Ten absolutely, totally useless, #5

I was born the child of a trail blazer. I was the final child of a forty-two year old woman back in the days when it wasn’t cool to be a mother at forty-two years old. That would make me what my siblings all referred to as the ‘baby of the family’, like it was some place of high honor, like I was a Princess… or something. Many times I would have gladly swapped places with either of them. It was a lonely position most times. My oldest brother was already fifteen years old when I was born, my sister was almost 11 and my nearest in age brother was already six, by one day.
Just to keep them in line, I was known to assure my three older siblings that after my parents had each of them they knew they could do far better and after three dismal tries and failures, they finally had me. They knew perfection when they had found it and decided to stop with me.

After I was a grown woman, I remember my mother telling me about the times my daddy’s mother would criticize her for having four children. (This was long after my Grandmother's death and maybe years after I married.) My grandmother seemed to think it was such a ‘sin’ or ‘shame’ at the very least for my Mama and Daddy to have ‘ so many children'. None of his other siblings had that many children. It really irritated my Mama for them to have this conversation and I can’t blame her.

Here was my grandmother’s count when she mentioned the other siblings. (1) One of her daughters had only one child, (2) another daughter had two children she had lost at their birth, (3) the other daughter had two children, but had lost her daughter at a very young age. (4) One of her sons had no children,(5) another one only had one child at the time, but would later have a second child, and (6) another son had only one child but (7) my mom and dad had dared to have four children.

Now math has never been my best skill, but if I’ve counted right, that means that my grandmother and my granddaddy had seven, yes, seven kids. And she dared criticize my mother for having four? So, she had three more than my Mama. I wonder which ones she would have given up if she had had her time to go over?

I don’t think my Mama would have given up a single one of us…well, not most days, anyway. No, I don’t think…I know… she wouldn’t have given one of us up. Good for you Mama, for getting upset with a nosy old mother-in-law, even if she was my Grandmother.

Maybe I sensed how she felt, and that’s the reason I never felt as close to her as I should have. I guess I kinda took her comments personally, since I was the one who was the tail-end of that family that my Grandmother apparently didn't think they should have had.

And, good for you, too, Mama, for recognizing perfection, although there were plenty of times when I really wished I hadn’t been so perfect. Then you may have felt compelled to have another sibling close to my age for me to grow up with. But you were pushing the age limit, weren’t you?