My mother’s brief stays at the hospital at regular intervals were nothing out of the ordinary, with nine children and counting. One early day in October Mother headed off to the hospital again. We waited for her to arrive with a bundle, but every morning I found my grandmother at the stove under the dark windows of autumn, stirring a pot of oatmeal.
“Is Mother back?” I asked, wishing for her little plates of scrambled eggs and buttered toast.
“Your mother has to stay at the hospital a little longer,” she said. A frown on her forehead replaced her familiar dimpled smile. I knew not to ask any more.
That evening, Father told us we had a baby sister and put us on the task of naming her. Names of my second-grade classmates circled around in my head. Kathy, Susan, Diane, Lisa.
“Kathy Kathy!” I piped up amid the dozens of other names in contention.
“Kathy is the same as Catherine,” my oldest sister exhorted. Catherine was No. 9.
“How can it be the same?” I thought. I pitched the name into the din a few more times.
“No, Lucy!” more kids shouted. “It’s the same as Catherine!”
Father cleared his throat and we fell quiet. “How about Sarah Rose?” he said. How perfect and pretty it sounded.
Sarah Rose. Sarah so soft, and rose the velvet flower.
A few days later, Sarah Rose arrived home — but in the arms of a stranger. The nanny had purple hair, a white cardigan sweater, and sturdy black shoes. She smelled like Listerine, and I didn’t want her to be holding the baby.
“Mrs. Gillaspie’s going to take care of Sarah,” he said. “Mother has to have an operation.”
Later that night, I heard our blond, downy-haired baby crying. First little creaky noises and then full-out wails. One of the older kids knocked on Mrs. Gillaspie’s door.
“It’s OK to let babies cry,” she said. “It’s good for their lungs.”
I couldn’t sleep that night, wondering how long it would be before Mother would get home. I rolled up in my bed against the wall, so my sister-roommate couldn’t hear.
“Please God, make Mother better. Don’t make her have another operation,” I pleaded, nuzzling my pillow for a dry spot to land my face.
The weeks ahead were filled with the doorbell ringing and my heart starting. Neighbors delivered casseroles that we gave a timid try. Mass cards piled up. A friend from the Pepsi-Cola bottling company even delivered our own old-fashioned soda machine. We could swing open the narrow glass door, grab a shiny cap, and pull the bottle out without putting any money in. Cl-l-i-n-nk, cl-l-u-n-n-k, and it was ours. I grew suspicious of such gifts.
It was a nippy but sunny day in late November when our car curled around the driveway, finally answering my prayers. The boys opened the car door. Father circled his arms around Mother’s back and raised her up.
“Don’t touch her. No one can touch Mother. Remember, she still has stitches.” The boys and Father made their slow way up the red staircase to Mother’s room.
We were allowed to visit Mother only when we brought up a meal tray. Over those days I lingered in the master bedroom, taking note of everything that had been added. The plastic bins and hot water bottles. Medicines and creams. I sat tentatively on the edge of her bed, sniffing the little bars of cocoa butter that cluttered her nightstand.
“What are these for?” I asked.
“To help my scars go away,” Mother explained. I shivered and shuddered and set the bars back down, thinking of the stitches that were said to run down from her throat to her stomach. Mother drifted to sleep and I tiptoed out, waiting for the day I could jabber to her about school and ask her all the questions I asked as she stood by stove cracking spaghetti into big pots of boiling water.
Christmas neared, and it was time for my program at school. No one would be coming from my home. Grandma paused in her sandwich preparation to slip my pink wool dress over my head. Then my white tights and black patent leather shoes, her hands sure and fast, and she needed to load the paper lunch bags lining the counter.
At school, the kids were excited and jittery as they took their places in line at the front of the classroom. Our desks were pushed off to the side, the space filled with rows and rows of metal chairs borrowed from our lunchroom for the audience. At my teacher’s cue, I stepped forward, counting off the proscribed number of brown and beige linoleum tiles to start the narration.
I had said a few words, maybe a line, when the wooden door of our classroom swung open a little. Walking with very small, very careful steps, Mother entered the room. In her hand was a box of candy canes, for each student in the class. She smiled at me, and I felt a huge joy, and still a little fear that she should not be there. Not out of bed. Not walking. Not here. But she was. She had made it called a taxi felt her way down the stairs and out the door.
And at that moment, nothing mattered but the fact that I still had a mother. My birthday had come and passed six days after Sarah was born, and Christmas was so soon, but my greatest gift had just walked into the room.
Lucy Ewing (lucyewing@comcast.net) is an elementary school teacher and parent in the Boulder Valley School District with a background in marketing, television production, and growing up with lots of siblings. She is a member of the 2007-08 Colorado Voices panel.
