Chapter 13 of Tales That I Can Remember by Elsie Swagerty Burton
I remember another episode involving a cousin. My father’s oldest nephew Leo and his wife Evelyn, the same who offered me the piano lessons, lived on a neighboring farm. They had four little boys. Their oldest was the same age as my baby brother, Jack. It was during the pregnancy of that last child that I observed her getting bigger and bigger but even though I knew how baby come into this world, I did not connect the two. One day when I got home from school, mother informed me that Evelyn had had a new baby that morning and we were going to visit. When we walked in, Evelyn was in the bed on their sleeper divan in the living room pulling her next oldest Miles, up onto the bed in order to diaper him. I was shocked. Here I was 14 or 15 and was shocked. I had heard tales of Evelyn’s unorthodox methods of recovery after pregnancies. Now I was witnessing one.
It was that same summer I was “loaned” to Eleven to her her can applesauce. It lasted one day. She and her husband, my cousin Leo, bickered continuously. My parents knew that but what they didn’t know was how much it would affect me. I cried and cried when I got home. To this day I can’t stand the sort of atmosphere that behavior produces. It does things to my insides.
My cousin Gladys, and her family lived close by for a time too. She was fat – more like obese with a capital O. She served as an example of what could happen if one allowed to it.
Menstruation started for me the first night out on our two weeks camping vacation trip the year I was eleven. That morning I awoke with a new problem, now I not only had urinary problems but menstrual as well. Being young is not easy. I knew that all women had menstrual problems sooner or later but at eleven I thought it would be later. On this particular vacation trip, we were camping with family friends, the Stones. They had two daughters and a son. The older daughter Betty Rae, was two years younger than I and was aware of my situation and treated me like some sort of invalid. Mother encouraged me to behave normally but that was difficult under the circumstances, besides I enjoyed the attention.
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 