Another Year Older

Yesterday was my 45th birthday.  I am not afraid to share that, obviously.  I feel I have deserved the right to broadcast it.  It must be the mentality of growing up in a large family and being close to the end of the line.  I come from a family of 11 children, and I am number 9.  No steps in there either.  My parents were crazy, and Catholic during most of my childhood.  So, in the eyes of my family, I think they still think of me as being younger than I am, especially since I left home and joined the Navy when I was 21.  That age seems to stick in peoples minds when you leave and then return.  They look at you like, "Hey, you are supposed to be young still!"  Well, I am, but I am not.  I would go home and visit and all my nieces and nephews were growing like weeds and I would feel the same way toward them.  We can't help it, it just happens that way.

So, yes, a family of 11.  People always ask me, "What was it like growing up in such a big family?".  Like I would have an answer to that?  What else did I know?  What is it like growing up in a small family?  Or the best one was "Can you remember all their names?"  Duh, do you know 11 people and can remember their names?  I remember their names, birthdays, anniversaries, ages, and lots more.  What a stupid question.


I will give a few clues to growing up with that many in one household though.  When I was a little girl, up to age 8, we lived in a house that had 3 bedrooms on the main floor, an unfinished upstairs, and a basement that was once the main living quarters before the upper part of the house was added.  Yeah, it was as dank, damp and dreary as it sounds-a basement.  But once I moved out of the crib, that is where I slept with my 4 older sisters.  There was a big room with no door and no wall either on one side, and we slept there.  The floors were concrete with those old slate type tiles, and they were COLD!  I don't know what it all looked like before I came along, but it wasn't a pretty place from any memory I have.  There was also a kitchen where my mother did her canning, a laundry area and a huge laundry cart where all 13 of us put our clothes.  So, imagine being the one to have to do all of that laundry.  I swear that washer had to run 24/7, literally.  We even had the old wringer type washer when I was little and loved to help my mother do laundry.  Now I would spaz if I had to do all that way.  She would iron too, including sheets, I remember.  She would spray them and fold and roll them up and put them in the freezer.  I don't know why, I never asked.  But I remember doing it.  She had an old glass pop bottle with this sprinkler thing that fit on top and had a cork fitting to keep it on the bottle.  I loved to sprinkle the clothes and she would iron them, or we would fold them together.

When I was maybe 7-years old, us girls got to move up to the upstairs of the house.  It was not finished, but it was enough for us to be up there.  I don't remember if the bathroom was completely finished, I think we could use it some, but not sure if the shower was hooked up.  Anyway, it was better than the basement.  Oh, and the boys got the bedrooms on the main level, 2 in each.  Did I mention?  There were 7 girls and 4 boys in our family.   Back to the upstairs/girls' room...I got to sleep in a full-sized bed with my one older sister.  The others had their own beds.  This was completely unfair.  The sister I slept with is 9 years older than I am, and with me being 6 or 7 at that time, she was much bigger than I was.  So, there we were, in a full-sized bed with those lovely, old springs under an old cotton mattress (no wonder I have back problems even now).  She slept in the middle of the bed, which, because of the springs that had no support other than keeping you off the floor, sagged drastically.  I ended up hanging onto the side of the bed all night so not to lay on top of her, which she would not have (did not when I happen to let go) been too happy with me about.

When I was 8, we moved.  My father and his brother had been running the family farm together and had a falling out/parting of ways, so my dad started a new business and we then moved to a farm 30-miles away.  Dad ran his business and the rest of us did the farming.  He worked in the field when it was time for planting and harvesting, and occasionally ( usually on Sunday mornings) would come and help do chores.  My parents bought an old house with 12-acres that was a quarter mile away from the dairy farm where we had milking cows.  We had a big dairy barn at the house, but it was not in any shape to milk cows, so it was used for dry cows, heifers, calves and our 4-H animals.  The house itself was probably 200-years old.  It seemed like a big house, but the rooms were tiny, it was OLD, and needed lots of work, but it held all of us.  The boys got to share the big room this time, and the girls split up the rest.  However, us three youngest girls got to share a hallway.  Yes, a hallway!  My two younger sisters had bunk beds and I had my own bed.  Thank goodness for that at least!  That room also served as the sewing room, if memory serves me correctly.  It was sort of a room though, maybe served as a sitting room back in the day that the house was a boarding house/carriage depot.  We never really knew the history of the old place, but it was old, old, old.

My parents had done lots of remodeling and adding on over the years, so it is much more than it was when we moved there.  Now, I have two adult siblings that live there with my mother.  My father passed away almost 3 years ago.  Now it is a big house that is nearly empty.  It makes me wonder what our house will be like when our children grow up and move out?

Yes, I am another year older, and wiser, and crazier and I like it.