Some women are not"cut out" to be mothers. It was my mother's talent. She had enough patience for a dozen children, and she was lucky to have three. Given our financial circumstances, I don't know how they could have supported more. Given her unique blood type, which was unknown at the time, she could not have had more. Later in her life she was told about the Rh negative factor. Her third child, Bobby, was sickly, but he survived, and he was always her favorite, the cutest little boy you ever saw. He was small and had blond curls. She couldn't bear to cut them, so he became the original Hippie. He was about three when it was cut the first time. Of course she didn't tell anyone he was her favorite, but we could tell. He was sickly and missed a lot of school, but he was very smart, and everybody loved him. He was always closer to her. It hurt her that I was not able to go home often in those lean years of graduate school and getting our feet on the ground. Bobby always knew he was her favorite.
My baby sister was born when Bobby was two, but the jaundice took her life in a few days. It was a terrible time for all of us. She was so beautiful, lots of black hair, and my mother sobbed for weeks at losing her. The next year she had a still born boy, and every year after for several years she had a miscarriage. To preserve her health she had a hysterectomy. It was the only time I remember her being in bed for very long.
Our houses were always so small after we moved from the Civil War house. I guess it must have fallen apart after we moved, I was in second grade when we moved back to Deep Run, the small community about ten miles from Kinston, called Kingstown in the 17th century. It was a very old house, too, without interior walls, or sealing, as we called it, which made it very hard to heat. It had a loft and someone had left a huge old volume of Dickens up there. I read Pickwick papers. The most fascinating thing about the book was a hole eaten all the way through it by a worm. It really was a book worm! The cartoons in the book were fabulous. I will never forget Mr. Pickwick on his donkey holding the reins with one hand and a long stick with the other. On the end of the stick was a bunch of carrots which he held just in front of the donkey's nose to entice him to keep walking. I spent many hours up in the loft with that book. Mama became very aggrivated with my being so absorbed by it when I should have been working.
Bill and I were always fighting. Mama would threaten to go in the woods and never come back if we didn't stop. When Bobby was old enough to take sides with Bill, they were finally able to subdue me, and she had more peace in the home.
Mama had a very soft heart. Traveling salesmen came through our area occasionally. She had little sales resistance, and once she bought a piece of fabric from a Jew. How did she know he was a Jew? We had a bull dog so mean that people would borrow him to catch an escaped pig. Anyone approaching the house had to deal with the dog. When he did not even bark at the little man with the suitcase, Mama knew he was a Jew. After all, they are God's chosen people! If possible, she would not answer the door when a salesman came by our house. She made us sit quietly, because even if he had something we wanted, she usually had no money. Regulars like the Watkins man were planned for, and she always bought vanilla.
Once we were playing at a neighbor's and a man came by selling books. He asked if she knew when the lady next door (Mama) would be home. I said, "She is home. Come on. I'll go with you." She was so mad at me when I took him right in the house where she was sewing. She bought a medical book, rationalizing that as far as we lived from the doctor, we should be able to take care of ourselves with that book.
One night Daddy woke me to say he had to take Mama to the hospital. She was screaming in agony. He said, "Now, don't go back to sleep! Stay awake and listen for your brothers!" The reason he did not want me to go to sleep was because I had become a sleep-walker, and just before that he had heard me walking around, had asked what I was doing, and I said I was looking for matches. They were afraid I would burn the house down. Mama was holding her hand to her ear, saying something had crawled in her ear and they couldn't get it out. When they got to the front door of the hospital where there was a bright light, the bug crawled out and they came home without even going inside.
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