During my childhood in the 1960s almost all the women in our small town were mothers. They had two, three, five, eight children. By the time Mom was twenty-four, she had four kids. Pat, Brad, Leanne, and me, the youngest.
The mothers of Condon drove big boaty cars or station wagons with kids piled all the way into the back. Some of the women worked. Mom worked when money was tight. She started her first job as an assistant to the local doctor when I was six years old. Even though she wasn’t a nurse, she wore a white dress and white shoes with rubber soles that sounded like whispers when she walked. Her job seemed like that too, a whisper compared to the shout of motherhood.
More important than helping their husbands on the land or working in the offices and stores was that these women were our mothers. They cooked and baked, cleaned and washed, knitted and sewed. They watched us go off to backyards or barns or canyons to play, dropped us off at the swimming pool every day of summer; they called us in to eat, checked homework and dirty hands, bathed us and cut our hair, read to us and sang to us. They took turns bringing cookies and decorations to school holiday parties, threw birthday parties, organized Cub Scouts and 4-H and Brownies. They gathered to drink coffee and teach each other crafts: crochet and knitting, sewing and macramé and upholstery. They taught these things to their daughters. How to do everything.
They were pretty and smart and strong. My mom most of all. When she brought the treats to school parties, she dressed in the latest. Slim and lipsticked, her dark hair showed off high cheekbones and the angled lines of her jaw. She brought Valentine cupcakes with frosting hearts, Christmas tree cookies with silver beads for ornaments. I made sure everyone knew she was my mom. I wanted to be like her. And above all, the one thing I never questioned was that I would be a mother too.
My sister and friends and I played house with our baby dolls more than we played nurse or school or Go Fish. My doll had eyes that blinked. Her soft belly and bottom had a heft like a real baby. When I turned her over, she let out a sad cry. I wrapped my baby in the triangle of a blanket and fed her. The white liquid in the bottle flowed like real milk. I held my baby up to burp her, her head next to mine, light pats on her back, whispers in her ear. Anyone watching would think she was a real baby, that I was a real mother.
Mom and Dad gathered us kids together in the family room one evening when I was seven. We sat in a row on the sofa, Dad in an easy chair in front of us. Mom turned the TV off and perched next to Dad on the arm of the chair. Their serious faces turned into let’s-all-be-excited faces, with big eyes and big smiles. They said we were going to have a little sister or brother soon.
I took on a fast, hard pout: lower lip stuck out, head hung down.
“Why?” I said.
I shared left-handedness with Dad and my brother Brad, being a girl with my sister Leanne, brown hair and brown eyes with Mom. I shared my parents’ names. They were Jack and Jeanie. I was Jacklyn Jean. Everything about me was shared. Being the baby of the family was my one special thing.
I pouted all through Mom’s pregnancy. Mom said, “Can’t you be nice? Be happy for someone else.” Being nice was a big thing in our family. But I felt weak against myself. Dad said, “If that lower lip sticks out any farther, a bird’s going to come along and poop on it.”
My pouting didn’t stop my little sister Cris from being born on the day before I turned eight. Mom missed my birthday. Everyone said Cris was my present. I didn’t get a special cake like Mom always made for birthdays. I pouted some more.
Everyone said the baby had brown eyes even bigger than mine. Everyone said she was beautiful. Mom showed me how to cradle the baby’s head when I held her, how to heat a bottle and test it with drips of formula on my wrist. She taught me about burping and soft spots and diaper rash and how to put a wet diaper directly in the diaper bin and how to dip a poopy one in the toilet first.
My pouting got boring even for me. I started to like this baby. I still had bouts of jealousy and even teased Cris, and maybe I tripped her when she was learning to walk. Once I gave her a peppercorn to bite, which made her cry and made Mom mad enough to put Tabasco sauce on my tongue.
But mostly I felt glad for my little sister. She needed love and help. The urine ammonia smell, the poop smell, the sour spit-up became part of the love I felt for her, equal alongside baby powder and gentle shampoo and her giggle when I played and acted silly for her. She trusted me when she slept in my arms.
When we were out in the world, I carried her like Mom did, with one hip jutted out, one arm holding her, like I’d been doing this forever.
This is what I did. This is what my girlfriends did. With dolls, with little sisters and brothers, with the children we babysat. We pretended. We practiced. We prepared. Our mothers said to us, “When you grow up.” “When you have your own children.” No question. We would grow up. We would have children of our own.