fun.”
I asked Peg what the hardest times were, raising her nine children. One, she said, was when her oldest daughter left home to go to nursing school thirty miles away. “I cried and cried to lose her,” she said.
Then she told me this story:
She only gave birth to seven children. But one day a neighbor called, asking if Peg would watch a friend’s two babies (a girl and a boy, both under two). Just for a few hours. Peg said no problem, which was true. Two more babies fit in just fine.
A few hours later the neighbor called again, asking whether Peg could keep the babies overnight. Once again Peg said no problem. The mother didn’t come the next day, or the day after that. After a few months Peg had the children baptized. After five years she and her husband decided they’d better file papers to adopt the kids. That’s when the mother finally showed up, and took the boy and girl away.
Did she ever see them again?
Not until Roxanne’s funeral. The girl was eighteen years old. Running with a bad crowd. Killed in a car accident. The boy was deeply into drugs too.
So now she has just seven children. Plus one of her sons is divorced; the ex-wife doesn’t have anything to do with their three-year-old daughter, and the son has to work all the time. So the little girl lives with Peg and her husband. She keeps Peg company, drawing or looking at books beside her, while she sews or scrubs the appliances.
This morning now, Peg got up at three o’clock to finish up a set of slipcovers for a customer. Then she made blueberry muffins. Then she did a load of wash and hung it up to dry. Then she got her granddaughter up and fed her breakfast. Then she mixed up a batch of bread dough and set it out to rise. By the time she got home, she told me (picking up the last of her pins, packing to go), she figured it would be about ready to pop into the oven.
I told her I was a writer. I explained to her that now I would be leaving my house, too, leaving my littlest son with Vicky, our babysitter, and heading out to my office, to sit at my typewriter all day. I asked if she’d mind my writing about her.
“Why would you want to do that?” she said. “There’s nothing special or interesting about me. I just did what I knew. Fed my children, loved them, kept them busy. Made sure they said their prayers every night. That’s all I ever wanted.”
But just before she left, Peg noticed the old pink piano we got recently from my friend Ursula. She sat down at the keyboard. “Do you play?” I asked her. “No,” she said. “Not really. Not for forty years.” But suddenly she was playing a tune with both hands, not badly at all. From memory.
“It’s good I don’t have one of these around my house,” she said a few minutes later, closing the piano firmly. “I’d spend all my time playing it. But it sure would’ve been nice to have, for the children. Your little girl must love it.”
I didn’t tell her that as a matter of fact, the one who’s taking the beginning piano lessons in this family is me. I just shook her hand, circled the date on the calendar when the slipcovers would be ready. Headed out to my office, and looked out my window at Vicky, pushing Willy on the swings.
BABY LOVE
The Ninth Month
Baby Longing
The Six A.M. Report
The End of Diapers
O F COURSE LIFE WITH young children has its surprises. (Sometimes it’s the child himself who is the surprise.) But our days around here are probably more defined by repetition. If I have read Scat Scat Cat once, I bet I’ve read it five hundred times. I’ve sung “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word” nearly every night for the last eight years. Made ten thousand peanut butter sandwiches. Kissed five million places where it hurt.
There’s no denying some of the tasks of parenthood are simply tedious. But in fact I guess I also love and need the familiarity of the territory. (At best, we have rituals. At worst, ruts.) I love ending my day with a tour of my
I asked Peg what the hardest times were, raising her nine children. One, she said, was when her oldest daughter left home to go to nursing school thirty miles away. “I cried and cried to lose her,” she said.
Then she told me this story:
She only gave birth to seven children. But one day a neighbor called, asking if Peg would watch a friend’s two babies (a girl and a boy, both under two). Just for a few hours. Peg said no problem, which was true. Two more babies fit in just fine.
A few hours later the neighbor called again, asking whether Peg could keep the babies overnight. Once again Peg said no problem. The mother didn’t come the next day, or the day after that. After a few months Peg had the children baptized. After five years she and her husband decided they’d better file papers to adopt the kids. That’s when the mother finally showed up, and took the boy and girl away.
Did she ever see them again?
Not until Roxanne’s funeral. The girl was eighteen years old. Running with a bad crowd. Killed in a car accident. The boy was deeply into drugs too.
So now she has just seven children. Plus one of her sons is divorced; the ex-wife doesn’t have anything to do with their three-year-old daughter, and the son has to work all the time. So the little girl lives with Peg and her husband. She keeps Peg company, drawing or looking at books beside her, while she sews or scrubs the appliances.
This morning now, Peg got up at three o’clock to finish up a set of slipcovers for a customer. Then she made blueberry muffins. Then she did a load of wash and hung it up to dry. Then she got her granddaughter up and fed her breakfast. Then she mixed up a batch of bread dough and set it out to rise. By the time she got home, she told me (picking up the last of her pins, packing to go), she figured it would be about ready to pop into the oven.
I told her I was a writer. I explained to her that now I would be leaving my house, too, leaving my littlest son with Vicky, our babysitter, and heading out to my office, to sit at my typewriter all day. I asked if she’d mind my writing about her.
“Why would you want to do that?” she said. “There’s nothing special or interesting about me. I just did what I knew. Fed my children, loved them, kept them busy. Made sure they said their prayers every night. That’s all I ever wanted.”
But just before she left, Peg noticed the old pink piano we got recently from my friend Ursula. She sat down at the keyboard. “Do you play?” I asked her. “No,” she said. “Not really. Not for forty years.” But suddenly she was playing a tune with both hands, not badly at all. From memory.
“It’s good I don’t have one of these around my house,” she said a few minutes later, closing the piano firmly. “I’d spend all my time playing it. But it sure would’ve been nice to have, for the children. Your little girl must love it.”
I didn’t tell her that as a matter of fact, the one who’s taking the beginning piano lessons in this family is me. I just shook her hand, circled the date on the calendar when the slipcovers would be ready. Headed out to my office, and looked out my window at Vicky, pushing Willy on the swings.
BABY LOVE
The Ninth Month
Baby Longing
The Six A.M. Report
The End of Diapers
O F COURSE LIFE WITH young children has its surprises. (Sometimes it’s the child himself who is the surprise.) But our days around here are probably more defined by repetition. If I have read Scat Scat Cat once, I bet I’ve read it five hundred times. I’ve sung “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word” nearly every night for the last eight years. Made ten thousand peanut butter sandwiches. Kissed five million places where it hurt.
There’s no denying some of the tasks of parenthood are simply tedious. But in fact I guess I also love and need the familiarity of the territory. (At best, we have rituals. At worst, ruts.) I love ending my day with a tour of my
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