By Georgie Bright Kunkel

In my mother’s day having eleven children was usually not conducive to having a career outside the home. In fact, many careers were not open to married women, period. After my mom was widowed with ten children, only two grown, I was born.

My mother said that she cried every day for the first year of my life. No wonder I related to minor music for a very long time and thought that joyous little ditties were frivolous. With an intellect like my mother had it was difficult for her to have to spend most of her time caring for a new baby and wash, clean and prepare meals for eight children still living at home. Of course my older siblings helped in many ways but soon she had to find work. A close friend offered to be my live-in nanny until I was old enough to enter elementary school.

One Sunday afternoon my mother had a gentleman caller. He visited with her quite a while. After he left she remarked, “I don’t intend to ever marry again. I have enough to cook and clean for as it is.” And she never remarried. Even though my mother would have loved to have spent her time in intellectual pursuits, she was forced to raise a garden in order to can food for the winter.

She had a root house built so she could store her canned goods, carrots and potatoes and the huge crocks in which she kept pickles and candled eggs. Eggs were candled by being put into a huge jar with a preservative poured over them. I remember when she poured hot wax over the top of the pickles to preserve them. I would play in the wax as it cooled.

I was always thinking up things to do with the neighbor children. We played house and in winter played fox and geese on the lawn—making a round path in the snow and pathways to the center so that we could run away from the one who was “it.” I loved to get the old Wesson Oil cans, stamp on them and wear them around, clicking and clacking on the sidewalk. But the most fun was when the creek overflowed and flooded the street in front of our house. My sister had to wear hip boots and carry me out to dry ground so I could get out to school. My little friend down the street made a raft to use when the street flooded. We even saw rats swimming about because the dump, where they congregated, was flooded and they had nowhere to go. I am sure my mother was frantic about the flooding as it came up even with our porch floor one year, but she never showed any fear or irritation so I didn’t ever know when she was frightened about anything.

Once I built a tree house in an ash tree beside our house. I took my books up there and read exciting stories about the Three Musketeers and The Phantom of the Opera. Only my special friends could come up in my tree house. One night I decided to stay all night up there. I took my sleeping pajamas and climbed up into the house with a blanket and a pillow. Everything was fine until it began to get dark and I got scared and made an excuse to come down.

As I got a little older, I began making my own paper dolls, creating designer clothes for each doll that I made. All my little friends loved to come over to our house because there was always something fun to do—either to play circus or pretend library. Things changed when I became a teenager. I was never taught to swing my hips or make eyes at the boys. I would rather play marbles with the boys than primp in front of the mirror at school like the other girls. My tomboy period ended when I met my late husband. Now I have entered a new phase of life spent with family and a special dating friend. Living a full life up into one’s later years is essential to one’s well being. Dropping out of life is not an option.