Lydia begins her teaching career and meets a future blogger among her beloved pupils, all heading for a memorable first graduation day. A serious illness gets her second year off to a harrowing start, and further tribulations lay in store, but in the end there’s a new smile in Lydia’s life.

That first day, Mother and I packed the car full of Sister’s and my out-grown toys and got to the school well ahead of the bell, but there were children and parents already there. The school was brand new, having been just built, and although the classrooms were furnished, my kindergarten room had no toys in it as yet. Oh, the school board had purchased special counting sticks and blocks as well as a few rhythm instruments, but no toys as yet.

Previous chapters: Part 1 @ Part 2 @ Part 3 @ Part 4 @ Part 5 @ Part 6

It was a beautiful room. There was a counter on wall with empty toy bins, on wheels, under it, cubicles for each child’s clothes and a shelf for their snacks, a kindergarten-sized washroom in one corner and our own outside door, with a fenced-in yard with two sandboxes.

We were part of the school but segregated from the rest. The floor was tiled, with a large black circle in the middle where the children could sit and play games. At the back, large doors swung out to reveal hangers for winter wear and a fan in the ceiling drew the moisture out of the room.

Other rooms in the school were the same, except for no door to the outside, no private washroom and no child-sized cubicles. The staff room was fitted with a small refrigerator and a tabletop stove, as well as a couch, chairs and a small table. Everything smelled new and clean, and I loved it.

Once I unlocked my room, Mother and I started bringing in all the toys and other equipment I’d brought and began pinning name tags on the early-arriving children. As more parents and pupils arrived I had to leave Mother to unload and stayed in the room to be with the children. I heard a commotion outside but couldn’t find out the cause for a few minutes because parents were still bringing in their little ones. When I could get away, Mother had a young boy with her and both were carrying in toys and supplies.

After the car was unloaded, Mother told me that one boy, Paul, had put up such a fuss about entering the school that his mother didn’t know what to do with him, and then Paul had crawled under Mother’s car and couldn’t be coaxed out. That’s when Mother talked Paul into seeing all the toys in the car and getting him to help bring them in. I don’t know exactly what she told him, but Paul came in, carrying boxes of toys while his mother quietly went home. Once inside, Paul must have liked what he saw because he stayed, and during that school year he never missed one day, in the end receiving the perfect-attendance award [Thanks, Teach! – Paul “Dorseyland” Dorsey].

I was so new to teaching, and the six-week summer course I didn’t even mention any kindergarten curriculum. The Sisters helped me by providing a stack of sheets, suitable for four- and five-year-old children, and I had to improvise the rest. I guess it was lucky for me that I was still young enough to remember my own childhood and also all that play-acting I’d done being a teacher to dolls and invisible pupils, because without all that I would have been lost.

Those first days went by in a whirl. We read stories, sang songs, played games and did some seat work, while Mother either scoured the local paper for a place for me to stay or slept in her car.

By the end of the first week we found a house that offered a furnished room, but I had to do my own cooking, and that Sunday Mother drove me to Audrey and Ron’s home along with my belongings, and I was now a Georgetown resident – but only during the week. I guess this was so much easier on Mother as well as on me, and I now spent my time after school trying to get this sterile classroom to look more inviting to the children by putting up the pictures and drawings they had created, as well as arranging my toys. The school being so new, there was no grass to be seen around it, and sand and grit was being tracked in with each child. Because my pupils spent a lot of time on the floor, I was concerned about them getting dirty, so one weekend, while home, I found an old velvet drape, which I brought to the room and the children would sit on that. The janitor had so much work to do trying to keep the school dirt- and mud-free that he couldn’t get around to washing my floor each day, and I decided to start doing this job myself.

With fall coming and the rains turning the dirt into clay, I couldn’t keep up with the job of cleaning, and just before the official opening of the school, a cleaning service was hired to do the whole place. Boy, what a difference! Georgetown had the most beautiful maple trees with large leaves, which turned all shades of colours just before the opening, and I gathered a pile that the children helped me to tape to the windows. Now my classroom wasn’t so bare and the effect was very pleasing. With the artwork and toys, our room looked lived-in and the parents had a chance to see what their children had been doing since they left them in my care.

