What Were They Thinking?
2 Civil War
“ELIZABETH ANN, stop picking at your brother,” I yelled. I was doing a lot of yelling lately. I hated it. I hated who I was becoming. I wanted to be a good mother but I was so tired all the time. I looked at Hayden for help but he was talking to Ford and not paying any attention to the four children. Ellen, of course, was in the kitchen, so it looked like I was the parent on duty. I turned to yell at Betts again, automatically assuming she was still picking at the smaller children.
Drew was sitting four feet away from Betts in a stare-down. Jessica and Brian were gone.
“Betts, where is Brian?” I demanded. The little brat turned and gave me such a look of disdain that I almost cringed. Why did I let her get to me? Drew, looking at her, started giggling as only a three-year-old can. I just threw my hands up in despair and headed for the kitchen—the only door Jessica and Brian could have left through.
Jessica had been carrying Brian around since the day they met—when Jessica was three and Brian was one. We all thought it was cute. But after a year, it had already evolved to Betts and Drew versus Jessica and Brian with the latter always running away from the former.
“Ellen, did you see Jessica and Brian? They had to come this way.” I was looking frantically around the kitchen with no sign of them. Ellen smiled at me and pointed to a lower cabinet under the counter. I opened the door cautiously and saw the two little ones playing patty-cake in the cabinet. I quietly closed the door and went back to watch Betts and Drew fighting over a dump truck that neither of them wanted. I just let them go at it.
Ellen came out of the kitchen and handed me a glass of wine. “They’re something special, aren’t they?”
“Hayden, I don’t know what to do. I’m such a failure as a mother. Sometimes I just want to turn a child or two or three over my knee and beat some sense into them. They’re brother and sister! They should get along with each other,” I cried.
My Hayden. He was such a gentle soul. Thank God, Brian, at least, took after him. I’m afraid Betts got much more of her temperament from me. But Hayden, even having grown up on a farm with a stern and demanding father, had become the most kind and patient man I’d ever met. I loved him so much my heart was breaking. It wasn’t only my children I was failing, it was my husband. He wrapped me in his arms as we lay in bed and kissed my chin.
“We can hope first grade relieves a little of the pressure,” he said softly. “At least you will only have one at home.”
“Is that all I can do? I don’t want to be a terrible mother. I don’t want to be a terrible wife. I don’t want to be a terrible person.”
“A horse,” he said firmly. I pulled away from him and stared.
“What?”
“Betsy needs something to focus on that is her responsibility. We need to get a horse.”
“Wouldn’t a puppy be a better place to start?” I asked. “A horse?”
“Baby, would you really put a poor defenseless little puppy in Betsy’s hands?”
Well, there was that. It was hard enough to keep her from doing damage to a two-year-old brother. I could only imagine what she’d do to a puppy.
“Isn’t… Wouldn’t that be… I mean a horse be… dangerous?”
“Betts needs something bigger than she is. I’ll get some materials next weekend and build a little barn. I don’t have anything left in our fields but hay. All the cash crops are on Dad’s land. I’ll find a gentle horse and teach her to ride and care for him. Look at all her books and toys. Books about horses. Pictures of horses. A stuffed horse, for Pete’s sake.”
“That’s a unicorn.”
“Whatever. All she sees are four legs and a mane. It will keep her out of the house so she isn’t picking at her brother all the time and teach her responsibility.”
I started to object some more but he silenced me by kissing me. In that kiss—something that had become less fervent over the six years we’d been married—I woke up. I’d always loved Hayden’s kisses. When we were teens, it was all I could do to keep from undressing when he kissed me. I missed it so much. He was offering me help. He was giving me something to hang on to. I let the kiss get deeper and could feel the stirrings down inside. Only they were different this time. It wasn’t just the sexual tension that I’d felt as a teen, though I still felt that. It was something that moved me to my core. I felt… I knew… how much he loved me. He loved me so much he would try to find a solution to my bad parenting. He loved me. And I loved him so much I ached for him.
I think Hayden was surprised that it was my tongue that first initiated contact that night. He was a little shocked when I pulled his hand to my breast. I was proud of my breasts—never let it be said that I didn’t have my vanity. I’d had two children and my breasts were still high on my chest, not sagging, even if they were a little softer than they’d once been. He squeezed gently. I heard him gasp when I grasped his erection.
I touched it! With my hand. I’d always—or at least usually—accepted his advances and willingly opened my legs when he indicated he wanted me. He always found me ready. I’d heard a girlfriend say that sex always hurt and it was just something she had to endure with her husband. I was thankful that Hayden never penetrated me until I was ready and receptive. But I’d never touched him and pulled him toward me.
And then, I don’t know what came over me. I sat up and pulled my nightgown over my head and stripped my panties down my legs. I popped two buttons on Hayden’s pajama shirt as I frantically scrambled to get it off of him.
“Marilyn?” he squeaked.
“Take your pants off, Hayden. I want you.”
I don’t think I’d ever said those words before. That night I became part of the sexual revolution. I knew women had burned their bras in the sixties. I knew all about women’s liberation. I’d simply never let it affect me. I’d been a proper farm wife. Not always as willing to have sexual congress with my husband, but always relenting. And I enjoyed it. But I’d never made the transition from a goodnight kiss to sex on my own initiative.
I’m not a dripper. My sexual lubricant wasn’t flowing down my legs. But I was wet and slippery and welcoming and the man I’d committed my life to thrust his penis into me as I held it and directed it to my opening. I hunched my hips up to meet his thrusts and began to feel something I’d never felt before. Six years of marriage. Six years of giving my body to my husband when he wanted. And never once realizing how much and how deeply he loved me and wanted me to enjoy our lovemaking.
