Dear Will:
As I think I may have told you a time or two, I am one of seven children, all born during a stretch of ten years or so, an incomprehensible feat of reproduction that has since been proven theoretically impossible by science. Now consider that I grew up in a “traditional,” single-income household in which my father went off to work each day while my mother managed the home. My siblings tell me that in the early years there was some hired help, but to be honest, I don’t remember that at all. As far as my memory goes, it was just Mom and the seven of us until Dad came home from work. Imagine.
In those days, each Sunday we all went off to church together, which is to say, my mother and the seven of us went off to church together while my dad, perhaps sensing the possibilities on the other end of the drive, stayed behind, alone in a quiet house. Now maybe you’re thinking: “Well, the seven of you must have been little angels then.” And if you’re thinking that, clearly you have never been in the same room with us, because if you had, you would know, and testify with conviction if called upon, that we were anything but angels there on that crowded pew (or anywhere else, for that matter). How in the world did a 5-foot-3-inch angel-mother manage all of us demons singlehandedly during worship services? It should not have been physically possible. (The science, for now, remains inconclusive.)
From the second through the eighth grade, I lived with my family in Redlands, California, on a street that was teeming with children, many of them my age or close to it. So during the summer months, after we finished our chores we would scatter around the neighborhood to play with our friends. My mother just turned us loose with the understanding that when she called, we would come right home. But there were no cell phones in those days, so rather than “call” us, my mom would simply whistle. With just her thumb and one finger she could produce a siren that could be heard blocks away all over the neighborhood. I’ve never learned to match it.
Due in no small part to her Wyoming upbringing, much of my mother’s daily activity was oriented around feeding the hoard. (She was one of nine children, her father one of 16, so massive meals were a necessary daily preoccupation.) Every day, we ate a hot breakfast and dinner together—all nine of us, when possible. Breakfast might include pancakes, fried eggs, and bacon, and yet when we were done and ready to blast out the door to school, she had sack lunches ready for each of us. Dinner included a number of go-tos: fried chicken, roast beef, chicken-fried steak, always accompanied with potatoes or rice and vegetables or salad or whatever. Real meals, in other words, enough for nine. Day after day. Think of it and you’ll agree with me: Not actually possible. Not possible at all.
During breakfast, my mother would work the griddle while we ate. We were kids who eventually grew into teenagers, so you might safely surmise that this was largely thankless work, taken for granted and sometimes criticized. (Shameful.) Nevertheless, I have a mental image of her sitting during dinner at one end of the table, delighted with the chaos all around her. There would be multiple, often inappropriate conversations going at once, each one growing in volume in order to be heard above the din. The pandemonium would include fights, accusations, recriminations, and discipline. Eventually my elder brother would tire of it all and beg to be released on his own recognizance, while my father, looking on in amusement, would just shake his head: “If only I had been an alligator,” he sometimes mused. “I could have eaten the eggs.” My mother, for her part, would look over her irreverent brood and just beam.
There is so much more that I could tell you about that madcap household—the drama, the tension, the difficulties common to any family. But these are the images that linger: security and freedom, nurturing and belonging, laughter and love. So many of the details seem unlikely, in retrospect. Incomprehensible. Impossible even. And yet it all happened. I know because I was there. I think of it now, and there is one salient detail that remains hardest of all for me to understand: How did I get so lucky?
PW
