Babies Abundant

My paternal grandmother, like many women of her era, was a baby-producing machine. About every two years she churned out one or two babies until she was in her mid-forties, and the doctor told her to stop. She would probably not make it through another birth.

Her first two children were girls and next came identical twin girls. My grandfather must have wondered when he was going to have some boys to help out on the farm. Then another set of twins was born – this time a boy and a girl. Eventually, fifteen children arrived, ten of whom were twins! There were five boys and ten girls, three of whom didn’t make it to adulthood.

I used to try to imagine how they all fit into that four room house, but my mother informed me that 1) they didn’t live in that house, but a bigger one (though not much), and 2) by the time some of the younger children came along, the older ones were already married with children of their own.

The next generation was as prolific as my grandmother. She had fifty grandchildren, though no multiple births were part of that number. What would probably put her in Guinness was that she had both fraternal and identical twins, but I’m sure there is no way to provide adequate proof of that. What is true, though, is that out of all those who came after, there are only four boys left today to carry on the name. As one cousin put it, we daughtered out.

My grandmother was one tough cookie. She was 68 when I was born and for at least ten years after that until my grandfather died, she had a very hard life on the “farm.” They did have electricity before I was ten (a bare light bulb hanging on a cord from the ceiling in each room). But she still cooked on a wood stove, kept the chickens and a garden, and had no plumbing.

Once, my mother brought them to visit us. They saw their one and only movie and also got a taste of city life. I don’t remember much about that visit except that my grandmother spoke a lot about Frances, the talking horse she had seen on the big screen. I wonder now what she thought of all the modern conveniences we had and if she was at all envious. She certainly never showed it and I guess we’ll never know.

What I do know is that I would put her near the top of my “most admired people” list.