Letitia Vanderbilt Swain

Letitia Vanderbilt Swain, née Rockefeller, called "Tish" by her husband Caleb was the mother of Wilbur and Eliza Swain. She was descended from wealth, attempted but failed to graduate college, about which she was humble, and was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She lived with her husband in a townhouse in Turtle Bay, and was rarely separated from her husband for more than a couple days. Once the twins were placed at a family property in Galen, Vermont, the two only visited children once a year on their birthdays. They would bring gifts from F.A.O. Schwarz designed to be educational for three year olds. Their annual birthday meeting would always take place in library, separated by large coffee table, while the parents sipped brandy. She was called "Mub-lub" in twins' childish babble. Their childhood doctor, Stewart Mott, produce bi-weekly reports on the twins' health, which Letitia kept her whole life, finally in a linen chest at the foot of her bed. Getting to know her later in life, Wilbur thought she possessed "unwavering decency" toward everyone and was not prone to insults.

Wilbur later surmised that their parents wished their children with die, but neither openly expressed it to each other. On their fifteenth birthday, Letitia had a brief episode in which she expressed her hatred for her children and wonderment that should could have birthed them. She wished they would show "the merest flicker of humanness", which led to the twins revealing their intelligence. When they first did so, however, she found herself unable to leave their bedroom to interact with them. Afterward, however, both parents were gratified that they were justified in yelling at their children for misbehavior. They had both subjected to testing by researchers financed by the Swain Foundation, but were unable to bring themselves to personally observe it. Eventually, they hired Dr. Cordelia Swain Cordiner, a world renowned expert on psychological testing, who reported to them that the twins demonstrated "low normal" intelligence for their age, concluding that Eliza would never learn to read or write but called her "quite an amusing chatterbox". Wilbur was considered serious and easily distracted by his sister, but could likely perform well at a menial job. Dr. Cordiner suggested Wilbur be sent to a special school for children with similar conditions. After casually dismissing the twins assertion that they would kill themselves unless they were allowed to retest together, saying she detected no suicidal tendencies in either of them, Letitia for the first time demonstrated maternal defense for her children, calling Dr. Cordiner an "overdressed little sparrow fart". Dr. Cordiner then retested them together, "depersonalized... like a robot" in front of their parents, but when the twins wrapped themselves around each other to assure they'd get the correct answers, Dr. Cordiner fainted and their parents left the room, deciding to send Wilbur to a special private school on Cape Cod. The two accompanied Wilbur on the drive. Her husband died years later in automobile accident during Wilbur's first year at Harvard Medical School.

Beacon Hill townhouses

Wilbur set aside a special suite for his mother at his Beacon Hill home for her visits. Meanwhile, Eliza was institutionalized at a facility that cost two hundred dollars a day and, Letitia claimed, requested that family not visit. When Eliza's release was secured by a lawyer, Norman Mushari, Jr., who also sued for her share of the inheritance, neither Wilbur nor their mother opposed her. When Eliza and Mushari came to visit Wilbur's home, their mother hid in her suite, with him lying that she was at her own home in Turtle Bay. However, when the twins came in physical contact, recreating their joint genius, they found their mother and held her prisoner for five days, along with Mushari and the house servants, tying them to chairs and feeding them nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She recovered afterward at Massachusetts General Hospital before returning to Turtle Bay. When Wilbur graduated from medical school, at the bottom of his class, she threw a party for him at the Ritz in Boston, where he expected from her the gift of a Rolls-Royce. By the time Wilbur was fifty, Letitia had sold the Turtle Bay home and moved in with him in Vermont, where he was running a medical practice from his childhood home. Described then as "feeble and afraid", she spent much of her time talking about the afterlife, where she expected to meet her husband and other deceased loved ones. After her son described her idea of heaven as "a place where people would drink a lot of lemonade", she replied that she loved lemonade. She also talked frequently of her hatred of artificial and synthetic materials, preferring silk, cotton, linen, wool, leather, clay, glass, and stone. Wilbur would often tuck her into bed. She slept through the first gravitational instability and died two weeks later.