Free Still Me by Christopher Reeve Page B

grandfather’s objections they were married at the Presbyterian church in New Canaan on November 23, 1951. She was nineteen and Franklin was twenty-three.
    But a widening gulf was developing between my parents when I was born. Franklin was beginning to turn away from his privileged background and to become more involved in his new interests—socialism and Russian language and literature. Coming from New Canaan, used to a privileged society, my mother still had a limited and rarefied view of the world, and she lacked confidence in herself. When she was eighteen she had an old-fashioned coming out party in New York. But afterwards the phone did not ring and no eligible bachelors appeared at the door. I once asked her what that was like, and she said, “Well, I came out, but I went right back in again.”
    She was very pretty. In the pictures of her when she was young, she is a knockout. But when she was still in her early teens she was sent to an all-girls boarding school in Arizona because of her asthma. Then she came back east and graduated from Westover, another girls’ school, in 1949. She had never had a boyfriend or even dated, so Franklin probably seemed too good to be true. He was extremely handsome, bright, funny, and charming. He was a scholar, a poet, an athlete (he set a record in the hammer throw at Princeton that lasted for decades). He was also something of an actor, having written and performed with the University Players.

    My mother’s father, Horace Lamb, at the time of my parents’ courtship.
    Everything changed for my mother that Christmas of 1950, when she suddenly found herself in a whirlwind romance with an extraordinary young man. She got married less than a year later, became pregnant at nineteen and a half, had a baby at twenty, then gradually discovered that she was married to someone who was going off more and more in his own direction. His romantic interest in her was gradually being replaced by an equally romantic interest in his work and colleagues at Columbia. My mother was never an intellectual, and before long they had little to talk about. The atmosphere in our home became increasingly tense.
    It must have been overwhelming for my mother to have to cope with two rambunctious boys at such a young age. Ben and I were usually going at each other, competing for attention and space. My father was devoted to both of us and enjoyed taking on much of our daily care. I think he even felt he could do a better job than my mother. But as my parents drifted apart, my mother had to take more responsibility. On some deep level I wished she were more confident and able to take control of us.
    When she was a young mother, she loved us very much, but she let people push her around, including me. I’m more ashamed now of having taken advantage of her than I was at the time, but then I was always testing her. I wanted her to say, “No, you can’t get away with that.” I needed boundaries. Now I realize how young and frightened she must have been when her marriage to Franklin broke up.
    My strongest memory of that New York apartment was the day we left it. A moving van pulled up in front of the building. This was a cause of great excitement for a three-year-old because the van was so huge. I remember running around inside it while they were loading the furniture, the clothes, and the bric-a-brac. I was only dimly aware that we were moving because the marriage was over.
    We went to Princeton because my mother really didn’t know where else to go. There she had friends from the days when she and Franklin were dating. We had half a house at 66 Wiggins Street and settled in on New Year’s Eve 1955. Horace paid the bills. My brother and I went to the Nassau Street School, just up the block. I was very happy there. We had to wear nice brown shoes every day. The minute I came home I would go upstairs to change so I wouldn’t get them dirty playing.
    At first Ben and