In only a few days, my nephew and his wife will have a second baby. This one is a little boy. Their first child is a little girl who looks quite a bit like I remember my baby sister when she was little. That same baby sister is the grandmother of this new generation.
I remember when each one of my siblings came home from the hospital.
When I was 2 1/2, my mother went to the hospital and I went next door to stay with my father's mother, Grandma Lena, on the farm. I got to help feed the chickens and followed my uncle Marvin around in the cow barn. To this day, the smell of a milk house or a dairy farm can take me right back to my earliest years. After a couple of days, I got a letter in the mail addressed to ME. The letter read something like this (I couldn't read it myself yet): Dear Big Sister, My mommy told me all about you. She said we would have a good time playing together when I come home. I saw my daddy peeking at me through the big window. He looks nice. I think I will like living in the family with you. Love, John.
Needless to say, I was very excited to meet my baby brother. When Mother walked in the door carrying her little blanket-wrapped bundle, she told me to sit on the couch. I climbed up. Once I was settled, Mother handed over my baby brother. To this day, I remember exactly what that moment was like. I was fascinated with this tiny toy that could move all by itself.
From then on, I did everything I could to help take care of my new baby brother. When he got a bath, Mother took the upper end and I helped wash the feet. (Mother gave me the splashy end.) When he drank his bottle, I helped hold it until he was big enough to do it himself.
I watched him sleep. - I'm laughing. - Do you know what it feels like to have someone stare at you when you are asleep? It doesn't take long to wake up. John had a cast on his foot for a few weeks until his foot straightened out. He would bang his cast on the crib bars and I would pick up the spring at the underside of the bars on the side that lowered. If you spun the spring just right, it would make this very cool musical sound as it twirled back down to the bottom of the metal bar. Very musical duet. Percussion and brass. Aluminum? Steel? Whatever. It was great fun. Mother at least always knew where we were and what we were doing.
I would climb on the clothes hamper to grab a clean diaper when John was being changed. We laid the ladder from the bunk bed sideways to block off the door to the living room and played wild animals in the zoo.
I wish for every child a childhood like mine. We were not rich in money or "stuff", but we had good parents, lots of love and the gift of imagination. How can you top that?
Thanks for visiting with me.
Kathi
