In the Autumn of my 15th year , Mom came home from a Doctor’s appointment with a smile on her face. All she said was that we were going to get an addition to the family. I knew it, we were finally going to get a dog. That night at the Supper table Dad announced that “we” were going to have a baby. A baby? I thought we were getting a dog. My 2nd little brother was already going to school and we were finally getting him house broken. A baby, what were we going to do with another brother? The last one kept getting in the way and had this annoying habit of wanting to go everywhere I went.
As Winter turned to Spring, Mom became really ill and really big. One evening my Dad took me and little brother 1 to the Garage for a discussion. The one car Garage was detached from the house and had a gravel floor, it was where all manly discussions occurred. His instructions to us were two fold. One, Mom was sick and going to be confined to her bed or the sofa for the next couple of months. This meant that we , Lb1 and I, were going to have to take over the chores of taking care of the house. This meant washing and drying the dishes, three times a day, using the electric sweeper, doing the laundry twice a week and finally making sure that the ironing in the ironing basket got done. While we were pondering this unexpected plum, we were also told that we were going to have to buy a new house. Boom, that little nugget hit me like a lightening bolt. I wasn’t sure which was going to crimp my social life more, word getting out that I was doing the ironing or that we were going to move. As we walked out of the” car house”, as my dimwitted youngest brother called it, I swore little brother 1 to secrecy about the housekeeping stuff.
As It turned out taking care of the housekeeping wasn’t so tough because women from the Church kept dropping by to help out. Ironing though was one thing they didn’t touch, maybe it was too personal. My Dad wore a suit to work everyday and his white shirts and handkerchiefs had to be ironed just so. Lb1 had to stand on a box to reach the ironing board so mostly that chore became mine. Ironing the white shirts made sense, but the handkerchiefs? I didn’t understand , it was just going to be folded up in his pocket. Nonetheless, the chore was done and probably has something to do with my lifelong aversion to cloth handkerchiefs.
One evening my Dad got us all together and gave each a slip of paper. He then announced that the baby was going to be a girl and were each getting a chance to name her. We were to write our vote down and he would put them in a hat. The first name drawn was to be her first name and the second was to be her middle one. Timeout, a girl, what were we going to do with a little sister? I was totally not prepared for this bombshell. A girl and we were going to name her by drawing names out of a hat? He must of had too many sips of the Holiday Sherry bottle from the back of the refrigerator. After several minutes the drawing was done, with a minor delay when Lb2 couldn’t figure out how to spell his choice. I looked around the room, everything was calm and Mom and Dad were smiling at the choice of names. Was I the only sane one in this family? I didn’t know how I got my name but now I was afraid to ask. Surely they didn’t stop some stranger and ask for a suggestion. That would be the only thing more weird than this.
Several days later Dad took Mom to the hospital and brought us home a Baby sister. I don’t remember all this fuss when Lb2 was born eight years ago. He came home from the hospital at the same time we were getting a new washer and dryer delivered and I just thought he came with the package. Now, everything in the house was turning pink and Mom was the happiest I think, that I had ever seen her. Plans were moving forward for a new house and Lb2 had all these dumb questions about where babies came from. It was a good thing I had my trusty bicycle to escape all the madness. I would take long rides to ponder my life and wonder where I fit in to the whole scheme. All of this trouble and uproar over an 8 pound ball of pink. I still think it would have been a lot more fun and a lot less expensive if we would have just found a dog.
