Tag: Mom

Doctors Make House Calls

Brenda Stratton

Or, at least they did in the 1950s.

I woke up one morning with a fever. Mom made me stay in bed and said I couldn’t go to school. She brought me some of my Little Golden Books and my favorite doll to entertain me. She called the doctor and made arrangements for him to make a house call later that afternoon.

I was fine with the books and my doll for a while, but I got bored. I had seen the books so many times. I don’t remember if I could read the words yet or just look at the pictures.

Before long, though, Mom brought me a new stack of books. Pearl Mohnen, the mother of the twin boys I played with across the street, had sent over some of theirs. I hadn’t seen them before, and I enjoyed them—but I noticed some had gum stuck to the covers. Boys! None of my books looked like that.

My bedroom was a stair-landing room. There was only enough space for my bed, with room to walk around it on one side. The other side was against the north outside wall. Around the staircase was a railing so no one could accidentally step off the ledge into the open stairway.

That afternoon, the doctor came. He stood on the right side of my bed, and Mom stood at the foot. He took his stethoscope out of his black doctor’s bag and placed it on my chest. I jumped—it was cold! I remember the quiet and the soft daylight in the room.

After talking with Mom, he pulled a pad of paper from his bag and wrote a prescription. Soon, he was gone again.

Mom knew she had to get to the drugstore before it closed, but we were home alone. It was cold and rainy outside, so she didn’t want to take me out—but there was no one to leave me with.

So she wrapped me in a blanket and sat me on a kitchen chair with my Little Golden Books and something with bright colored pieces—maybe her plastic clothespins, though after all these years I can’t quite be sure.

She told me she had to go get my medicine and that she would be right back. I knew where the drugstore was—it was only a couple of blocks away.

She told me not to get off the chair while she was gone.

I didn’t.

Mom knew she could trust me to do what she said—and I knew I could trust her when she said she would be right back. I wasn’t scared, but it did feel a little odd to be in the house alone.

She came right back, just as she said she would.

First Grade

Brenda Stratton

Around the time I first started school, I went shopping with Mom, Dad, and Monty for school supplies. I was so excited! I remembered the years when my brother went to school and I had to stay behind. Now I would never be left behind again.

When we got to the store, it was decided that Dad would help me pick out my supplies while Mom helped Monty. When everything had been chosen, Dad paid for the supplies. He was still carrying my tablet under his arm.

We left the store and had only gone a few feet when I heard him say, “Oh, no! I forgot to pay for the tablet.”

Without another word, he turned around and went back into the store — still clutching it to his chest — and apologized to the clerk for the mistake.

The only real experience I had with school before starting myself was the day I went with my brother — a memory I’ve written about before.

I can’t remember the exact first day of school. What I do remember is the school and the classroom itself.

The school was a tall, square building made of dark brick. It stood exactly one block from home. I couldn’t guess what school would be like, but I was anxious to find out.

I remember the inside of my classroom — from the wall of windows where the light filtered through the oak trees outside, to the crayon color chart on the wall with the names of each color printed in bold lettering. I remember my cubby, too. We each had one with our name printed on it to keep our nap rugs in.

We would move again before the end of the school year, but this is where I met Dick and Jane, Baby Sally and their pets, Spot and Puff. It is also where I learned that colors had names that I could write and someone else could read — and that classical music could make a child sit still and listen… and imagine.

Never Far From Home

Brenda Stratton

From the summer before I started school, until the spring of my third grade year, I attended five different schools.

One place we stayed a couple of years. Three others we stayed a very short time, hardly more than a few months. In the third grade alone, I attended four different schools. I never questioned why until much later in life, when it was too late to ask anyone.

We moved from the farm, near Viola, Illinois, to Galva, Illinois, 30 miles to the east. There I started school in 1958. 

By the spring of the next year, we moved back to the Viola area, near Aledo, Illinois. I finished first grade here, attended all of second grade, but before Christmas of the third grade, we moved again, this time 44 miles west to Burlington, Iowa. I was disappointed because I had a part in the upcoming Christmas play.

I remember we spent Christmas in Burlington, but we moved again shortly after, this time 72 miles northeast to Rock Island, Illinois.

We didn’t stay long in Rock Island, either, and by spring we moved again. Our move this time took us back to my mother‘s childhood home in the small village of Millersburg, Illinois, 7 miles northwest of Aledo. 

There I would live for more than 40 years.

If you wonder why I mention the distances between towns, it is to show that we were never far from Aledo, where I was born in Mercer County Hospital in 1952 — the same hospital where my own children would be born years later. We never strayed far from our roots or our families.

My parents are gone now, so I can’t ask them why we moved so often during those three years. With the moves came job changes for Dad.

