My parents were forces to be reckoned with, individually and collectively. Thirteen years after Mom died and nearly five after Dad followed her, they remain a vibrant part of many lives. Wayne and I are spending the first five months of my retirement in Jackson Hole on our family ranch. I spent every summer on this astounding spot growing up, but visits have been limited to 7-10 days annually for the past forty years. It has been a daily joy to explore our new life in various ways, many through old connections.
When Dad and Mom retired from their boarding school lives, they started spending six months a year here and became very involved members of the community. The name “Huyler” resonates in Jackson Hole. Ruth Glass is a non-entity. Ruth HuylerGlass has history. Wherever we go, if I use my full name when being introduced, the response is immediate and positive:
“You are Jack and Margaret’s daughter? I knew your parents. They were wonderful.”
“Your mother was such a strong and gracious woman. She always made me feel special.”
“Your father always made it very clearly how he felt about everything.”
“We miss your parents and feel blessed to have known them.”
During his retirement years, Dad wrote and published two books about this area: That’s the Way it Was in Jackson’s Holeand Every Full Moon in August.Both Mom and Dad were active in St. John’s Episcopal Church, and Dad faithfully attended Rotary meetings. The women’s book group that Mom co-founded has offered vital discussions for four decades. They leave a legacy that Wayne and I feel is important to honor and to emulate. Many parents today seem reluctant to recognize and insist that there are usually clear lines between right and wrong and that even young children should be held accountable for their choices and actions. My parents were not always right; they were human. However, they both stood firmly for well-established principles. Those who knew them in any context remember them for their honesty and integrity – as well as for their grace and generosity. There was pressure growing up as their daughter, but it was of a do-your-best-and-be-respectful-of-others variety. Some students of my father hated him at the time; most of them came to respect the lessons he taught and the high standards he demanded. Mom, in contrast, was universally loved. Though outsiders didn’t always understand the bonds that kept them together in a vital relationship for over 60 years, there was no question that their partnership was inspiring.
Frequently people ask if it’s weird (one even used the word “creepy”) to live in the cabin where my parents resided; to sleep in the same bedroom where they spent such happy years and where my mother died; to look at the ceiling that is covered with hundreds of framed photographs of family members and activities that my father installed when Mom’s Parkinson’s made it hard for her to get out of bed; to share the space where my grandparents lived before them. No. It is glorious. We gather friends around the long dining room table where Mom hosted endless streams of guests (one summer Dad counted an averageof 14 at each meal). During the summer and early fall we served cocktails (good grief, we really are the adults now) and sat in the same rawhide chairs facing the Tetons that have been used for that purpose for longer than I can remember. I prepare meals in the kitchen where my mother did the same. The walk-in pantry shelves display the same red-checked coverings that my grandmother installed.
Our lives have been busy ones. Our careers have taken us across the country and back. We have lived in Japan, Guam, and seven states. Each was an important and loved abode in our journey. We celebrated our independence and the course of creating our own lives. Now, however, it’s time to come home.
It is easy to imagine – to feel the presence of — Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Manie and Aunt Alice, my brothers and I when we were little, our daughters when they were tots. A doorway in one of the cabins registers the rising pencil lines and dates from each summer when our heights were measured as children – and those of our own daughters and now our granddaughter. We are living surrounded by history, enveloped in the scents and sounds of the river and the aspens, the coyotes and the geese, the bugling elk, the slamming of the porch screen door, and the crackling of the living room fire.
I try to express gratitude every day (another lesson from my parents) and to be aware of the many ways my life has been blessed. This week, especially, I am thankful for a family whose legacy it is easy and essential to honor.
Glass Full 