I’ve been taking trips down Memory Lane lately and decided to share some of them. Of course the first few stories are only vague memories. After all, how many people can remember being born? I must have been though because here I am today, remembering a few things and if I had not been born I wouldn’t be writing this.
So, I arrived at 2:00 a.m. on December 26. Two hours late for my first Christmas. My mother told me she had been in labor all day that Christmas (so maybe some of these are my mother’s memories.) She and dad were visiting her parents and they had taken some of the Sisters from their parrish out to the same area to spend the day with the Sisters from that parrish but the same Motherhouse. Not wanting to shorten their stay she just didn’t tell anyone labor had started. Now having been there myself a few times I’m not sure how she kept it a secret because pain is difficult to hide, but according to her they were all surprised to find out I had been born that night.
My aunts tell me what a stinker I was, so I guess this is also their memory as well. It seems one of my aunts was babysitting my older brother and me and had put us down for naps. Brother went off to sleep but apparently I wasn’t ready to be that good. My crib was next to the window, I was already walking and talking, the window blind (the old roll up type) was pulled down and I decided to open it up to some light. When my aunt admonished me for that I am told I put both hands on my sides and told her “It isn’t your windowshade!” She found that funny and apparently still does because she has told it to everyone who comes by to talk to either of us. (We are both living in the same Assisted Living home now).
Fast forward a couple of years now and to things I remember. Mom read to us at bedtime from the time we were born. This was during World War II when everything was rationed, but one night she read “Hansel and Gretle” to us. The next day she bought the groceries and left them on the table while she went out for a few minutes. Big Brother decided we should play Hansel and Gretle because he loved the story. Not finding and bread crumbs to mark our way through the forrest, he pulled the bag of sugar off the table and we used that to mark our way through the house. I don’t remember what happened when mom came back in, but she did tell me she was still sweeping sugar out of the cracks between the floorboards in the house when they sold it and we moved to the country. I think maybe I just don’t want to remember what happened next.
A few months later Big Bro made some mud pies and gave me one to eat. Having complete trust in him I ate it. I can still remember Mom trying to wash all that mud out of my mouth and throat! At times I also remember the words she was saying at the time but will leave that to your imagination.
One night when she was at a church meeting and dad was watching us (or so she thought), the boy next door and Big Bro wanted to play Barber Shop! They chose me as the customer, probably because I had some scissors that I used to cut out my paper dolls (now how many people alive today can remember those!) The shop was set up under the street light and they were all set to give me what would be my first ever hair cut since it was the first time I had any hair to cut! Oh, how my dear mother cried when she got home that night! My scissors were confiscted and she called one of my aunts to ask what to do. My aunt took me to a real hair salon the next day to get the mess fixed, assuring Mom that the cut would help my hair grow in faster and thicker. Almost 80 years later I’m still waiting for my hair to grow in faster and thicker!
One of my most promonant memory is of August 15, 1945. My younger brother was 2 months old and we were outside the house, Mom and Steve on a blanket she spread on the ground while Big Bro and I were playing chase around them. Suddenly all of the bells in town began ringing and the boy down the street came running by shouting “the war is over, the war is over”. Mom cried because it meant her 3 brothers and Dad’s sister would all be coming home, the brothers from Europe and the sister from the Pacific front where she was serving as an Army nurse. I’m not sure how that memory remains since I was only 2 1/2 years old at the time, but it is there!
More will be coming later. Right now I need a snack.