MY MEMORIES

Chapter 7

A Baby Sister

My parents asked me to help them name my new sister. I wanted to name her Nancy Jewel but they convinced me to let them name her Margaret Elizabeth. Their first decision had been to name her for both grandmothers but Grandma Jones asked that they use the name of her sister, Elizabeth, who had died at the age of three from drinking wood ash lye on soap making day.

At first I was very happy to have a baby sister of my own but the change in our household was more than I expected. It seemed to be total chaos much of the time. My parents were not so available for me, Mama was easily upset and I had to be quiet when the baby was asleep.

The weather was terribly hot with no relief. There was no electricity to power a fan. We all suffered from the heat and Mama didn't get along well after the birth. Neither did the baby. I'm sure that Mama's condition contributed to the baby's unsettled stomach and not wanting to nurse. It seemed to me that the baby cried all the time and really wasn't much fun. I was also feeling the lack of attention. For the first time in my life I wasn't very happy.

Fortunately Grandpa Jones made an effort to play with me more than usual. He told me about the Civil War and how he had worried that he might be fighting his brother in the battles around Springfield, Missouri. He talked about living in northern Missouri and how he had chosen to move to the Ozarks after a real-estate transaction and had stayed there the rest of his life. He told me of games they played when he was a kid. It was interesting, and I was surprised to learn that I had played many of the same games. This extra attention from Grandpa was a great treat that I fully appreciated.

One day while Mama was still in bed after the birth and there were ladies visiting her and the baby, I seized the opportunity to have some fun. I loved to jump up and down on the feather bed but that was not allowed. I knew Mama would not get out of bed to stop me. I got on my bed in the corner of her bedroom and jumped up and down with the feather bed and quilts billowing up around my feet. Poor Mama kept trying to get me to stop -- sorry, I didn't stop for quite awhile for it was the most fun I had had since the baby arrived. The ladies soon left; I suppose to spare Mama more embarrassment. By then I was feeling sorry for Mama and I still had Daddy to contend with when he got home. I found it really wasn't so much fun after all.

After Mama was up and trying to take care of the many household chores it was my job to push the baby buggy so the baby would sleep. It seemed to me that I pushed that buggy for hours and felt that I never had any time of my own. My dog, Chubby, and I never got to explore any more and my play family, kids and dogs that I had invented, were pushed aside until I seldom thought of them. I guess this was growing up but I didn't like it. Having a baby sister was not at all what I had expected and I rather hoped someone would take her off our hands until one night I dreamed that someone kidnapped Margaret and we found pieces of her in the road east of our house. In my dream we were all crying and I was so scared.

A few months before Margaret was born I dreamed that Grandma and Grandpa Jones were coming to see us. My cousin had told me that if I told a dream before breakfast it would come true. I called Mama and Daddy to my bed and told them before breakfast. That day we got word that my grandparents were coming the very next day.

When I woke after this terrible dream I was still scared and I wanted so much to talk to Mama but knew I had to wait until after breakfast to tell her so my dream wouldn't come true. The folks kept asking me what was wrong and I kept answering, "Nothing." I had always liked to sit and watch my daddy eat. He would put gravy on biscuits and cut them in neat squares, then he would cut his side meat (home cured bacon) in matching squares. He would then take his fork and match a square of side meat with each biscuit square and eat it. This all took time and this morning I was impatient and wanted him to hurry. Finally everyone left the table and I ask Mama if breakfast was over. She said, of course it was. Then I began to cry and told her about my dream. It was such a relief to share this with my parents. They were very sympathetic and explained that it would have been OK to tell them before breakfast. They told me it was just an old saying that dreams come true if told before breakfast, and that I had experienced what was known as a nightmare. Secretly I had been wondering if I was to blame for the whole thing. When I realized how much I loved Margaret and that I didn't want anything to happen to her it cured me from thinking of her as a liability. I was her protector from that time on.

I never knew until I was grown that my parents had been told Margaret's head was too large and she would probably never mature normally. They carried that burden secretly. It was no wonder my mother had blue spells as she would call them. I can remember how excited Mama was when we were listening to the band in the El Dorado Springs City Park and Margaret, who was about 18 months old, began to respond to the music. I had always loved music and I couldn't understand Mama's excitement. Margaret's enjoyment of music progressed rapidly. While we were still quiet young we entertained the relatives with our singing and piano duets.

When Margaret was middle aged she became ill and had surgery for a brain tumor as large as a small grapefruit. The surgeon said his guess was she had been born with it. We looked at her baby pictures and, sure enough, there was a bulge in her skull in the area where the tumor was found. She recovered successfully and we still enjoy our music and all our times together.

Given a little time a baby sister can be just as exciting as I first expected.