Brenda, the Third Child

It’s amazing to me how three children can be so different. Our third and final child, Brenda, was born when Ashley was four and Jim was two. To say I had my hands full was an understatement.

I had literally run out of hands with the third one. When I would try to cross a street, I would hold Brenda in one arm, Jim’s hand with the other, and tell Ashley to hold on to my clothes as we crossed. That didn’t happen more than once or twice. I just avoided crossing the street. In fact, I avoided going out at all if I had to take all three of them.

Brenda was another “good” baby. I guess she had to be; she must have learned early on that I couldn’t come running as soon as she peeped. And she was frequently entertained by the other two playing nearby.

I remember certain crises when Brenda was a baby. When she was three weeks old, our dog, Snoopy, had eleven puppies in our garage! And when she was a year old, she had to have a little knot removed surgically from her head. For a while the surgeon thought that she might have some terrible disease that gave her a life span of thirty. So we were in a bad state until the pathology report came back negative. By that time, I was at home with a raging fever and sore throat that turned out to be my second bout with mononucleosis. I was in bed for three months. Fortunately, I received plenty of help from our parents, sisters, and friends.

Amazingly, Brenda and I bonded during that sickness; the other two were off to play school, and she and I could prop up in the bed and play, read, or even sleep together. So it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.

She was a sweet, easy-to-please child. There were no battles over clothes with this girl; she went along with whatever I picked out. And she was that way with everyone else, too.

One day she came to me and asked, “Mom, what is my talent? Ashley has her academics and Jim his tennis, what do I have?” I remember that I immediately thought of her sweet nature and said so. And I stressed that that was so very important in life. She told me later that her compliance and sweetness were an act, but I don’t believe it. She’s still just as loving and compassionate as she was then.

But she did have a hidden talent that we didn’t know about until later.