Looking back, I understand more than I did then. Those were hard years in the Midwest. Jobs weren’t always steady, and people took work wherever they could find it.

But as a child, I didn’t see any of that.

Both Mom and Dad were very hard workers — and my dad always had a job. If one ended, another one soon followed. We never went without anything. If things were tough for them, they never let us feel it.

All I knew was that we kept moving…

and somehow, we were never very far from home.

Mom, Meet Butch!

Brenda Stratton

One afternoon when I was five, my mother put me down for an afternoon nap and decided to join me.

We were both sleeping soundly when we heard those words:

“Mom, meet Butch!”

We didn’t know anyone named Butch.

Mom opened her eyes.

She was face to face with an owl.

Butch the screech owl. And my brother was holding him.

Mom wasn’t amused.

It was well-known in our family that she didn’t like birds — at least not in her face. Or in her house. Or anywhere near her. Or near us kids.

She didn’t mind them from a distance, but she said they were dirty and carried mites. I wasn’t sure what mites were, but I got the idea they were some kind of crawly bug. Turns out I was right.

I don’t remember actually seeing the bird myself. I always took my glasses off when I was sleeping so I wouldn’t break them.

My brother wasn’t in the room much longer than it took to say those few words before Mom sent him scrambling back to the barn to put the owl back where he found it — cautioning him never to do that again.

Loudly.

Butch must have been a juvenile or Monty likely couldn’t have caught him. It never occurred to me to ask.

I do know Monty never brought a bird in the house again — or any other stray animal.

Sometimes I wonder if his ears were still ringing when he got back to the barn.

A Little Dab Will Do

Brenda Stratton

In the 1950s, Brylcreem was as common in Midwestern households as toothpaste.

One morning while Mom was getting Monty ready for school, she was combing his hair and absent-mindedly reached for the Brylcreem. She started distributing it through his hair and realized something was different — it was thick and white and did not blend into his hair. 

Glancing at the tube she held in her hand, she discovered she had rubbed toothpaste through his hair.

What to do? The bus would be there any minute. 

I was watching them from across the kitchen. She looked at me, shrugged, and quickly washed his hair. 

In those days, we didn’t have running water. We also didn’t have hot water. What we did have was an old hand pump at the kitchen sink that only brought in cold water. Cold well water. 

Monty went to school with wet hair that morning. I expect that was the only time in his life he had his hair washed with shampoo and cold water. Brrr. 

Brylcreem, a little dab’ll do ya — that is what the television commercials said. That morning, a little dab definitely did not do. 

Two Longs and a Short

Brenda Stratton

Party lines were a fact in the 1950s, and many rural areas didn’t convert to private lines until much later — around 1990. 

We didn’t have phone numbers in those days. We had rings. Ours was two longs and a short. 

Whenever the phone rang, everyone in the household listened carefully to see if the call was for us. When the phone rang at our house, it also rang in every other house on the party line. 

Sometimes it was hard to tell who the call was for. If you were just coming in from outdoors or another part of the house, you might not hear the entire ring.

Mom taught me the difference between our ring and those of our neighbors. I appointed myself the household sentinel to announce to the house in general — and Mom in particular — if it was indeed two longs and a short. 

The polite thing to do when answering the phone was to pick the receiver up and listen carefully for a moment to see if anyone else was already talking, then hang up if the call wasn’t for you. 

Not everyone was polite enough to follow this protocol. Some people would stay on the line and listen, a practice often referred to as rubbering. The people the call was for could usually tell someone was listening in, but only had suspicions as to who it might be. 

I wasn’t allowed to use the phone in those days — yet somehow, that old black box still found its way into my childhood.

It was a heavy, black desk telephone — the kind that seemed as solid as a small piece of furniture. A sturdy black base anchored it in place, and the handset rested across the top in a simple, unpretentious cradle. In the center sat the familiar rotary dial, its round finger holes lined with numbers that circled back toward you as you released them.

There was nothing delicate about it. The phone felt permanent, rooted to its spot on the phone table, as if it had always been there and would always remain. The cord, still straight then, stretched toward the wall in a quiet promise that this was not a toy, but a tool of connection — dependable, familiar, and woven into the ordinary rhythms of home life.

And when it rang, it carried its own unmistakable voice: two longs and a short, a sound that announced itself clearly and left no doubt that someone was calling.

That Has to be Enough

Brenda Stratton

There have been many times in my life when I’ve wondered if I was doing things the right way.

That question has come up for me in more ways than I can count.

As a mother, I have wondered if I was being too strict… or too permissive. 

What I learned goes back to something my mother told me many years ago—something that has stayed with me ever since:

“If you do the best you can with the information you have at the time, that is all anyone can do.”

