Raising Lucille: Chapter I

PART 1:
Chapter I: Lucille's Birth 25 December, 1917

It was sharply nine-thirty in the evening, according to their grandfather clock. It rang its little hymn when the second quarter of the hour was over and the third would begin. Snow was littering the ground outside. Horses galloped gracefully, forming tracks in the pure white snow as they pulled carriages to and fro.

         

The snow was coming in chunks that Christmas night, and one carriage was parked outside a grand mansion on the cobblestone street. A doctor, highly trained, was helping Doris Dance deliver her firstborn. She screamed, hollering for her husband, Jim Dance, to hold her hand. Tears leaked from her eyes; the pain was much too great for a sixteen-year-old woman.

         

At last, at exactly nine-thirty-two, a baby girl took her first breath, bawling away. Doris held her newborn daughter close to her, giving her milk. Everyone in the Dance household sighed in relief, for the baby was finally born.

         

As the doctor left, Jim turned to his wife. "What shall we call our daughter?" he asked quietly.

         

Doris's blue eyes never left from the baby's face as she answered, "We shall call her Lucille Jane, after my sister, Jane, and your grandmother, Lucy." She began to rock back and forth in her bed, cooing Lucille Jane Dance to go to sleep.

         

On Christmas Day of 1917, at nine-thirty-two in the evening, Jim and Doris Dance became the happiest couple in Barrington. And as Lucille fell asleep, the family wondered what legacy she'd leave.