Title
# 1
Date 7-10-58
(Ed. Note: With this issue, the San Bruno Herald is pleased to present the first number of a brand new column. In order to introduce it to the widest possible audience, it is also being printed, for the next few weeks, In the Recorder-Progress.)
The authoress, Mrs. Richard M. Harnett, of 213 Rainer Ave, So. San, Francisco, is superbly equipped to write this column, both by her writing background and by her present circumstances. As she says, in explaining the name she has chosen for her columns:
“It’s simply about one mother tied, down- by apron strings with little ones hanging on every minute. As such it’s about all mothers. Sometimes the days seem to be nothing but an endless round of dishes, diapers and don’ts. However, it can be a merry round instead, for there is a lot of fun in having little children in spite of all the housework that must be done somehow.”
She adds that “my family being what it is, I doubt that I will ever run out of material.”
It was the usual 6 a.m., an hour I’m used to, but not resigned to.
“Just write it off the top of your head,” he said. “Just like you talk.” Words by husband, Dick.
“Huh.” By noon I’d have been wide awake enough to blow my stack at such a remark.
“I mean, it’s not bad, what you say from the top of your head. And, after all, look at the investment I have in those kids. I should get some return. They say people get paid for writing columns. You can write, you know.”
Yeah. In the year before we married I wrote some radio commercials, did a few magazine layouts. Now all I ever lay out is five sets of little clothes. And I mean little. The sizes would scare you.
“They’re all fine little children and you know it. “Everybody would love hearing about them every week.” Proud and Irish, he is, can’t you tell?
“Why, just everybody. Okay, okay. “I’ll try.” Love, honor and OBEY.
everybody up. Hurrah, it’s morning, up and at ‘em. Let’s go. There are limes when I wish I’d gone into a nice quiet convent.
I ignored them all while I sipped my coffee cup, finished reading the paper. I was lucky, after all. I have friends with just two children who never have time to read the paper. They just aren’t
lucky enough to have to get up in the wee hours.
But there are compensations. Soon as he was dressed, Buzzy, almost 2, crawled under his crib and out of the melee selected my nice big wooden mixing spoon. It made me glad then and there that I hadn’t spent a futile 20 minutes yesterday looking for it.
I’m a smart mother, too. I didn’t snatch it from him, knowing he’d wail if I did. I let him carry it to the kitchen where he abandoned it at the sight of high chair and bib. Trouble is, I forgot about recovering it until he picked it up again after breakfast. It’s still missing.
While I dressed Buzzy, our five year-old and eldest, Mary Margaret, was dressing John, 3. She loves to. “help” me by dressing him. Oddly enough, he stays within Aix feet of her for the ritual, more than he ever does for me.
And talking all the time—Mary! was. About a symphony she attended last February.
Have you ever stopped to listen to just exactly what your children are talking about all the time. It’s usually about something that happened at least six months ago!
I remember that symphony evening well. Baby sitters are scarce and I suggested to Dick that he take Mary instead of me he accepted, with unusual eagerness, I thought, ‘Course, I don’t blame him. She’s so very young, so very blond and blue eyed. My blondness has the look of thirty-ish!
Anyway, Mary’s memory was working hard at the symphony this morning. She was telling Tim about the orchestra. (Don’t expect any world-shaking comments here—we have normal kids.) “And all the men were dressed just like Abraham Lincoln.” When she came home that night, I asked her how she liked her first symphony. “Well, it was noisy.”
Comments to warm the hearts of music lovers everywhere.
Minimum. I’m making like one of those articles on how to write and raise children at the same time. Frankly, those titles should be with ‘built-in growing mechanisms. What with all the bitching, baking and candlestick making, I wouldn’t ever get around to their cell multiplication!
Over the clatter of the typewriter, I can hear the baby, talking to himself. He’s Gerald Peter, age ten months. So good you’d never know he was here. It’s time for his lunch—and everybody else’s—so that means I’d better get to the breakfast dishes soaking in the sink.
So I’ll leave you with one of those ever-popular household hints. If you’re constantly surrounded by house work and several children the trick is to soak everything. After awhile it just comes clean
This- even works with the children. |
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