I Remember My First Prayer

I was one of five children. My brother Michael, the first, was eleven months older. I came along second. I don’t have a vivid memory before the age of 2-1/2 years old. It was from that point my memories, though fuzzy, seemed genuine. Some events seemed very real to me back then. It wasn’t until years later it became clearer that it wasn’t actually as it appeared to be at the time. I didn’t give much thought to how real things were when Mom told them to us. I just believed it as it was said, because my mother had said it.

One of the things I remember most is how Mom would make pickles from the garden every fall. How good the vinegar and spices smelled, the odor drifting through the house. My mouth would salivate; I could almost taste those pickles from the smell alone. The odor would linger in the house for days, but we couldn’t have any pickles for a bit as they had to set and flavor. It may have been only halfway into the next week, but it seemed like forever to us.

During the winter months Mom had another use for the vinegar she didn’t use when pickling. When it came bath time, she would add it to the warm soapy water in the tub, telling us that it was to help keep the chill off as we were getting a bath. Do you suppose this was true? I still don’t know if it was just something she said or if it was for real. Maybe she just wanted us squeaky clean like the windows get when you wash them with vinegar.

Bath time was a complete horror to me. We didn’t have much money and Mom tried to save all she could. Needless to say at bath time she would undress us children and put us all in the bath water at the same time. She said it saved on electricity, though I never saw anything light up when we got into the water, so I wasn’t sure where the electricity part came in.

When this ritual first started as I remember there was just my brother and I. It eventually became four us. Pauline, the youngest, was born so much later that this “fun bath deal” and I say it sarcastically, was not done anymore by the time she came along.

How I hated getting into that water with the vinegar in it. I just didn’t want to become a pickle and I was positive from the smell that I would become one. That thought was followed by the pickles going into a jar, so what did that mean would happen to me? Needless to say, when I got into the water I sat as still as I could waiting for this to happen. I soon started to relax as nothing was happening any different, I just smelled like vinegar.

One of these bath times I was busy playing with the soap bubbles and all of a sudden a spurt of water arched into the air. Instant panic, we had sprung a leak. Mom glared at my brother. “Michael”, she said, “I told you to go to the bathroom before you got into the tub.” Why in heavens name was she worried about that now, we had a leak to worry about. Michael just looked down into the water, wiggled around a bit and then looked at Mom and grinned. He must have moved over the hole and stopped the leak because the water didn’t get any lower.

From there it was the fear I had about going down the drain. In my small mind the thought never came to me that I was too big to fit down the drain any more than I was too big to fit into a pickle jar. Mom always put me into the tub first because she couldn’t catch my brother; he always wanted to get in last. I was placed in the water and put near the back of the tub. The water wasn’t as deep at that end. Mom always carried on about the house at bath time, I never figured out what that had to do with the bath either. It was later I learned the house was so old that it wasn’t built straight and nothing was level so the floors tipped, causing the water not to be level in the tub.

She finally got Michael into the tub and he sat down by the drain, which he never left alone. I didn’t care how deep the water was, Mom should have put me down at that end, I would not have touched the plug. Every time Michael pulled on the drain plug, the water would make a funny noise, funnel up and start to go down the drain. I think he liked the noise of the water going down the drain, or maybe he just liked to hear me scream that I was going with it.

When we were finished with our baths and it was time to get out, Mom would pick us out one at a time and wrap us up in a big bath towel. Then I would stand there and watch closely because when Mom talked with the neighbors she was always saying something about throwing it out with the bath water. I watched Mom pull the plug, wash down the sides of the tub and the water all go down the drain. No matter how long I watched I never saw ‘it’. What was ‘it’ anyways? Why was Mom always saying that when she never threw anything out? I just didn’t see ‘it’ happening when I took a bath. Maybe it only happened when she took a bath, I don’t know, I was in bed by that time. I wonder if Mom and Dad took their bath together too because of the electricity?

My brother was a constant source of problems for me as far back as I can remember, bath time was just the beginning. I did hear my Dad tell him one night after our bath that my Mom was going to have another baby.

Mom always listened to my prayers when she tucked me in, then kissed me goodnight. I remember waiting until after she left the room and then added one more prayer quietly, “God, please give me another sister, one brother is enough.” God must have listened to me, as I got three more sisters and that was it.