When the furniture arrived for each classroom, the teacher’s desks were packed inside huge cardboard boxes, and I managed to save two of them. One day after school I turned one box into a playhouse for my students. I cut out windows, made a door that swung open and topped the thing off with a roof. Using poster paints, I decorated the house and hung curtains inside and waited for the children to see the new addition to our classroom. They were delighted! In fact, that house soon became their favourite place to play but, being too small, it couldn’t hold all of them. So I got busy and created a second house from the other carton, and now they all had room to fit.

Before the end of the school year, with one house already in pieces, I asked some older children to bring the remaining house to the little girl with whose parents I lived. We must have looked pretty silly, walking down the street, carrying a cardboard house but Valerie sure enjoyed playing in it until it too fell apart.

I must have been doing all right in the teaching department because I got no complaints from any parents or the principal when I started my class in reading or arithmetic. The Grade 1 class had finished the first pre-primers, so I borrowed them and got my class started in reading. Counting, colouring, singing and playing games only went so far, and the children had begun to get restless so, not knowing what else to do with them, we began with real school work. I needn’t have worried. The little ones took to academic work like ducks to water and before long sheets of work appeared on the bulletin board. Some children who had older siblings already knew how to read and so we sailed through the year.

During this time Lonnie and I were really having problems, and we now saw very little of each other. Before, I would see him almost every weekend, but now a month might go by without us going out. We still talked on the phone, but were drifting apart.

In the spring, chicken pox went through the school, and my class wasn’t spared. There were days when only two or three children came to each of the morning and afternoon classes, and Paul was one of them. Kathy was another child who came every day and she, along with Paul, received the perfect-attendance award. With hardly any children in attendance, we didn’t go on with regular work, but did a lot of playing, singing and story reading.

One day Marie came in shortly after the morning class was let out, cold and shivering. The bus that took the first class home also picked up any children for the afternoon and brought them to school. Most of the children played outside but that morning Marie was too cold so she came in. I felt bad for her, so I took her into the teacher’s lounge, warmed her up and made her some chicken noodle soup. Marie, who was very shy, just sat there, eating her hot soup and looking at me with her big blue eyes, I guess seeing her teacher in a totally different way.

In February of ’59 Brother decided to get married, and we had a real Ukrainian wedding in Hamilton, in the church we sometimes attended. A Ukrainian wedding is a bit different from an English one, and this one went on for so long we all wondered when it was going to be over. But at last we returned to our house, where Mother and Sister-in-Law prepared a dinner for family and friends. We had a good time, but I missed not having a date, still not seeing Lonnie very often. Brother and wife left on a honeymoon and I returned to my teaching.

Carolyn and I visited on some weekends when I was at home, and before Brother returned I got her to help me move all my stuff into the finished recreation room in the basement because Brother and wife were to have my big bedroom upstairs. I loved having this space to myself, away from others, and enjoyed having Carolyn over on some weekends. When I got the flu one weekend I would go to the laundry tubs for water instead of going upstairs to the kitchen. During the night I awoke so thirsty and I couldn’t find my glass, so I just leaned over to drink from the faucet in the tub. Well, the smell of the stagnant water in the drain, on top of my flu, made me so sick that to this day I have a hard time drinking water without remembering that smell.

When I attended St Ann’s, the Sisters there made white caps and gowns for the kindergarten graduation class and held a special ceremony when the Grade 8 class graduated. I wanted my class to have such a ceremony, so with the principal and board’s approval, I began working on a program for my two classes. I found songs that were appropriate and wrote new words to some nursery songs, and the children practised until they all knew them very well. I had some who weren’t too shy learn verses to recite, and even picked one girl, Colleen, to be the valedictorian. At first the morning and afternoon classes rehearsed by themselves, but shortly before the graduation both classes were combined and worked together.

The janitor built a stage in the foyer of the school and we rehearsed there until everyone knew their parts without any mistakes. I had asked the Sisters if we could use the caps and gowns for our own graduation, and for $5 each they agreed. I sent notes to the parents and, after collecting all the money, Mother and I picked up the gowns the day before the ceremony and took them to the school. We tried them on the children before the evening’s ceremony and had a last rehearsal before everyone went home.

