In summer before I started the eighth grade Mother and Daddy called my sister and me into the living room for a family meeting after dinner. Ginnie Lou and I looked at each other surreptitiously. What was this about, we wondered? We’d never had a family meeting before. Were we going to move? Were our folks divorcing? Was mother going to die, because she had been sick lately? Ginnie Lou and I, just entering our teen age years, had lived very uneventful, ordinary simple lives with no earthshaking events happening. What was going on?
“Girls,” mother said, “We have very important news.” She looked at Daddy, who had a strangely sheepish look on his face as he wiggled uncomfortably beside mother on the couch. “You are going to have a little brother or a sister, and that’s why I’ve been sick lately. It’s called morning sickness and it comes when you are expecting a baby. The baby will be born in six months.”
My sister and I sat silent and dumbfounded. “Oh,” we finally said with one voice, and that seemed to end the family meeting. What mother and daddy expected of us we didn’t know – but Ginnie and I later agreed that all we could think about at the time was the act that was described in Frances Bruce Strain’s book “Being Born” which our mom had handed to us to read a week or so earlier, the act between a man and a woman that brought a baby into the world – and that had caused us then to say in disgust, “Not OUR parents.” And now it was true, our parents did it for sure!
Our innocence had ended.
“Girls,” mother said, “We have very important news.” She looked at Daddy, who had a strangely sheepish look on his face as he wiggled uncomfortably beside mother on the couch. “You are going to have a little brother or a sister, and that’s why I’ve been sick lately. It’s called morning sickness and it comes when you are expecting a baby. The baby will be born in six months.”
My sister and I sat silent and dumbfounded. “Oh,” we finally said with one voice, and that seemed to end the family meeting. What mother and daddy expected of us we didn’t know – but Ginnie and I later agreed that all we could think about at the time was the act that was described in Frances Bruce Strain’s book “Being Born” which our mom had handed to us to read a week or so earlier, the act between a man and a woman that brought a baby into the world – and that had caused us then to say in disgust, “Not OUR parents.” And now it was true, our parents did it for sure!
Our innocence had ended.
ANNOUNCING THE BIRTH OF LITTLE STEVIE DOBBINS
APRIL 10, 1949 - 8 lbs 10 oz
1 comment:
That is a cute story!
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