When my mother wanted to go to America, she always allowed my father to initiate it. She would have everything ready, her dresses all made, because at home we didn’t have readymade dresses, so she had the seamstress in and she’s having all the things done. But he was at work and these were done during the day. My father isn’t that curious about what ladies are doing, therefore he didn’t know. If a seamstress was there, it would be an order because of all the children, so something is being made for the children. Mother was having her dresses made and all the things made for America, and then she would sleep in America and she was there. Then he would come home one day and say, “You now, Wilsey, I’ve been watching you and I think you need a vacation. You know what I’ve done? I’ve booked you to sail on SS so-and-so and you’re sailing in two or three weeks”…exactly how she planned it. But she thanked him profusely, “Oh, Joseph, you’re so kind and so generous! You really shouldn’t do this. It’s so expensive.” She did the whole thing anyway. So he would take her aboard, we all saw mother off, and mother went only to fulfill what she had already done in her Imagination. And my father was never disillusioned by my mother; he always believed that he initiated it. She said, “After all, that’s your father’s approach to life. He is the man of the house, he has to initiate everything. I don’t even know what we are going to have for breakfast.” Our breakfast is what we call a big lunch here. “But your father the first thing that he does when he goes to the store, he sends home all the meat that he wants for the breakfast and for dinner. So he will call the porter over and say ‘Take this, that and the other and go right away.’ When mother would receive it, she would know whether she was going to have hearts, kidneys, livers or what. And so that was my father. He did all these things and she allowed it, when inwardly she was doing it anyway. But he played his part beautifully and she played her quiet, simple, marvelous part beautifully, and that was it.738 ¶33