That evening the children made us all proud! All went according to plan, without any mistakes. Everyone knew when to sing or say each piece and when each group was to go up, and to this day I can still hear Paul reciting a verse of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem, “My shadow”, and saying “sadow” instead of shadow. Everyone thought it sounded so cute and commented about it afterwards. We sang “We Are the Little Children” to the tune of “I’m a Little Teapot”, and “Teacher Told Me Something” to the tune of “Jesus Told Me Something”, using words I had written. Everyone of importance was there, including parents, teachers, board members, the priest and the news media. A photographer took a group picture of us that appeared in the Georgetown newspaper, and the whole affair was a huge success.

With school over for the summer, I had made plans to stay in Georgetown at my boarding home and attend the second six-week summer session with another teacher who lived on my street. Because I now saw very little of Lonnie it was easier for me to stay where I was and concentrate on my studies. The people I stayed with were from New Brunswick and the husband worked in Brampton on the Avro Arrow jet. Unknown to any of us, the plant was going to close that fall but, for now, the jobs were still secure.

My six weeks went by fast and I again got good marks. Teaching kindergarten and having to improvise helped me during my work at the school. One time we were given sound blends like “thr”, “sch” and others and told to make a poster to illustrate that sound. I was given “str” and could find no picture of things that started with that sound, so I made my own. Using construction paper I created a street scene fading into the background, and when the master saw it, he held it up for others to show them how imagination could be put to use when the right picture couldn’t be found. Needless to say I got a good mark in that class.

Soon, the course was over and there was still some time before my second teaching year began, so I went back home. That summer Brother moved out and Mother couldn’t afford the payments on the house, so she moved to a smaller home in a fairly new area, on Ravina Crescent.

And that’s where I came to from Georgetown. Maybe because of all the long hours studying that summer, or maybe I picked up a bug somewhere, I had a sore throat and didn’t feel well the rest of the summer. With the first day of school fast approaching I went to the doctor, but other than telling me to rest and take some aspirin, he could find nothing wrong. He did tell me I shouldn’t be going to teach yet, but by Labour Day weekend I felt better, so Mother drove me to Georgetown the day before opening and I prepared my name tags and other things for the new year.

I wasn’t feeling very well that first morning at school, but went and did all the things required. I stayed after school, putting up charts and decorating the room and got everything in order for the next day. I’m now glad I did all that, because the next day is a blur to me. I must have made it to school, how I don’t know, and all I remember is putting my head on my desk and feeling very hot and sick. I don’t remember how I got home. The next thing I do remember is being in bed with a huge thirst and having difficulty sitting up or even holding my head up.

The people I lived in were concerned and kept asking me if they should call a doctor, but I kept refusing, until I found myself on a stretcher being wheeled out the front door. A crowd of people surrounded the front steps, and the boy from next door looked at me and said, “Oh it’s only the teacher”.

The ambulance was taking me to St Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton, where Mother was waiting for me, but I didn’t know that. The ride made me motion-sick and I threw up on the floor, and the next thing I knew the two drivers were lost and trying to find out how to get to the hospital. I managed to lift myself up to see where we were, but nothing was familiar, so lay down until I found myself looking up at Mother and being told I was at St Joseph’s. The next few days are a blank to me. Here and there a snippet of something comes to mind, but I can’t connect anything.

When I started of rouse a bit, I was in a small room in the old section of the hospital, and everyone who entered my room was covered from head to toe, wore a mask and gloves as well as washed their hands before leaving the room. I couldn’t talk, the lights hurt my eyes and I was on intravenous, which I kept pulling out of my arm until both arms were tied to the bars of the bed. I didn’t know what had happened, why I was tied down and why I couldn’t speak. I thrashed around in the bed and cried and screamed with a terrible pain in my head and only quieted down when they gave me a shot.

Once I started to stay awake more often, but still unable to talk, Mother, who also was covered from head to toe, told me I was in isolation because tests showed I contracted meningitis/encephalitis and the lining at the back of my brain was infected. This meant nothing to me because I’d never heard of either of those things, but I couldn’t ask any questions. My doctor would come in and he began to explain what was happening to me. It seemed that that summer there were a lot of cases of the same thing I had, and several children had died. He told me I wasn’t going to die, but my recovery had a long way to go and they didn’t know what if any permanent damage had been done. There was going to be a big meeting of doctors, and he told me he was presenting my case as an example.
Slowly, my speech started coming back, but the words were all garbled, and I would get so frustrated trying to convey what I meant.

