Mom was tired.
She had circles and bags under her eyes.
I wanted to hug her and pet her
plus I had a million things I wanted to talk to her about
but she was always either taking a break by reading her Bible
or changing another diaper.
She was real hard to catch ahold of.
I saw that Wes had taken over my jobs
vacuuming, washing clothes
trying to get all the diapers
folded and put away
trying to get some order
into the house.
Poor Wes was going crazy though.
One day he got real mad
and smacked one of the babies good
on its rear end
and it ran off squalling
and we laughed about it.
We knew we should be ashamed of ourselves
but we weren't.
We both missed Mom so much!
Jimmy was working
going to school
plus he had a girlfriend
so he wasn't much help.
Daddy wasn't a housework type of man.
So I took on the ironing
and swabbing out the bathroom
and rinsing dirty diapers in the toilet
but my first priority was to get a job
to make sure I could go back to college.
I worked all summer at Wharton Brassiere.
We made Secret Treasure bras
big humungous bras
and I spent 8 hours every day bending over my sewing machine
sewing darts into hundreds of bra cups.
It was piecework
so I skipped lunch in order to keep working
because the more darts I sewed
and the more bras I could drop into my finished box
the more money I made.
But oh how it hurt my back and neck and hands!
I met a girl there
Charlene
who made me laugh
with all her jokes about the bras
and who brought me pieces of sandwich
or banana
from her lunch bag
because she said she didn't want to come back from lunch
and see a skeleton sitting there still sewing.
I wanted to do something for her
to thank her for making Wharton Brassiere bearable
and even funny
so I invited her to our house for supper
and I was up half the night cleaning
the night before she was coming to visit.
In the morning I asked Mom if she thought she'd have time
to fix something good for supper
and if she could keep an eye on the house
to make sure it stayed clean.
Mom was so sweet.
She fixed stuffed meatloaf
and devil's food cake
and kept the house reasonably clean.
B U T...
right after supper one of the babies fell off his scooter
and slashed his leg
and we had to call the rescue squad
to take him to the hospital
and Mom went with him
leaving me and Charlene to watch all the other babies
because Wes and Jimmy were at work
and Daddy was visiting a member of his congregation.
Charlene gave babysitting a good try
but after a while
she called her Dad to come get her
and I stood at the screened door
a baby on one hip
another crying in the highchair
waving goodbye and thinking how lucky she was!
If it hadn't been for my sweet Charles
taking a weekend off work to come see me
once in a while
and my desperate prayers for a merry heart
instead of a crabby one
I would have spent the whole summer
wallowing in self pity!
Music Playing: Cry Me a River
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