Something burst inside me as I gave myself over to his love. And in that moment, I found something about myself. I experienced an orgasm. I gasped and giggled and cried and tried not to shout to the rooftop how happy I was.
A horse!
It was so ridiculous and so perfect that I couldn’t contain myself. I was going to do this again and again. Sex was no longer something I would give when my husband desired, it was something I was going to ask for. A lot.
“This is for you and this is for Brian,” I said, giving each of my children a fresh-baked cookie. I saw Betts eying her brother’s and knew she was going to wait until my back was turned and try to get as much of his cookie as she could. “Betts, if you touch Brian’s cookie, you will have no horse privileges tonight when Daddy gets home.” That threw my six-year-old for a loop.
I was a little skeptical about introducing a horse to my oldest child. But Hayden was right. She needed something bigger than she was and Silk was perfect. I guess as horses go, she wasn’t big. She was an eighteen-year-old Arabian and unlike their hot-tempered reputation, she was as gentle as an old grandma. Every day, Betts had a riding lesson with Hayden after he got home. With harvest coming in and school starting, that was sometimes in the dark, but she was developing quickly in her riding skills. It looked like we had found something she liked more than picking at her brother. The threat of losing her riding privilege had only been carried out once, but that was all it took. She shaped up pretty quickly.
She glanced at her brother’s cookie again and sighed.
“Mommy, he’s little,” she said exasperatedly. “Why does he get as big a cookie as I get?” My daughter was trying to use logic on me. Because I said so wasn’t going to cut it. I decided to take a different tact entirely.
“Well, my precious daughter, that is a good observation.” I placed another cookie on her napkin. Brian was happily chewing on his and never even glanced at hers. “Now, you have twice as many cookies as Brian. And you aren’t quite twice as old.”
“I’m six and he is three.”
“But he will be four next month and you’ll still be six. I’ll only be able to give you an extra half a cookie instead of a whole one. That will be fair.”
“But…” she hesitated trying to compute the problem. It was beyond her first month of first grade computational skills. I wondered for how long I’d be able to do math that was more advanced than my children’s. “I’ll still always be older so I’ll always get more.”
“And when you grow up big and fat, you’ll thank me for feeding you twice as much as your brother, even though Silk won’t be able to carry you around any longer.”
Okay. I don’t play the looks card often. Betts is a pretty child, but I try never to make any more of her looks than her brains. This child-rearing is so hard! Nonetheless, overeating just in order to have more than her brother could cause severe health and weight problems in the future. She put the half-eaten second cookie back on her napkin and pushed away from the table. She stared at her brother.
“Don’t let Brian have the rest of my cookie. I’ll be back.” Thirty seconds later, the back door slammed and she was gone outside. I wrapped the cookie in a napkin to keep for later. I knew she would ask for it, eventually. Maybe after six years, I had figured out parenting.
“I don’t understand what happened. Suddenly he stopped breathing. Then he started again but was gasping. Please help.” Hayden’s arm was around me and Brian was lying on an emergency room bed with oxygen being pumped into him. He was only four years old. How could this be happening?
“It appears that Brian is sensitive to certain types of particles in the air. This most closely resembles an asthma or allergy attack. Is there anything that he might have gotten into?”
“Oh, Lord!” Hayden whispered. “The insulation.”
“He was near an insulating material?”
“Fiberglass batting insulation. I’ve been insulating the attic before snow falls. We lost a lot of heat last season.”
“That could do it. He inhaled the dust and it caused his airways to inflame. Look. You can see hives on his skin as well.”
“You can help him?”
“Yes. We can get the swelling down and get his airways open, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he has continued breathing difficulty for anywhere from a few days to a few months,” Dr. Roberts said.
“What else should we do?” Hayden asked.
“First off, we should get you checked out, Hayden. If you’ve been working with that stuff and raised enough dust to affect Brian’s breathing, there’s a good chance you’ve inhaled a lot of it yourself. Secondly, I’d suggest that you get it sealed up. At minimum, stretch plastic over the insulated ceiling or wherever. I think they call the stuff Visqueen. But if I were you, I’d see about sheet-rocking and getting it truly sealed up tight. You’ll probably get better insulating value that way, too.”
They started treatment immediately, keeping oxygen flowing. I had to stay in the hospital. Well, I’m his mother. I wasn’t going to leave. Hayden took Betts home so she could go to school the next day. Before Betts left, she reached up and touched Brian’s hand. Hayden picked her up and carried her to the car.
It was a hard winter in more ways than one. Brian suffered from shortness of breath and could scarcely play outside in the snow at all. The cold air caused his lungs to seize up. He eventually started to gain some weight back, but he’d pretty much stopped growing. His pediatrician said it was normal for a child to grow and then stop growing and then grow some more so we shouldn’t worry. I worried anyway.
Betts seemed to have called a tentative truce with her brother. I won’t say the war was over, but it was more peaceful.
The hardest thing for us to adjust to was Hayden going to work in town. Buying the insulation, sheetrock, and plaster had been an unexpected expense, on top of the medical bills and the addition Hayden built the previous spring. The house had been under construction ever since we got that bit of land from his father almost nine years ago. It started as just a little box. We added on another two bedrooms and built the Cape Cod style attic room. Everything a little at a time. But finishing everything took all our money and put us in debt. There was no choice but for Hayden to get a regular job.
His father was even more unhappy when Hayden said he’d only be available to farm on weekends in the spring. Early that summer, Naomi passed away and Harlan never went back into the fields. He was sixty-eight years old and assumed his son would just keep farming. It was a spring of double-heartbreak for the old man and a time for us to adjust to a new lifestyle.
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