When finally I was able to talk, the nurses told me the needle would be taken out of my arm if I would eat some food by mouth, but the infection was still affecting my brain and I was acting very irrationally and like a spoiled child. I wouldn’t touch any hospital food and kept requesting homemade soup, rye bread and meat spreads. The staff finally allowed Mother to bring in what I would eat and my food was kept in the nurse’s refrigerator at the end of the hall.

Slowly, I was able to sit up and began to take note of my surrounding. The first thing I did notice was snow outside my window, and I asked the date. When told it was the beginning of October I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to know about my teaching position and was told the school had hired supply teachers while I was sick and I could go back when I was well. That settled, I asked if anyone had called Lonnie, since he was conspicuously absent among the family visitors, and I was told he was notified but chose to stay away. I was crushed. I did receive a letter from him telling me he had met someone and, although it might not lead anywhere, he had to see for himself.

Now that I could speak, I found my motor skills weren’t co-operating. My hands were so shaky that I couldn’t hold onto things and dropped everything. A nurse had put a pad on me and it wasn’t situated comfortably, so I tried to adjust it, and with those shaky hands just managed to shred it to pieces, receiving a scolding from her.

Brother and wife came one day with two butter tarts her mother had made and I ate one then, with their help, and saved the other. Later that evening I got the second tart, but my hands shook so badly that I only had the filling left, the crust spread all over me and in my bed. Again I got a scolding.

As I grew stronger I started getting out of bed, only to fall or be so weak that I had to yell for a nurse to get me back into bed. My headaches were still very severe, but with medication they weren’t too bad, so I now was wanting out of this room. When I could be on my feet for a while, I decided to go out into the hall and wander around. Sometimes I took the stairs opposite my room to the floor below and wander there. Usually someone missed me and sent an orderly looking for me, but on occasion I went to another wing and no one could find me. One time Mother told me that my friend Lynne’s mother had just had another baby, and so had our old family doctor, so off I went into the maternity ward to congratulate them. That’s where an orderly found me and took me back to my room, with strict orders not to leave my floor.

Mother had brought me a small radio while I was sill quite sick, and it played softly all day. I loved hearing all the songs, but one song just grated on my nerves and even yet, when I hear Sarah Vaughn singing “Broken Hearted Melody”, I have a hard time with it. Now, because I kept wandering so much, I was watched more closely, but I still managed to sneak away. One time I packed all my belongings in a paper bag, took my radio and, in slippers and housecoat, slipped out, down the stairs and got on the elevator to the basement. Here I went through some sort of tunnel and climbed up stairs into a house, finding myself near the front door. I went out into a freezing snowfall during rush hour and saw the hospital across the road. I had managed to get into a nurses’ residence across the road without even knowing how.

I stood on the edge of the road, in slippers and housecoat, hair all dishevelled and carrying a paper sack and a radio. Not one person stopped to see what it was all about, but I managed to cross the slushy street in one piece, making my way to the hospital parking lot, where I tried car doors until I found one open and climbed in, with the idea of asking the driver to take me home. How long I sat there I don’t remember, but all of a sudden an orderly opened the door and, speaking softly, took me back into the hospital, where I welcomed the warmth and was soon back in my bed. Now there was a nurse stationed outside my door, and I no longer could leave the room.

Mother came in and gave me such a tongue-lashing, telling me if I didn’t behave the hospital was going to send me to the psychiatric hospital,scaring me very much, but not enough that I kept trying to get out. When asked why I kept running away, I told them I just wanted to go home, so the day before Thanksgiving, after 29 days in isolation, I was discharged.

During my hospitalisation, Mother, Sister and Brother and his wife were all quarantined at home. Brother and wife moved into our basement because he couldn’t go to work and pay rent, and Mother wasn’t allowed to nurse. How they all survived I don’t know but they were all back to work when I returned home.

Things familiar to me in that house were now changed by Brother when he couldn’t go to work, and the furniture had been moved around, making me feel this wasn’t really home. I was still sick and had very severe headaches, feeling like there was a huge sponge encircling my head and I couldn’t get through it. One day I was again crying, which I did regularly, and Sister became concerned enough to ask me what was wrong. When I told her I didn’t believe I was really home, she woke Mother and asked what she should do. Mother, who had worked several night shifts, was tired, and told Sister to tell me to take a bite out of the kitchen table and then I would know I was home. Well, that image made me laugh, and it was a turning point in my recuperation.

