nephew survived his tour in the Pacific.
“It was always on your mind,” Mrs. Lydon says. “When you have children like that and they're in danger ...”
Half a century later, Lisa Arehart prays for her baby's health.
She's aware, of course, that the nation's computers may crash in a year and that the president's sexual repertoire involves cigars. She wishes the United States would finally do something about Saddam Hussein.
But these particulars of 1999 are not so important — not now, anyway. Mrs. Arehart is thinking about the life inside her and how best to bring it into the world. She has been wanting this child for years, she says.
She also has endometriosis, which can cause infertility. When it was first diagnosed, her doctor suggested she get pregnant as quickly as possible; of course, she wasn't even dating anyone at the time.
As a nurse practitioner, she is a busy, independent woman without much time to look for boyfriends. She met Jeff through a dating service.
Now she is cheerfully working through nausea and tiredness. Her usual heavy sleep is suddenly so light that she wakes up when the dog snores. Her doctor says this is the maternal instinct kicking in; mothers sleep this way so they can hear their babies crying.
This means Edith Lydon slept lightly, too.
Her son, Joe, was born in 1921. He lives in Alexandria now and calls his mother every day.
Her face brightens when she hears his voice, even though their topics don't vary much: her health, the weather, his health.
Sometimes Joe calls twice a day, just to check on her.
At bottom, this is what new years are all about. People, families, love — the presence of God.
Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or by e-mail at: ksamples@enquirer.com
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