Cheese and Me

On a cold February morning in 1945, the first in fact, a child was born in the old Tillamook county hospital in Tillamook, Oregon, a small coastal town.  Its one claim to fame is the Tillamook Cheese Factory - and me, of course.
 My parents were poverty level folks  My father worked hard to keep us going.  My mother...well, she was a mean little cuss who had no feelings for anyone other than herself. Even when she gave birth to my brother five years later, no spark of motherhood ever showed itself.
 In those days girls were tolerated and boys were worshiped.  I was mouthy and precocious...never knowing how intelligent I am, for I was told I was stupid and a dummy all my life.  If they said it - it must be true . I was also weak in my lungs and sickly.  My mother would look pitiful as she wondered aloud how that could have happened.
 People whispered that it might have been the two to three packs of Camels she smoked every day.  Dr. Lassiter would never dare to tell her...her sharp tongue could cut iron.
 When I was almost five years-old there was a lot of whispering and commotion.  Mother was given a pink satin bed-jacket and went away for a while.  One day my father took me to a big building he explained was the hospital...where that baby brother I longed for would be born.  So, that's how they did it, I thought to myself.
 Back then children were not allowed on the maternity ward, so my father held me up and my mother waved out the third story window.  Some man in a white coat held a bundle up to the window.  And that was it.  I was a big sister.  Not even any ice cream on the way home.
 The baby didn't seem to interest her, but she was proud of that bed jacket.  Brushing its pink satin with a look I wouldn't understand until I had my first boyfriend.

They brought Richard home five days later.  He just laid there and burped now and then. My father took cigars down to the mill in Garibaldi where he worked and life went on.  My mother plopped me in my miniature rocking chair, plopped the crying baby on my lap and said, "Okay, Sharon Lorraine, you wanted a baby - you got one."  She went to sit in front of the t.v. to smoke another Camel.
 My Grandma Flora and Aunt Donna came by, huffed and gave mother dirty looks.  Then they began to teach me how to take care of "my" baby.  I took to it like a duck to water.  Bottles, diapers...the whole thing.  I had a stool and a little gingham apron.  Remember, in those days there were no plastic bottles or throw-away diapers.
 My mother had already  taught me to do the wash in a Maytag wringer washer.  And I was a whiz at pining the wash to the four-lines out back.  After all, I was a girl and that was all a girl was good for.