It was now November and I wanted to go back to my teaching, but I needed the doctor to give his approval. I saw him both in his office and at home, and he finally pronounced me well enough to go back to the classroom, but I was still taking medication for the headaches. Everything wasn’t back to normal yet, though other than the headaches, the only trouble I had was when walking. It always felt like I was walking down steps because my depth perception was still out of whack, but even that disappeared and I was now on my way back to Georgetown.

The Avro plant had by now closed, and the people I had lived with had sold the house and moved to the east coast. Friends of theirs next door agreed to rent me a room, so all my belongings were there. These people were an older couple, and she worked while he was retired. I didn’t feel comfortable in their home and only stayed there until Christmas. By then I was back into full swing with my new class, which I had to get to know all over again.
The first thing I did upon return to the classroom was to put up new decorations, because nothing had changed since I was there at the beginning of September.

As the children and I got reacquainted, I noticed that one little girl always had a group of children helping her to dress and undress, while she just stood or sat there. I watched for a few days and noticed that Sandra was capable of dressing herself, but being a bit different than the others, let them do it for her. So I stopped all that and Sandra soon was dressing and undressing herself, receiving praises from me and the children, which put a huge smile on her face.

The children were able to do some printing, and all of them coloured very well, except for Sandra. I tried to help, but her co-ordination was so poor that I just let her go at her own pace. When she got bored she would push her little chair backwards all over the room, and when no one paid any notice, she came back to the table and tried working again. Sandra was different, but she worked her way into all our hearts, and the children accepted her for who she was.

Shortly before Christmas I began looking for a new place to live, and the family of one of my pupils offered me a place in their home. I would share a bedroom with their two older girls and eat with them. Mother brought up a bed and dresser for me, and after Christmas I moved. I was quite content to live with this family. Besides the two older girls and the young sister in my class, they had a teenage brother, so the house was always full of talk, laughter and people my age. Next door lived another of my students, and I became friendly with her mother, visiting there and even staying over a few times. Life settled into a routine of school, family life and going home on weekends.

By now Lonnie and I got back together, but without his parents’ knowledge, because they had other plans for him. A few times he came to visit me at my new home and after one such visit, I was told that he had called the older of the daaughters and asked her out on a date – this while he was supposed to be seeing me! That opened my eyes, but I still felt a lot for him so I overlooked it.

The older brother in the house developed a crush on me and I let him take me to dances or to Brampton to movies, along with his sister and her boyfriend. That year I was enjoying my life and made many friends, one of whom was an uncle to another of my pupils. He asked me out, but all he talked about was the older girl I lived with, and now another date of mine wanted to go out with her while supposedly seeing me. But she was very pretty and had her boyfriend, so we laughed about it.

Many weekends were now spent in Georgetown, so I was able to do extra work in my classroom. I also got to know some parents more than others and babysat their children occasionally. I again began preparing my class for graduation and we worked out a program so most children had at least a small part by themselves. While practising the songs over and over again, one of the boys yelled out, “Sandra’s singing!” We all stopped and I asked Sandra if she indeed was singing, and she looked at me shyly and nodded yes. It was the first time that Sandra had participated in a group activity, and one of the few times I heard her utter any sound. Boy did we praise her and did she beam. Sandra was put in a small group that sang a song during the performance, and we were all very proud of her.

The graduation ceremony went off smoothly, and soon I had to get ready to move back to Ancaster because I had to attend a full year of Teachers’ College in Hamilton. Before I left, the boy in my home asked me to go steady and gave me his signet ring to wear. Things weren’t going too well between Lonnie and me, so I figured I may as well, knowing I wouldn’t be seeing this boy after I got back home.

After the school year was over he drove me to Ancaster, and we stopped in where Lonnie worked to offer him a ride home. I guess I just wanted him to see that I could also see another person. The following weekend I got a call from Lonnie, inviting me for a picnic, which I accepted. During that lovely summer day, on the July 1st weekend of 1960, Lonnie poured his heart out to me, telling me he was beginning to realise his family was keeping him from getting his own life, and now that his father had had a heart attack he wanted more than ever to create his own family. He told me he wanted us to get married. I was overjoyed!

We talked for hours, and that evening I became pregnant but didn’t know it. We now saw each other quite regularly, and went to the Buffalo Zoo, Brantford and many places of interest around Hamilton, but not once did we go to his parent’s place, like we used to before. Time was spent at my home, watching TV or playing cards and I was preparing to enter the Hamilton Teacher’s College in September. Things couldn’t have been better.

