For a time we lived in Philadelphia on the East Coast. I had two brothers, no sisters, and a Mom and Dad. Mom stayed home with the kids and Dad worked. That was typical for the time.
With the rest of us growing up, Mom began to miss having a baby around the house. First she took in a foster child, a teenage girl, but, as she told me later, I was learning too much from her. So she began to take in babies. These babies were those who would soon be adopted, but who had been released from the hospital. Now there was always a crib in my parents bedroom and the babies came and went.
Then the agency asked Mom if she would take a baby girl for a longer period. This child had parents, but the mother was in shock! The baby’s father had left them at the hospital because the baby wasn’t a boy - or maybe it was something else, but this is what I remember. So, this is how we happened to have little Adelaide Helen (aka Snooky) in our home for the next two years.
We began to think of her as our little sister. We knew she had a mother because the mother visited our house frequently. Still Snooky was always with us. She belonged with us too. Personally, I was glad to have a sister. Mom was happy. She had another baby.
When Snooky was two, my Dad took a position on the west coast in Washington State. He’d been born and raised in the west and looked forward to returning. Frankly, Mom didn’t like to move. At all. But she was the kind of a wife who willingly followed her husband wherever he went.
There was a complication with this move. Mom knew she’d have to give Snooky back to her mother one day, but she always thought she would be close by and they would continue to visit us. She and Snooky’s Mom had become friends. It would be an easy transition, she thought.
It didn’t work that way. When Snooky was two years old, Mom returned her to her mother and we moved west. There wasn’t much of a transition. No time for Mom to release her heart strings. Dad didn’t seem to comprehend the depth of her pain. He said, “You’ll get letters and pictures from them. It’s not like you’ll never hear from her again.”
On the way west we stopped in Columbus, Ohio, to spend a week with Mom’s parents before continuing west. For we children, this was a great adventure. For Dad, he was returning home. For Mom, this was a tough time. She never liked to move and she’d never been out west. She was a city girl and we were moving to a little town in the country. We moved from a row house in Philly to a big drafty house in Washington with a big lawn and room for a garden. Dad was looking forward to growing things, maybe even raising some chickens.
We stopped part way in a big lonesome state and our weary father said. “Out!” He turned us to face away from the car, the insisted that we yell until we were tired of it. I remember that our voices didn’t carry there like they had in the city where they echoed off all the walls. It frightened me.
After a visit to Dad’s grandmother, our great-grandmother, and meeting some cousins, we finally arrived in Washington State. We had a shiny black car we were really proud of. We arrived in this dusty little wheat town in the midst of a dust storm. Mom was in shock. When Dad stopped to get the key to our new home, she made him park around the corner. Then she sat and cried. It just finally all came out.
The house was big and drafty, but in spite of the size, it had only two bedrooms and one bath. After a while, the porch over the entrance to the root cellar was fixed up to be my bedroom.
For three city kids, this town was heaven. In the city our parents had taken us to parks to play. Here we seemed to be living in a park. We loved it and were soon all over the town and in to everything.
But Mom wasn’t taking it well. It was a huge adjustment for her. She missed Snooky and nothing seemed to help. I would find her laying on the bed crying. “I thought I heard Snooky crying,” she’d say. “But when I looked she wasn’t there.” She tried to hide it, and maybe she was partly successful.
When I was thirteen we had been in this house for about three years. Mom was doing better. The day I found out she was expecting she wasn’t aware that I was in the house. Her sisters, maybe her mother too, were visiting her from Ohio and they were having a good chat. I was listening, of course. She told them that it was still a secret but she was pregnant and would have the baby in November.
My Mom pregnant! My teen age heart rebelled. No way! Still I didn’t say anything about it until I began hearing the news from other people.
It seemed like no time at all and we were being told to be quiet, Mom was napping. Dad was so protective of her. I think she was having a weepy pregnancy because I remember being told many times that if we made her cry we were going to hear it from him. We all survived it.
Your brothers and I always tease you about when you were born. I realized today that we didn’t joke a lot in our family, but we were always teasing you - and probably still do. Dad took Mom to the hospital in Odessa for your birth, and when she was settled came home to watch us kids. I remember that one time coming home from visiting Mom, Dad nearly missed his turn, and nearly ran into a fence post. I guess it was a hard time for him as well.
So, Mom and Dad brought you home one day and our world changed. We felt pretty grown up compared to you. I was thirteen when you were born. Rich was eleven and Fred/Bill was eight. We had no one close to you in age.
Mom was so happy! She told me once “No one is going to take this baby away from me. Never.” I knew she was talking about having to leave Snooky behind.
As an experienced mother, she didn’t have a lot of doubts about raising you except for your crooked little legs. She looked at you standing one day and realized your little legs looked like they were growing around a barrel. You rocked when you walked, but lots of babies walk like that when they’re just learning. She ran you to the doctor to find out you had rickets. Was she ever insulted. She knew she was raising you well. You ate well. You got plenty of exercise. Why should you have rickets? Well, they traced it down to her putting your cod liver oil in your hot cereal. They felt that diminished the effect of the vitamins.
So, they gave you spoonfuls of straight cod liver oil for a while. I don’t know how long, but I remember that you craved it and would ask for it even if it wasn’t time for more. Your legs straightened out and everything was fine.
So, I write this because you’ve sometimes been teased about being an Oops! - a child who wasn’t planned for. I know this isn’t true and I want you to know this deep down in your heart. I think Mom wanted you even more than she wanted the rest of us.
Love, Marilynne 