The boy

On top of all the rest that being twelve made me deal with it wasn't quite done being a big year for me. Mom was pregnant again. It must have happened just after Grama and Aunt Mary died. The results were a brother for all of us and a son for Mom and Dad that fall.

A brother that was 6 years younger than me was a little hard to figure out what to do with. He was too small to play with and pretty boring at first. We all added fetch and carry for the baby to our list of chores and soon it was like he had always been there. He was so much younger than me that it was like having a live practice run on having a baby. I did a lot of his care when Mom was busy.

While he was still little, cute and defenseless we dressed him funny and ran him around in his stroller a lot. When he could sit up well we used the little red wagon and would dress him and Baby Lion up funny, like little clowns or teddy bears, then drag them around the block so all the kids got a laugh.

When he was about 8 months old Dad got him a beagle pup. I think we called it Buttons or maybe Puddles. The boy loved the pup but he didn't last. I don't remember what exactly happened but the pup was gone. Then we got a new dog, another beagle breed and named him Ozzie.

Ozzie was a pain in the butt. He wouldn't stay in the yard, we were always running around calling him, he chased the kittens from next door away and he didn't learn any fun tricks no matter how hard we tried to teach him. But he was ours and slept in our room every night.

So with a new baby, a half grown pup, 4 girls from 12 to 9 years old and a mate that worked two jobs while she worked one, Mom started packing us up to move in the spring.

I had my 13th birthday in the white house. I only remember I had a lovely deep royal blue princess cut high necked, short sleeved dress with real fur on the collar, around the sleeves and as pom poms on the end of the strings that tied in a bow at the neck.

In the spring, around April, we moved.