Brother and his wife were to become parents in October, so Mother was in her glory. They now lived in Stoney Creek. Mother had rented the upstairs of her house to a single mother with three children, while we moved into the basement. Before I was to start my next leg of education, I found out I was pregnant, and this fact turned my whole world upside down. First of all I told Lonnie, who took the news in a way I didn’t expect at all. He hadn’t planned on this, and now told me he wasn’t prepared to get married. When I reminded him about our earlier conversation, he told me he was just saying that because his father’s illness had him depressed but, now everything was back to normal and he’d changed his mind.

Mother was told about both situations, and she surprised me by being so supportive that I counted myself lucky. In those years, an unwed girl was shunned or sent to a home where she gave birth and then returned home alone to pick up the pieces of her life. Mother told me we would manage and I would keep my baby. I had already decided to do just that, so a weight had been lifted off my shoulders at her words.

Lonnie was a different matter. He wanted me to put the baby up for adoption and even took me to the Children’s Aid Society to discuss the matter, but I refused to sign any papers and told them I was keeping the baby. I now saw very little of Lonnie, and when I did it was on the sly, with him coming when no one was home or we went to places where he wouldn’t be recognised. Because I still wanted to be with him, I allowed myself to be treated this way and only found out later that he was seeing someone else and was just using me.

As the summer wore on, the boy from Georgetown kept phoning, and I finally told him I was sending his ring back and that we were through. He took it very hard, as his mother told me when Mother and I went to pick up my belongings, but at that time I was happy with Lonnie so I just shrugged it off. I guess I wasn’t very fair to that boy.
And so, summer was drawing to a close and with me expecting, all notions of Teachers’ College were put on hold.

Carolyn was told about my condition and we both got excited about having a real baby we could look after. Carolyn had long ago dropped out of high school and stayed home looking after children in her home. She had regular customers and was quite content. She had had a few boyfriends, but something was always wrong with them so they didn’t last very long. Now we spent hours talking about personal things, either both sleeping in my home or in hers. No one said or did anything to me in my presence so I felt at ease with my pregnancy, if not disappointed that I wasn’t married.

In October, Brother’s first son was born and he called him Tony, much to his wife’s disgust. She wanted “Gary”, but Brother called the paper and announced to everyone the boy’s name was Tony. I too didn’t think that name should have been given to the baby because I’d planned to call MY baby Tony if a boy and Shelley if a girl, but Tony remained Tony.
By now I was showing and didn’t want to go out much. Before Christmas of that year, Sister developed some female internal ailment and nearly died. She was so sick that she couldn’t come home for the holidays and we brought her a small tree and her presents to the hospital. They operated on her, but her insides were in such a mess they couldn’t do much for her, so they just did what they could and sewed her up again. We often wondered if her troubles had any connection to her bout with polio.

My baby was to be born on March 23, 1961, but on St Patrick’s Day, after a day of shopping, I went into labour through the night. The lady living upstairs was called because Mother was sleeping after working the night before, and when she tried timing my contractions, decided there was something wrong, so we woke Mother up. The doctor was called and I was taken to the hospital, where none of my contractions were the same and I was rushed into the delivery room. The last I remember before the mask was placed over my mouth was the doctor telling me I was doing it the wrong way – the baby was coming feet first.

When I opened my eyes it was over, and I was told I had a boy but couldn’t see him since he’d been placed in an incubator. All I glimpsed was a tiny thing with dark fuzz on the head before I drifted off again. Stephen arrived on March 18 at 2:58 in the morning, just missing St Patrick’s Day.

For two days he was kept in that incubator because, I was told, during birth only one foot had appeared and he had to be pushed back in while the other foot drawn out, and when he finally emerged, he nearly choked because the cord was wrapped around his neck four times.

When the doctor came in it see me, he told me Stephen was the first child he’d delivered with the cord wound around the neck four times that hadn’t died, and he was pretty proud of his team for saving him. It seems that all those funny contractions had something to do with Stephen turning in my womb and, in doing so, he’d nearly strangled himself. That was my first indication that Stephen had a mind of his own and was in a hurry to go places. Now begins a new adventure for me, being a mother myself.

That’s me with eight-day-old Stephen and my sister-in-law with Tony, five months..

Continue to Part 8.