Our Children

Summary

Jamie and I had three wonderful children, two of whom have become very capable and accomplished women. Our son chose a different path.

Our 3 children plus mom and dad at the seashore. — Our children and mom plus dad at the seashore.

To digress a moment, I have often thought that children, as they grow up, are not given any lessons on how to be a good parent. I suppose that the guiding wisdom is that we all learn parenting skills from our parents, who have raised us. While there is a certain logic to this philosophy, we realize that not all parents are equally skilled in the important job of parenting. My parents were a case in point, as I have described in my memoir (Demons Hidden Within), so the parenting skills I practiced on our children I learned from them were at times questionable.

The First Born of Our Children

I was very excited by my first pregnancy, thrilled at the prospect of having a baby to love and care for, and Maria was our very first. My hospital experience was less than ideal, and I came home with this tiny baby and no idea how to parent her. Luckily, much of it happened naturally, although there were mishaps here and there. There was the time, for instance, that I took Maria out shopping but had to run home to get something. This was before car seats, of course, so I parked the car in the driveway, leaving Maria standing in the car while I ran into the house. When I came out, the car was gone. I looked across the street, and there it was sitting cross ways in the street. Maria had moved the gear shift lever to drive –well, the driveway was on a downward slant, and the car had slowly backed into the street. Fortunately, there were no cars coming, and Maria seemed to be fine.

And that’s an example of something that I didn’t anticipate with having children! This reminds me that Maria, when very young, was a head banger. I would be walking with her, and all of a sudden she would crouch down and bang her head on the sidewalk. Strange? In desperation I looked up this behavior in Dr. Spock and discovered that it seems to be a harmless habit that gradually ceases and seems to do no damage nor have any deep meaning.

But Maria was a delight as she grew, happy and perfectly content to sit on the couch and read a book. I believe that I learned a lot about parenting from working with her. She was a terrific student, loved school and did very well there. In fact, she was valedictorian of her high school class and did equally well in college. She met her husband there and went on to become a thriving archeologist.

A Boy Joins Our Family

After Maria’s birth, I had a couple of miscarriages, which I found very difficult emotionally. At last I experienced another viable pregnancy, which made me very nervous because of the earlier problems. We were living in Baltimore at the time, and I began to look for a new doctor. I had been unhappy with the hospital delivery, so I decided that I wanted to have a home birth. I finally found a willing doctor, which delighted me, although she was going to be out of the country on my delivery date. But she was not worried, she told me, as she would just induce labor before she left the country.

And that’s what she did, as she delivered our baby boy. I was delighted, but perhaps not as careful as I should have been. We had by then moved into a new house in Silver Spring, Maryland; and I was busy painting bedrooms. Jeffrey was still tiny, so I would put him in an infant seat and move him from room to room as I painted. I thought that I had found the perfect solution, but I wonder now if the paint smell in a closed room was hard on his lungs.

This occurred to me because Jeffrey evidenced respiratory problems as a very young child; he would get bronchitis and cough and cough on winter nights. This was mostly true during the cold weather, but there were other times when he would be fine and a delight to us, his parents. I remember, for instance, that we sent him to a co-op nursery, where his best friend was a little boy named Andrew. By luck, we had found a book for Jeffrey titled “Nobody Listens to Andrew,” and we read it to him every night. Imagine our surprise, when Jeffrey at the age of four, told us that he could read the book to us! And then he took the book and did just that! We sat there with our mouths open in complete surprise!

I remember too the day I took Jeffrey to market with me. As I wheeled him past the very large boxes of Tide, he looked at me contentedly and said “I know what those BIG boxes of soap are for! They’re for FAT people!” I probably laughed out loud at his understanding!

I didn’t realize until later that of our children, Jeffrey was the only introvert. He was very comfortable with us at home; it was at school that he sometimes felt out of place. This wasn’t obvious when he was young but became much more apparent as he grew.

The third of our children was a home delivery.

He was still young when I got pregnant a third time. I always wondered if this was because I was so worried about Jeffrey’s health when he would be suffering from his bouts with bronchitis. We had moved again, so I once more searched for a doctor, who would do a home delivery. I was fortunate; this time I found one who brought with him a couple of nurses, including one who just stood by and smiled because it was all so beautiful. The doctor delivered our third child, Rachel, fine, except that I then turned out to have a retained placenta. He wanted to take me to the hospital to be medicated, but I said no, so he delivered the placenta manually at home. It hurt like hell, but I survived it and was fine afterward. That night, in fact, Jamie and I slept in bed with Rachel nestled between us. She never cried or woke up all night, and the next morning Maria and Jeffrey joined us in the “family bed!” We now had 3 children and our family was complete.

Rachel was mostly healthy, except for the time when her temperature spiked one night. I gave her aspirin and was ready for her to go to sleep when she started talking to me about seeing “tigers jumping” and “monkeys swinging from one branch to another!” All of a sudden I realized that Rachel was not imagining these animals; she was hallucinating! I was terrified! I woke Jamie in a panic, and we drove her to the hospital, where they packed her in ice until her temperature receded. It was terribly frightening, but she recovered fine!

Learning Not All Strangers Are to be Trusted

There was another incident in the small town where we once lived.

I was walking with Rachel down one of the residential streets; as we passed a lady, my daughter said hello to her. I looked at the person and realized that I had no idea who she was; so, once we were past, I asked Rachel about her. She explained that she and Jeffrey had been walking home from school one winter day, and she got cold. Her solution was to walk up to one of the houses they were passing, knock on the door, explain her problem, and ask if she could come in and get warm.

I was astounded by her story. I was certainly impressed that Rachel had found a solution to her problem, demonstrating that she had really taken care of herself. But I also realized very clearly how potentially dangerous her behavior might have been. It almost broke my heart to explain that fact to Rachel, but I felt that it was necessary for her own safety to teach children that not all strangers are friendly.

Teaching Two of My Children at Home

After this we made a trip north for a couple of years until we decided to come south again, and we settled in rural Virginia. Jeffrey and Rachel went to school for a year until I realized that the country school they were attending could not meet their academic needs. It was at this time, with the ACLU’s blessing, that I took the two kids out of school and began four glorious years of teaching them at home. I loved it as we investigated the ecology of a local pond, watched the Shakespeare plays on TV, and visited the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, to enjoy the free rehearsals they featured on Saturdays. This was one of the happiest experiences of my life!

Rachel thrived after that and finished high school, then college, where she met and married her future husband. She completed graduate school and became a school psychologist, as she had always been interested in psychology! I felt good about that because I had introduced Rachel to the subject of psychology when I was teaching her at home.

A Tragedy Hit Home

But Jeffrey did not survive his teenage years. After home schooling, I sent him to private school, thinking it would be a better fit for him than public school, but he still had issues. One afternoon he came home early and, as I left to pick Rachel up from the school bus, told me that he was “five minutes from killing himself.” I didn’t take his statement literally and left.

This was a serious mistake, as it turned out that Jeffrey’s words were prophetic! When we came home, we found him hanging from a tree in the backyard! Our lives were immediately turned upside down! Rachel and I went into counseling, but it was years before we all recovered, years that we mourned while cursing the darkness! It was a very dark period that seemed to me like the end of the world! Besides the joys, having children also represents serious risks.

We did recover, of course; but life was not the same.

Published by Susan on September 8, 2021September 8, 2021