Learning to be a Mother

Our house was not quite a mile from my parents if we walked through some woods. If we went on the roads, it was more than a mile. Ed’s work was only a five-minute walk from my parent’s house. When he first started working there, he was required to work evenings a week once monthly. Evenings meant until midnight and I was afraid to stay alone. I would dress Evan warmly and we walked with Ed and stayed at my parents. He came in at midnight and we would go home the following morning.

It came time for his week of evenings and I was busy getting ready when Ed asked me what I was doing. I told him getting ready to go with him to my parents. He was quiet a few minutes then he told me I could not go. Stunned, I asked him why. He explained I was a mother now, and everything I did would affect our son. He explained if I was frightened our son would be frightened, so I must stay home and learn there was no fear in being alone. I was silent in my horror but if he said I must stay, then I must stay. He saw the tears in my eyes and hugged me tight, saying the time would fly and he would be home.

I did my washing every morning. I was 17 now and as I first began changing my son’s diaper, I recalled going into my neighbor’s house as a child. It always smelled of wet diapers. That was such an unpleasant memory; it motivated me to wash every morning so as not to have wet diapers in the house long at the time. There was no such thing as disposable diapers in those days and I wanted my son’s diapers to be as white as snow. Therefore, with those two motivations, washing each morning seemed to extricate both problems. My mother was in AL during some of that time and she later told me she and her friend laughed when they received my daily letter. She said the first line never failed to be, ‘just finished washing diapers and hanging them out.’ She said she had never told me to do that and why did I think I must. I reminded her of our neighbor and she laughed at me for even remembering.

Nevertheless, as I folded diapers that day after Ed left, I was aware of silence so loud it hummed. As the afternoon became evening, my work became less and I begin to get Evan into his nightclothes. With the night hours getting darker (there were no streetlights), I refused to let Evan go to sleep. I talked to him, laughed, and read to him. He really did not like sleeping at night anyway. It was December and cold and Evan was nearly four months old. Suddenly noises were exploding in my ears but the main sound was something trying to tear the roof off. I knew what it meant to be scared stiff.  I sat in the middle of the bed with Evan in my arms waiting for the unimaginable to happen.  I was sitting just that way with Evan looking at me with wide eyes, slobbering and goo, goo, gooing at me. I am sure he was trying to make me laugh as I had him the past two hours, but it failed to make me smile.

Just then, Ed walked in the door and I motioned to him to be quiet. ‘Listen’, I whispered. ‘Something’s trying to get in,’ and I pointed to the ceiling. He went back outside but soon returned. ‘Honey, the wind is blowing a little and that limb is scraping against the roof.’

That little scene played out twice and I accepted a fact; I could stay alone without Ed or my parents and not be afraid. My sons grew up unafraid of noises, unafraid of thunder, lightening, or wind. I never again needed anyone to be with me. That did not mean I remained totally free of fear. If Ed told me he would be home at a certain time, I could count on it. However, as in all events of life things do not always work out as we plan and there were those few times he could not get home and neither could he call. Those times, I had him dead and buried and the boys and me living in the Baptist Orphanage. By the time, he did get home, I was crying to high heaven but somehow my sons never knew. Normally they were sleeping and while my tears were copious, they were silent.

He never failed to be halfway prepared for my behavior and I do not remember him ever being impatient with me. After a few years, I finally quit burying him every time he was late but there was always just a tiny pain in my heart until he was safely home. As I look back over our lives, now that he has been in Heaven six years, it seems perfectly natural we were together most of the days of our marriage. When he was pastor of a church or when we built a business together, we seemed to be a team. If I could not be with him, he was back as soon as possible because he loved home.

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