My own mother wrote about growing older:
Soon I will have my 85th birthday. It has been nearly two years since this thought occurred to me: I spent several years of my life living with a saint. Then I wondered why it took me so long to realize it. For several years I tried to write a poem honoring my mother, Verna. I never could do it. My attempts were unworthy. Now I know why. It is difficult to describe a saint.
My mother was born May 3, 1880. She had one brother, a year or two older. There were two younger sisters. When Mom was eight years old, her mother died. Grandpa Wilson, a farmer, did the best he could with his little brood. Eight-year-old Verna was often left to do a little housework and get dinner on the table. For protection she had a dog.
Verna’s brother Ben had to help with any kind of work a 10-year-old could do. One day when he was chopping wood, Verna was nearby watching. Alas, she stood too close; a chip blinded her left eye. From that time she could see only daylight and darkness with that eye.
I don’t remember ever hearing her complain about it. Sometimes she would cover that eye with her hand when she was reading. Mom could sew but made only everyday clothes. She did a very nice job of that. It was many years before I realized why we had a dressmaker. Shortly before my 65th birthday, I lost sight in my left eye. That gave me a lot more understanding of mom’s vision problems.
After a time Grandpa remarried. I remember him as an old man, still tall, wearing a long white beard. Mom probably got her height from his side of the family. He liked to tease, but I picture him as a quiet sort of person. I could be wrong, but I feel Mom inherited her quiet nature from him, too.
At an early age she was doing housework and living with her employers. McCorkle was one employer name I remember. Also one year she taught school. She never said much about that, feeling that she was inadequate because she had no formal teachers’ training.
Verna was only 19 when she and Charles E. Howard were married in the parsonage at Wingate, Ind. It was December 21, 1899. They went back to her home for a wedding dinner and were snowbound. Their new home was a little west of Veedersburg on a 15-acre plot of ground. When they got there, Charlie picked her up and carried her into their little log cabin.
18 or so years later, I arrived on the scene. I, Verna and Charlie, along with six children, were living in a small village called Sterling. Veedersburg was to the west, just across Coal Creek. Our house was the last one to the east on our road in Sterling. Across the road (North) was Chambersburg but most people just called it “Sterling.”
Can you imagine a seventh child being given a name meaning “Gift of God”? My folks did that and made me feel as wanted as each of the other children. Times were hard. World War I was calling the boys off to war. My oldest brother enlisted and served as an ambulance driver in France. The ambulance was a horse-drawn vehicle. On the home front our family came down with influenza, with only three of us escaping. Brother Lawrence (Jack) was 12. He could cut beans and fry potatoes. Owen would’ve been four or five and I was four years younger than Jack.
(In the margin, Mother wrote 1875 dad and 1880 mom 1900 Everett 1903 Rus 1905 Jack 1908 Leslie 1910 Ruth 1913 Owen 1917 Dorothy.)
There were many deaths caused by the flu, but some way we all survived on beans and fried potatoes!
Then while I was still in the baby or toddler stage, we had a round of mumps. I don’t know how many had them at the same time. I had mumps, whooping cough, and erysipelas all at the same time. Mom had mumps. Is it any wonder no one could remember whether I had mumps on one side or on both sides! Measles made their rounds, too. I can’t put an age or date with that.
When my siblings Ruth and Leslie were growing up, it seemed that every Sunday afternoon a bunch of their friends dropped in. They cracked nuts and made two batches of candy. Fudge and divinity. Two of their friends, a brother and sister, often came after supper and the four of them studied around the dining room table.
When Ruth was a junior, she got sick. For eight or nine months she was in bed. Day and night we cared for her. The rest of us could go to her door, but not enter her room. The doctor came often. When Dr. gave up he said she would not live over the weekend, but she did. There was a long convalescence. Ruth was out of school for years. Then she finished her junior year (the last six weeks). The following year, 1932, was my freshman year and Ruth and Owen graduated.