Welcome Little One

Included in the new book “Re-Write Your Life” by June Swadron http://www.juneswadron.com

So you finally made it, little bald baby. Saturday night. 11:00. You tried once before, changed your mind, then three days later decided to brave it. You should have come through the first try and you could have been twins with your double cousin Pam. Then she wouldn’t have been able to hold her superiority over you all those years. Oh well, now you can claim to be younger, which is just as sweet.

The 26-mile trip over the bumpy rural Montana roads must have helped ease your way. And your Dad made that trip every evening for five days to come and see you and your Mom, while Wendell stayed at the farm with Grandma Mullet.

Grandma and Grandpa Kauffman would come up after church on Sunday to see you – the 23^rd grandchild. They would also visit Pam and her mother, your Aunt Gladys. There was probably a whole stream of relatives coming to visit both of you. Uncle Morris and Uncle Cliff would make jokes about your bald head. Aunt Jesse would have come in from the ranch and Aunt Jerry would come up. And Aunt Cele. And Aunt Lucille.

Thursday you made the trip back out to the farm. How did it feel to drive onto the yard and smell the scorched brooder coop that burned the night you were born, the kerosene heater tipping over and starting it all ablaze? Is that a way to announce your arrival into the world?

Wendell would have come running out on the porch as the car drove up, a two-year old eager to see what a little sister looked like. You would be carried in up the steps to the porch, then in through the screen door to the separator room, then into the kitchen. The bassinet was set up in the bedroom with stacks of carefully folded cloth diapers, the receiving blankets, the knitted booties and caps.

Then Sunday you would go to church as you would for every Sunday for the next 17 years, this time to Red Top. Your Mom would try in vain to tie a ribbon to the few strands of hair on your head. And after church, you would be invited to someone’s house for dinner – probably Uncle Cliff and Aunt Ann’s, your first introduction to a few of your many cousins; Rolly, Donna, Judy and Gloria.

Life was good in the Red Top valley. Your Mom would take you to watch your Dad play softball at the field shared by the church, the school and the community. You would go along on the hunting trips – deer and antelope. You would go to the church picnics in Evan’s Grove. And every Sunday you would go to church and be bathed in the sound of voices lifting their acapella praise to the Lord – delivering their prayers and their gratitude directly to heaven’s door.