These bloom in the winter, when we really need them

 

Snow Gravel

WHEN YOU SHOVEL a path through the snow on a gravel driveway, often gravel comes with. I must have dumped it all in one spot because now that the snow's melted, there's a little mound in front of my car. If you look sharp, you can see where the path was, and the pattern of the permeable paver grid.

A Hot Saturday In July, 1955

July 1955 was hot, the third weekend extra hot, on the morning of the Saturday of that third weekend
and in what was then tiny little Providence Hospital
all at once seven women went into labor
Today the Port of Everett is a good-sized city with a Boeing plant and a naval base and the hospitals are large and modern,
But it was a different time
Then, the one hospital had a maternity ward with two rooms near by equipped to support birthing, and no laundry service on the weekend.
This is plenty on a normal day, but - seven at once?
Head Nurse looks at her patients (she called them her girls; it was a different time.)
The one on the left is having twins. It is her first birth and Head Nurse does not like what she sees on the chart.
Next is a skinny teenager who had walked in this morning never having seen a doctor.
There must be more to her story, but no time, Head Nurse has to make decisions.
Head Nurse looks at all seven women. They look at her.
In the corner, Doris speaks up, "I can wait a little longer. He - AH! - he is not quite ready."
Head Nurse looks at Doris and sees a short woman with broad shoulders, eyes as blue as the sky outside.
There is no time to ask why Doris is so sure she is having a boy, just to look at the chart.
"You are healthy, you have had three children before with no complications. Hm."
Doris winces but only inside.
Head nurse has no way to know her first child died before his first birthday, of something they today have a shot for.
"Doris, thank you for waiting. It may be some time."
Doris got out her book.
She loved to read; a habit she picked up in her childhood, on a farm near a tiny town in Saskatchewan, called Duck Lake.
Where's that?
You know the high plains of Montana? Hot in the summer, blizzards in the winter?
Go north of that, 400 miles: Duck Lake.
Her ancestors had been migrant workers from Kentucky, following the crops as they ripened, first in Oklahoma, then Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, then Canada north until the farms ran out.
The last farmer they worked for said "Do like me - homestead!"
They registered a claim, built a cabin, survived the winter, set to farming.
Their grandaughter Doris knew farm work, had farm muscles, milked cows, drove a tractor better than a car, had helped at more than a few birthings in a farmhouse.
When her brothers played pranks, she pranked them right back.
When Jerry learned how easy it was to swipe a fruit pie as it cooled on the window sill, she did not complain, oh no.
She made the next pie with her best crust and a filling of sawdust.
That took care of that!
Her parents made sure their children got schooling.
Doris took to books, quite well. At the age of 16 took the train to to board with the nuns in Saskatoon.
Two year later she came home with her certificate
Came home to Duck Lake to teach the mixed grade schoolroom
Not enough kids for separate classes - it was a different time.
The summer she turned 21 Doris took the train again to visit Aunt Dusty, in the faroff port of Everett, Washington State, USA
They went dancing at the VFW where Doris met Robert, a young veteran working at the pulp mill.
A year later they were married.
Four years later, she was waiting to have her fourth child on a hot Saturday in July.
Reading in bed, a science fiction thriller with spaceships, a thing that she loved, she has two chapters to go, then one
But she stops, marks her place with her rosary, and rings the bell.
The nurse's aide enters.
"Yes?"
"It is time. He is coming."
"No! Doris, the rooms are full. You must wait."
"I can wait, but he can not."
Not fifteen minutes later, the nurse's aide cuts the cord, wraps the squalling little boy in a soft blanket, and hands me to Mother.
She holds me.
Later mom loved to say, "Around lunchtime the doctor came by, counted your fingers and toes, and put his name on the paper.
I guess you were just in a hurry and did not want to wait. You have been like that all your life."

This story she told me every birthday I was home.
Every birthday I was away she called me, and told me the story.
Why? I never asked; when I was young it was nothing to me.
Now I realize when we tell a story, we relive that moment.
When she told that story, she relived that moment.
It was a different time, but a mother's love remains the same.