“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

([Mary:] “Okay.”)

([Mary:] “Yes.)

([Mary:] “Yeah. I thought that he would be home and we could...uh... he’d have more time to farm, and we could work something out, but I was really relieved when he went to, had to go to work at night and I could read and study by myself.

(Long pause at 9:10.) In a large manner, however, Marie’s daughter was always—somewhat, now—on the periphery of Marie’s life, and not at its center. [...] (Delmer Roberts, Marie’s husband.)

[...] Ruburt has changed in many ways, but throughout Marie’s life, Marie changed relatively little—that is, any change was well with a certain recognizable scale. [...]

Marie did not hate Ruburt, though at times she could be quite hateful in her expressions. [...] Ruburt need not blame himself for not attending Marie’s death. [...]

Some of our other books contain more information on how Jane grew up fatherless, and with a Marie who soon became bedridden and embittered. [...] Marie was a brilliant, angry woman who lived in near-constant pain, and who regularly abused her daughter through behavior that, if not psychotic, was certainly close to it. [...] Her mother died in 1972, at the same age; Jane, who hadn’t seen Marie for a number of years, did not attend the funeral. [...] For my part, I’d always felt distinctly uneasy in Marie’s presence on the few occasions we met.

One of their common creations within the same time scheme was rheumatoid arthritis, of course, for Jane began to show her version of it some eight years before Marie died. [...] However, with that fine stubbornness I mentioned in the first essay, Jane never told Marie of her own affliction; since the two no longer saw each other, consciously Marie never knew. [...]

In our ceaseless search for answers to an unending list of personal questions, we discussed the notion that in her own way Jane has described a circle from her childhood: Her parents, Marie and Delmer, were married in Saratoga Springs, a well-known resort town in upper New York State, in 1928. [...] All we have are a few photographs Del took of Marie not long after their marriage. [...]

“A terrific little dream that beautifully states its message: Mary’s ideas of romance and making love (represented by modern-day flowered sheets) are being transposed from the bedroom into the area of her art, and in a way that mars the art itself. The transposition of the flowered designs of bedsheets to sheets of paper is great; Rob chose a sketch pad rather than, say, typing paper, I think, because painting is his art while Mary’s is writing. Also perhaps to make connections with Mary’s sketches of her own life. Maybe by using his own art symbol, the sketch pad instead of the typing paper, Rob reinforced the idea of Mary’s conflicts about the nature of her own work.

“… later in the night, last night, I became aware of a mental conversation between Mary and myself. [...] The feeling I had was that something had happened between Mary and her new husband, an argument. [...] I’ve picked up on Mary’s relationships before.…

[...] Our friend Mary came up to us. [...] Instead, as Mary lifted the cover of the pad, holding the pad out for Jane and me to see, we saw that the top page was covered by a lovely large floral pattern of leaves and flowers, as one might see on bedsheets these days. I examined several pages of Mary’s pad and saw that all of them were covered by the same design, in reds and greens, etc. [...]

[...] Jane tried again to read the session, but couldn’t. At 3:10 I started to read it to her when Mary Jean came in to check the flow of the antibiotic. [...] Mary Jean said Jeff must have seen something on the report of her urinalysis this morning, and ordered the Bactrim, which is quite powerful. [...] “I want to make a formal protest for the record,” she told Mary Jean, “that I wasn’t notified about this.” Mary Jean said she’d relay it to the head nurse — where I suppose it’ll die. [...]

[...] She talked about how the one priest who put her to bed when she was but 3 or 4 years old would “play” with her sexually, and how Marie finally figured that out. [...] She described how Father Trenton sat with his back to Marie when he was mad at the mother, and how Father Rakin made advances to her. [...] And Marie said to her: “You were a nice kid until you turned about sixteen — then you turned into a bitch.” [...]

[...] Marie had always encouraged her poetry, and the two women shared it for a number of years. Jane used to write poems to get back in Marie’s good grace: “At the same time I felt like I was betraying myself for doing it. [...]

[...] Jane began by talking about how her mother, Marie, told her at puberty that she had bad blood in her from her father [Delmer], that he had syphilis. [...]

[...] Dr. Gibson and the head nurse, Mary, had been in to 330 to look at Jane’s knee. [...] Dr. G looked at it, remarked that she had a large ulcer on the knee, and quickly left with Mary before Jane was quick enough to ask him what he was talking to the nurse about. [...]

[...] When Judy, the RN, brought the lunch tray this noon, and replaced a couple of dressings, we asked her to contact Mary and find out exactly what Mary and Dr. G had talked about, re Jane’s treatment. [...]

[...] I felt like directing some very nasty barbs at Marie — especially when I remembered those old photos of Jane that I’d looked at a couple of days ago. [...]

[...] I held my tongue instead of cursing Marie, as I wanted to. [...]

There is no reason either, to blame his mother, or to hold any grudge against her, for in no way did Marie understand the issues.

(Thoughts of her birthday at once led her to Mother’s Day and her own mother, Marie. Jane talked at length about the welter of conflicting events surrounding Marie and herself. She realized that as a youngster she had loved her mother, and tried hard to do things for her, even when Marie had rejected her efforts say, in buying a nightgown of the “wrong” color.

