if wishes were horses...

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride," my mother would say every time I begged for a pony. I don't know what that had to do with anything; my wishes were for horses. There wasn't a birthday or Christmas between ages 6 and 16 that I didn't jump out of bed in the morning and check the backyard for a pony. Backyard empty, I'd check the garage, just in case... For several years my birthday gift was a Breyer horse. I treasured them, and still have them, but it just wasn't the same. I longed for a horse with an unwavering passion. I pleaded my case, "but Becky and Barb had a horse!" Yes, they did. The mighty steed, Trigger, shown here with Barbara in the saddle. Sold when we moved from rural Pennsylvania to suburban Illinois, I remembered Trigger as the most majestic horse to grace the earth. I was too small to ride him before he was sold, but he was magnificent; tall and strong, handsome and brave. Roy Rogers would have been envious, probably would have wanted to trade his pitiful palomino for our princely paint. I lost my first tooth to Trigger. Well, almost. Actually, my sister Barbara was instructed by our mother to take a sack of fresh corn out to the barn yard to shuck. And she had to take me with her. Begrudgingly, she trudged out to the fence surrounding our state-of-the-art barn (think henhouse with a lean-to addition), me running behind to catch up. She gave me brief instructions: pull off the shuck, throw it over the fence, put the naked ear of corn in the basket. Trying to prove my usefulness, I pulled off the husk and held it up for her to see. She nodded, unimpressed. Then I tossed the ear of corn. Over the fence. I looked to my sister, she looked angry. After telling me what I already knew- that she didn't want to bring me and she knew I couldn't do it, etc., she told me to go through the rails and retrieve the ear of corn. O. K., I could do that. I slipped through the two lower fenceboards easily, grabbed the corn, and turned back. About that time, Trigger heard the commotion and the "food!?" lightbulb went on in his head. He trotted for the fence, leaving the two hens, Calico and Pinafore, who had been napping on his back, flapping in mid air. Panicked that the mighty stallion (overweight gelding) might trample me, I dove between the fence boards, whacking my head in the process. "Your mouth is bleeding," my sister said calmly. Immediately I began to cry. Howling, I was dragged back up to the house. After a brief inspection, my mother diagnosed the problem, "You lost a tooth! You can put it under your pillow tonight and the Tooth Fairy will come and leave you money!" "Where's the tooth?" she asked my sister. Door slamming behind us, my sister dragged me by the hand back down to the barn, where Trigger had his head through the fence rails, happily munching corn husks, the ones with the corn still inside.

"Now look what you did, this is all your fault and I'm the one that's going to get in trouble," my sister grumbled. "But look, there's my tooth!" I said happily, pointing to the corn husk covered ground between the pony's front hooves. "Well go get it," she commanded. I shook my head, no. "It's just a pony!", she said angrily. I shook my head, no. Really fuming now, Barbara ducked under the rail and retrieved the tiny tooth. Pushing the tooth into my hand, she instucted me to go back to the house. I skipped all the way; I'd lost my first tooth, and I didn't have to shuck any more corn.

Richard and Edna, Lake Erie, 1949

Lake Erie pier, Pennsylvania, 1949. My mother, Edna Wescott Bowes with my sisters Rebecca Ann and Barbara Jean. Here a formidable Lake Erie, where the cold wind never stops, meets the equally formidable Edna. Her given name was Jessie Irene. Hard to imagine anyone would choose to be called Edna; who gave her that nickname? We all grew up knowing that our mother was like no other. She was a stunning beauty who wielded a power over those around her like no other mom we knew in the neighborhood, or even on TV. She was a movie star without a movie. I thought she was Lucille Ball, without the loud voice and the Cuban husband. She never wore a housecoat or put her hair in a ponytail. She was never seen without make-up and heels. Dress or suit, stockings, earrings, nails polished and red hair done, she was the first up and about in the morning, and the last to turn out the light at night. Unlike our friends' moms, our mom was always a working mom. She always had a job, or maybe two. Whatever she did, she was always the best at it; she took her career very seriously. She was small, but mighty. Her fierce blue eyes could burn a hole right through you. She loved us just as fiercely. She was the head of our family, there was no doubt, and we knew to never, ever cross her. Hell hath no fury like the wrath of Edna. She was a whirlwind of activity, 24/7; a powder keg, dynamite with a short fuse. We feared her and loved her, and spent our lives trying to please her. Some of us fared better than others, or at least we each believed "Mom liked you best" about the other. But what I didn't know, until I was married and had children of my own, was that my mother had dark and frightening secrets. Some secrets were revealed to us slowly, piece by piece, in her later years. Some will never be known to us.

