Mommy's Piggy Tales: Week 2: Baby Steps (part 1 of 2)

Before I was born, my dad worked 3 jobs: police department, Sears & the National Guard. By the time I was born, he'd been getting enough hours & sales to quit the police department (much to my mom's relief), but he still had his commitments to the Guard. The weekend drills weren't bad. Summer camp was a pistol. His first years of camp, he talked his store manager into letting my mom cover his store hours to keep his position open, since he was part-time & they didn't have to. He was full-time by the time I turned one, so he could use vacation time while on Guard duty. But there's nothing he could use to cover Guard duty, so he missed my first birthday. My mom drove the two of us to Birmingham to celebrate with my dad's mom & the cousins on that side of the family. It was comforting to her, since dad was off at camp, and it was comforting to Grandmama, since Paw-paw had died not so long ago.

Almost 1!

(My dad didn't miss Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon. The convoy had been tuning into radio stations all the way to camp in south Georgia, and when it was announced that he was expected to leave the capsule within the hour, the whole convoy pulled over at a local elementary school along the route. Back then, who would break into a school in the summer? So my dad found an unlatched window, crawled in and plugged in the TV they'd brought; then everyone circled up to watch. Don't worry, my dad made sure every window & door was latched when they left.)

My mom remembers my little mispronunciations like "jabberjoy" for trapezoid while we played with the Tupperware shape-sorter ball. She also remembers I made a great little piggy "Oink." (Don't forget, I was chubby-- wonder who taught me that noise.) I remember getting my Fisher-Price stacking rings stuck on my feet & couldn't find my mom to help get them off. (DLG has done the exact same thing.)

Mostly, I don't have many memories until I was about 3 and life got different. My dad was promoted at Sears and was sent to Valdosta, Georgia, to learn how to be a store Controller (kind of like the head-accountant.) I have memories of playing in our back yard & sitting in the notch of the crabapple tree to watch the harvester in the field over the fence beyond the dirt road, and walking down that road with my Babchu to find real strawberries to pick & eat. I remember watching Romper Room with my daddy, and hiding behind his chair once, and Ms. Nancy didn't see me to call my name out through her magic mirror. I remember playing with my baby doll, giving her a bath & washing her hair in my baby pool. I remember a friend named Stephanie & using my baby slide & play chairs as a train. I remember a big box of Childcraft books arriving just for me. I remember my daddy & uncles deciding to turn the yard into a golf course by trying out the new post-hole digger, and them lifting me over the neighbor's garden-wire fence to fetch the golf balls that looked like little whiffle balls. I remember my daddy making me a humongous toy box and framing it in the living room. I remember my mommy using a baby-gate to keep me out of the office while she made fancy candle holders for Christmas presents by gluing old jars & plates together & painting them red.

Play-Doh & me (We still have the shakers.)

Then there was my brother. He arrived while we were living in Valdosta. My mom says that even though they'd wanted a lot of kids, they really hadn't wanted him born then & there. I think they'd either wanted us even closer in age than 3 years (which would have had us sharing the same birthplace,) or they'd hoped that he wouldn't happen until after my dad had finished his training and had been assigned a store. But he was born 3 months before my 3rd birthday. I remember I was excited. I remember I was brought to visit my mom while was I wearing my footie pjs. I remember we shared a room & he cried. A lot. And loudly.

Not quite 3, but not quite a big sister.

My brother, I am told, was late like me. And then even later, and the doctor didn't act very concerned-- even though my mom had been having contractions and had begun dilating. Grandmama had arrived (for a second time) to look after me, so my mom was able to go to her appointment alone. When the exam was over & the the doctor had left the room, my mom stood up and began gushing blood. It took a while for her to get a nurse to come back in, and then for the doctor to come back in. He decided that she needed to go to the hospital to have the baby, gave her a towel to wear under her clothes, and had her drive herself to the hospital a mile away. She barely made it in time for a very emergency, very rough C-section. She had placenta preveria & no one had a clue. Not even the doctor. In 1970, she & my brother came very close to bleeding to death. To this day, I still find it hard to believe that no one had a clue, even after she began dilating; as an adult, I'm very angry that what seems to me as carelessness could have cost me my mother & my brother.

Beth (3 1/2) and Billy (7 months)

But that was then. And then I was a little girl who was very glad to have a baby brother, even if he was loud. And I didn't even mind that he got sick around Thanksgiving & had to go to the hospital again; that just meant I had my Grandmama again and she served up pancakes & orange juice for breakfast, let me play with Play-Doh and made me a pretty doll just like the ones she was making for her church bazaar. We little ones only know ourselves. Sometimes that is the better part of remembering.