I’ve always tried to do the right thing, even when I wasn’t sure what the right thing was.

All I could do was look at the situation, consider what I knew at the time, and make the best decision I could.

Did I make mistakes along the way? Of course I did. That’s part of being human.

There were times I wished things had turned out differently. I spent years going back over those moments, thinking about what I could have done better—even though the outcome never changed.

Somewhere along the way, I equated doing my best with doing things perfectly.

And when things didn’t turn out the way I hoped, I held onto that as regret.

It took me a long time to understand something I hadn’t seen before.

“I can’t judge what I did forty years ago by who I am today.”

I am not perfect. I never was, and I never will be.

But I did the best I knew how to do at the time—and that has to be enough.

Where’s Brenda?

Brenda Stratton

Every family has that one child who tends to do a disappearing act sometimes. In our family, that was me. It wasn’t intentional, but that’s how it turned out, anyway.

I was playing outside by myself one summer day. When Mom went to check on me, I was nowhere to be found — or so she thought.

I was dragging a small doll blanket around with me. I had been playing with my doll — and probably the cats and dog, too.

The bridal wreath bushes around our front porch were in bloom. As a little girl, I loved flowers, and I had been admiring the bridal wreath. I loved them so much. 

I laid down on the porch with my doll and doll blanket. I was looking up through the branches — and fell asleep. Mom had apparently been calling me, but I didn’t hear her. Because of the bushes, she couldn’t see me until she came outside and stood in front of the porch — and there I was. 

The Asian flu pandemic of 1957 swept through our little town that winter. Mom and I were both sick at the same time, which is why she was in bed the day I disappeared the second time.

We were taking a nap together in her big bed. I woke up before she did. I wasn’t used to her being in bed in the daytime, and I wandered around the house a little. Then I got sleepy, and decided to go back to bed, but I didn’t want to wake her. 

The bed was high off the floor, and the pretty pink nubbly carpet under it felt soft and safe, so I crawled under it and went to sleep. 

When I woke up, Mom was leaning over looking under the bed at me. She said I scared her. I never meant to. I just liked quiet places.

Bluebells in Spring

Brenda Stratton

Bluebells — one of my favorite signs of spring — usually arrived sometime in April, along with gentle breezes and a general thawing of the land.

I lived just three blocks from school, so I walked there and back each day. There was a patch of bluebells I passed twice daily. They belonged to Mrs. Joseph — an elderly neighbor — but she said she didn’t mind if I picked a few.

I was careful not to take too many, so we both could enjoy watching them grow. Mostly, I stopped to smell them — once or twice every day for as long as they bloomed — but sometimes I gathered a small bouquet for Mom. They smelled so good.

A friend showed me how to pluck a blossom from the stem, place the stem end in my mouth, and draw out what I can only assume was nectar. What a sweet surprise.

One year, I made May baskets from construction paper and filled them with small bouquets of bluebells. I left one for Mrs. Joseph, one for Mom’s best friend Marion who lived next door, and one for Mom — and felt very grown up doing it.

There were other flowers in the neighborhood, of course — many in our own yard, as Dad was an avid gardener — but nothing was ever quite so sweet as those first bluebells in spring.

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Brenda Stratton

Two years after we left the farm — in the spring of my third-grade year — we moved back to Mom’s childhood home in the little village of Millersburg, where so much of our family history already lived. 

It had been a tumultuous year for me. We moved often, and I was about to enter my fourth school in as many months — the fifth since starting first grade.

The new school — the little red schoolhouse that I became so fond of — was just two blocks from home. I would be able to walk or ride my bike back and forth.

Color rendering of the Millersburg School re-created from a historic newspaper photo.

The school itself — and many of the kids who lived there — were already familiar to me. My Aunt Evelyn — Mom’s sister — lived across the street. When I visited, she often put me in touch with the neighborhood kids, so I already had playmates when we moved there.

The school was made of red brick. It was two stories tall with a bell tower on top, though the bell had been removed before I ever walked through its doors. 

There were only two classrooms — one for grades one through three and one for grades four through six. Both classrooms were on the ground floor. 

Each classroom had only one teacher. Miss Garner was mine. The teacher for the bigger kids was Mrs. Brayton. 

Upstairs was a large room where we all ate lunch and had our music lessons. We did other things there, too, like school Christmas celebrations and sometimes a class play. 

Next to it was the kitchen and the tiny library. Sometimes when I went upstairs to get a library book, I’d stop in next door to say hello to Mrs. Archer, the cook. 

When that Monday came, and Mom brought me to school for the first time, I wasn’t nervous like I was at those other schools. I knew the streets. I knew the kids. It felt like home.