(Then we talked about her grandparents in connection with Jane and Marie; her grandmother’s death; the lawsuit against the town, which I don’t think I’d heard about before; welfare; Jane’s grandfather, Joseph Burdo, and her feelings for him, and so forth. She told me how a traffic light was installed at the corner of Lake Street and Nelson Avenue, as a result of the suit Marie won against the city, concerning her grandmother’s death. [...]

(John verified Seth’s material regarding his wife, Mary Ellen. [...] Mary Ellen is scheduled to attend, or have, a Sarah Coventry party soon, on a Thursday afternoon or evening, John said, and will be involved with four other women in particular. The five total could be that Mary Ellen herself is the fifth; as well as Mary Ellen herself, the other four women are holding Sarah Coventry parties for her. [...]

(Jane said her mother does have a friend, Mary Miller, who did housekeeping for Jane and her mother when Jane was perhaps seven years old. Mary Miller is still alive. [...] Mary Miller is the same age as Jane’s mother.

[...] This at once led her to feeling that as a child it had been vital that she avoid the disapproval of others — her mother, Marie, especially. [...] Jane feared that if she got Marie mad, Marie would get sick and die. Marie used to tell Jane it was her fault the mother was sick, and that it was also her fault that Jane’s grandmother died, and the housekeeper. [...]

[...] Marie and Andy Colucci were present, and at this gathering Marie told me about Dr. Lodico being interested in my paintings.

(An A. The first name of Marie Colucci’s husband is Andy. As stated above, under the group data, Marie and Andy were in the group visiting us a couple of weeks ago. [...]

[...] We thought of various combinations here, among them Marie Colucci, Dr. Lodico and myself, since we are closely involved with the object. We didn’t know whether Marie wears a hat, though. [...]

(After this session Jane wrote to Marie in an effort to verify the above statement. [...] In her reply, dated October 11, Marie told Jane that she has not been involved in childbirth for two years. [...] And at the time of Jane’s dream, Marie said, hurricane Cleo had been descending upon them at Boynton Beach, and “we had plenty of water around then during the storm. [...]

[...] In it he said that although he was not sure, he thought Jane’s schoolgirl friend, Marie Tubbs, now living in Florida, may have been in childbirth at the time of Jane’s dream, with a possibility that the water bag had broken during birth. [...]

(So, since there was some kind of discrepancy here between what Seth at least considered a possibility, and the fact that Marie had not been giving birth, we naturally wondered what was correct, and hoped the session tonight would deal with it.

([Jane:] “I know that he did something, Mary. [...]

(To Mary Ellen.) Explain what I did. [...]

(Mary Ellen recapped Seth’s previous comments for Jane.)

(In an effort to further clear up Seth’s rather involved interpretation of Jane’s dream of September 7, I made it a point to ask Jane just before the session was due tonight about the statement Seth-Jane had made on page 46, involving Jane’s friend, Marie Tubbs, in childbirth. Marie wrote Jane on October 11 that she has not given birth for two years, and Seth dealt with what looked like a discrepancy between the two sets of facts to a partial degree in the 98th session. [...]

(Tubbs, of course, was Marie’s maiden name. Her married name is Marie Sterrett, of Boynton Beach, Florida.

[...] Jane and Marie went through high school together. [...] Through the years I have heard Jane wonder aloud, many times, about the fact that Marie decided to have children, rather than place her emphasis on writing, as Jane chose to.

[...] Older than yourselves”, referred to the parents of Marie Colucci, the dentist’s wife. [...] On a visit to their home this summer we met Marie’s mother, in Elmira on a visit from New Jersey. Marie had made the trip to New Jersey, to get her mother, by train.

[...] This is the somewhat complicated sequence of events here: Marie Colucci took the train to her parents’ home in New Jersey, and drove her mother back to Elmira in the parental automobile. When Marie’s father died of a heart attack in NJ, Marie drove her mother back to Jersey in the parental car, then returned to Elmira herself by train.)

(We thought this connection with “a trip by train” might be the distant connection referred to by Seth, when we remembered that while Marie Colucci’s mother had been visiting in Elmira, the mother’s husband died of a heart attack at home in New Jersey, while bowling. [...]

(To Mary Ellen.) I beg your pardon for the interruption. [...]

(To Mary Ellen.) And now I do, indeed, myself apologize. [...]

[...] The answers lie within Sue and Bette and Mary Ellen and Natalie and Joel. [...]

(Seth commented upon the fund, perhaps, because of the letter I took to read Jane, from Mary Newman. [...] Through mutual friends Jane and I had met Mary several years ago: while on a business trip to New York City, we had stayed at her apartment for a number of days.

[...] A woman’s name, like a variation of Mary; for example, Mary and Mary Ann. [...]

(When Jane was young Marie had in all seriousness often warned her “When I die, I’ll come back and haunt you.” During those years Marie was in her late 20’s and early 30’s, and already incapacitated by arthritis; and, to quote Seth from a session held in 1964, she had “… often spoken vehemently of Ruburt’s birth being a source of disease, and pain, that is of her arthritis … If Ruburt’s mother had it to do over, she would not have the child — and the child hidden within the adult still feels that the mother actually has the power, even now, to force the child back into the womb and refuse to deliver it …”

[...] While we waited for Seth to come through, she talked about the deaths of her parents.¹ Her father, Delmer, died on November 16, 1971, when he was 68; her mother, Marie, died on May 10, 1972, at the same age.