... and my father, Richard Arden Bowes, with his first two daughters. A slightly built man of few words and little ambition. He was content to work at Sears or Montgomery Ward's, selling appliances. He didn't smoke or drink, play cards or golf. He hummed everywhere he went. On Sunday he would take a nap on the couch. My mother would say, "Dick, when you are dead and gone, I won't need a picture to remember you by. I will remember you just that way, asleep on the couch."My father was handsome. As I remember him, he always wore a moustache. I thought he was Clark Gable, or maybe Dennis Weaver. My father was brilliant. I loved to watch jeopardy on TV with my father; he would say the question for every answer, before the contestants could hit the buzzer. There wasn't anything in our house that my father couldn't fix. We never had a repairman of any kind come to our house, never took the car to a garage to be fixed. I didn't know, until I married, that there were men in the world that did not know how to fix everything that was broken. While my mother wished only for a son, my father loved having daughters, even having three daughters. He had a quick temper, and not much patience, but was also quick to laugh. While much of what my sisters and brother and I did was exasperating to my mother, the same antics were humorous to my father. He loved us at arms length; he never said, "I love you", but I knew that he did. My father probably had secrets too, but he was a contemplative man and didn't share much about himself. I wish I had known him better; I wish I had asked the questions I want to ask now.

Becky

I love this photo of my sister Becky. Like many photos of Becky, it includes a dog. When I was small, there were two things I knew about Becky: she loved animals, and she loved me. Becky is 11 years, 361 days older than I. I'm sure she didn't ask for the job, but she was my mother much of the time. Perhaps our own mother was preoccupied with our baby brother, or her career, or just putting food on the table, but I can remember being dressed and fed by Becky, waiting at the door for her to come home in the afternoon, and climbing onto her lap and wrapping my arms around her neck. Becky was always laughter and smiles, chatter and more laughter. She made me feel wanted and loved. Her mothering was an art she cultivated early, and practiced her entire life. Long after Becky was a mother of two and I was a mother of four, I would still call her when I needed mothering. More than just a good listener, she offered practical advice with a large dose of sympathy, followed by encouragement, optimism, and a good strong ego boost. Money couldn't buy better therapy than a chat with my sister. I still hear her voice, full of excitement as she comes to the phone. It could have been the most awful day for her, but she never gave any indication. She would make me feel as if my phone call was the best thing that could happen. I know by her voice that she is smiling and her eyes are dancing. She wants to hear everything I have to say; I feel as if I am the most important person in the world to her. "Oh, Chrissy!" she would say. No one could ever have been as blessed as I have been with sisters. Oh Becky, I hope that before I said goodbye, I remembered to tell you how much I love you.

in the beginning...

...of course I don't remember this. I am the infant. The almost 9 year old, my sister Barbara. The year is 1953. What I like most about this photo is that my sister looks so happy. Proof that someone was happy about my arrival-- parents are almost always happy about a new baby, even if they (or at least my mother) had hoped for a boy. 3 times. But for the child who has just been displaced as the youngest, and therefore the most likely center of attention, my sister Barbara looks genuinely thrilled to have a new little sister. And that's how I always knew her to be; never grabbing the spotlight for herself, almost embarrassed by the attention her beauty attracted, and very much taken with babies. She was what we would today describe as a "girly-girl"; loving dresses and dolls, having tea parties for her doll-friends, and cutting paper dolls from the Sears Catalog. One of my earliest memories is of Barbara setting up the paper doll house on her bed. The furniture was cut from the catalog, the rooms were defined by belts from our mother's closet. The large, well-dressed family came from the catalog pages where they modeled clothing. There were appliances, toys, and family pets, all in black and white, wobbling on the chenille bedspread. And there were horses, always horses. Cut from coloring books and carefully decorated with crayons, horses galloped and reared in their belt-made barns and pastures. I loved watching my sisters unpack the paper family and its furnishings from their shoebox, sliding the children into their beds through the slit cut where the paper pillows met the paper bedspread. I was repeatedly instructed by my sisters (Becky would play too, if Barbara let her have first pick when choosing family members from the box) to watch, but don't touch. There came a time when Becky was not at home to play, or perhaps felt she was getting too old for paper dolls. Out of desperation, Barbara allowed me to play paper dolls with her. I was given a few family members; a mother missing an arm where she had been separated from her husband by the scissors, a boy looking back over his shoulder at the hip pockets of his jeans, a baby, grotesquely large-scale and permanently sleeping. I was patiently reminded several times not to touch her dolls or house. It must have been all too tempting for me because I remember Barbara dragging our mother by the hand into the bedroom, where apparently I had committed a crime. Our mother listened patiently while her middle daughter produced exhibits A, B, and C: paper people, crumpled by tiny hands. Trying to sympathize, and to hide her smile, my mother suggested that I be given additional family members and furnishings, and belts to make a house. Exasperated, but obedient, my sister shared a few of her treasures, then packed the rest into the shoebox and put it up too high for me to reach. I can't remember seeing her play paper dolls after that; a couple of years later she gave me the coveted shoebox. It wasn't the same, though. My houses were never as cleverly designed as hers, my paper families were never as beautiful, their furnishings were never as flat and unwrinkled. I wasn't even able to cut new dolls from the catalog with the careful precision of my sister. I kept trying though, because I wanted to be just like the most clever, fun, most perfect person I knew, and the best paper doll cutter in the world; I wanted to be just like Barbara, my big sister.