I helpy my mom :)

It was summer 1975. I was 5, Bobbie was 4, Ray was 2. Daddy had a green 1948 GMC truck that had a pulpwood set up on it in the winter to cut down trees and haul them to the saw mill and a wooden flatbed to haul hay in the summer. He switched them out according to season. My favorite was when he had the flat bed on it, as I would direct my siblings and cousins in shows starring me and I would belt out my favorite hymns and country songs and the Acee milk commercial from the radio. Once, we drove it to town and mama was paying bills and Bobbie and I climbed up on the back of that old truck and started singing as loud as we could. A man came up and listened for a minute and gave Bobbie and I each a quarter and told us to keep singing.  We showed the quarters  to mama and got a stern talking to about climbing up on the “stage” as I called it and singing for strangers and for heaven’s sake, taking MONEY from them and we KNEW better and good heavens, you CHILDREN should KNOW better. So we kept our shows at home after that.  I knew all Loretta Lynn’s songs by heart and I loved “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man” and would belt it at the top of my lungs. I would sing and star in the show til they wandered off, hungry and bored and I would sadly follow them, my audience now gone, drawn away by baloney sandwiches and mushroom soup in a can. Bobbie and I loved mushroom soup, but we didn’t know what mushrooms actually were. They called the ones that grew wild in the woods by our house “toad stools” and warned us not to eat or even touch them or we would surely die. We would eat the mushroom soup heartily and save the “meats” in the bottom for last. We called them “meats” until one of my older cousins pointed out it was MUSHROOM soup, not “MEATS” soup and we stopped calling it that.

  Daddy and mama hauled hay all summer and with no one to babysit, would just take us kids along to what ever field the hay was at. Mama would take water and ice in an old glass pickle jar wrapped in a towel to keep it cold and peanut butter crackers. We would take an old blanket and books and a few toys and sit under a shade tree. A few times, though, we would get to a field and there would be no shade tree close and that meant we had to stay in the truck, a boring hot business for young children. One particular time, the hay was in a long field with few bumps or terraces…and no shade tree. So, mama put the old truck in granny gear (the lowest, most powerful gear in the truck, making the truck roll forward at a snail’s pace. You didn’t even need to be in the truck, it moving so slowly you could walk beside it) and put me up to the steering wheel. She instructed me to steer and cautioned me about letting Bobbie and Ray bump the gear shift. Bobbie and Ray sat on the other side, by the door. She cautioned me to not let them open the door from the inside of  the truck and let them fall out. “Bobbie. Don’t let your brother climb out the window.” She said and Bobbie nodded.  I took this in and set about my job. Mama started the truck. The gears made a little grumpy, grinding noise. Mama jiggled the gear shift gently and it eased up and she pushed in on the clutch again and it caught. The truck started to roll forward, slowly and mama got out. She shut the door and pointed to the end of the land, toward an old, creaky barn. “Drive that way. When we get close, I’ll hop in and turn it.” she instructed.

   I couldn’t see over the steering wheel by sitting, so I had put my feet up on the seat and was on my knees, that old steering wheel about as far as my little arms could stretch. I drove and steered, daddy throwing the bales up to mama, who stacked them firmly up onto the flat bed. Daddy wore no shirt and old blue jeans and glistened with sweat, his reddish blonde hair curling up around his ears. Mama wore jeans and a sleeveless shirt, she was brown but her hair was blonde and thick and hung in a ponytail down her back. She was thin and tall and striking, with a “don’t mess with ME” kind of vibe.

  Bobbie and Ray read books and bounced around in the front seat. I scolded them when they got too close to the gear shift and protectively put my tiny hand around it and drove that way, holding it in gear in case it got bumped. I would steer until we reached the end of the row, mama would jump in and turn it, that old truck with no power steering. The muscles and veins in her arms bulged and were covered in dirt and bits of hey. Sometimes, I will be driving the tractor..or mowing…or carrying dead chickens and I will look down and be surprise to see not MY arms by my MOTHER’S arms, all veins and dirt.

  So, I drove and scolded and protected the gear shift. But, then…distracted by Bobbie asking me a question, I ran over a hay bale. The truck bounced, mama almost fell and daddy ran up and caught the truck. He took it out of granny and backed it up and cautioned me to watch where I was going and don’t run over hay bales. I found out later this cost us 75 cents and I was crushed. So disappointed in myself.

   But I felt accomplished and strong after this experience and the next time we hauled hay, I was already prepared to drive again. We went to a field and…no shade tree. “YAY!” I thought silently.

   The people who owned the land had other ideas. The lady of the house, a sweet graying woman told my parents we could come in her house and stay while my parents worked. She had grandchildren that would visit and she had toys and ice cream. Bobbie and Ray were gleeful, but I was distraught.

  How could they haul hay without me? How would they get all that work done? I tried to tell the lady how much my mom needed me to drive. She looked at me as though I had just announced I was flying to Mars on my tricycle. “honey” she said gently, sweetly. “your mom and dad don’t need you. You’re just a little girl!”

   “poo.” I thought and quickly took it back. Mama hated “ugly words” and wouldn’t allow them . “poo” was an ugly word.

  She got out toys and Bobbie and Ray were playing and eating cookies she brought us. I halfheartedly looked at books and nibbled at a cookie, turning down the ice cream..my stomach churning. Finally I ran out the back door and all the way to the fence in the nice lady’s back yard. I could see the truck, slowly rolling. The hay on the back stacking higher. I yelled, thinking maybe they would hear me and needing my help, would come and get me. I surmised I could drive better with the nice lady watching Bobbie and Ray, how I could be MORE help without their distraction and wouldn’t run over any hay bales. Maybe that’s why they were treating me like a child, I had run over a hay baul, ruining my shining moment.

   And that’s where I stayed the rest of the afternoon, out by the back fence, watching the truck go back and forth. The nice lady finally forced me to come inside out of the sun and eat a little something. I dozed off on the floor as Bobbie and Ray played quietly beside me on the rug. When mom and dad came to get us, I was fuzzy from sleep, but told the nice lady “thank you” when prompted. She told my parents of me insisting they needed me out there and everybody laughed. The laughter at first confused me, I thought they were making fun but when the nice lady patted my head and said “that one is a hard worker and wants to help her mom and dad” I realized they were bragging on me.

  Trevor was 2 and I was hugely pregnant with Tara. It was 1992. We were remodeling the house and repainting…ripping out flooring. It was hard work and one day, while doing dishes in the bathtub, 8 months pregnant, I thought “this was a BAD idea” but it was too late to stop and we just kept plugging along.

  It was my job to paint. It was hard painting with a 2 year old and so I had a plan. I put an old cardboard box in the living room, gave Trevor a coffee can full of pain and an old paint brush. He was insistent on helping and if I waited for him to nap, I would never get it done. So, I painted the walls and he painted his box, asking me from time to time how it looked. He would proudly show Clint his hard work when he came home and said “I helpy! I helpy my mom!”. When I would start getting out the stuff to paint, he would put on his toy tool belt with plastic hammer and screwdriver and  grab his paint brush and get to work. He would try to carry paint cans from room to room or help me drag the ladder. “I helpy! I helpy my mom!”

  One day we were painting in the master bedroom and the phone rang. This was before cordless phones. I couldn’t see Trevor from where I was, but I could hear him. I chatted for a few minutes with my aunt Muff, filling her in on my pregnancy and she filled me in on hers. I could hear Trevor in the bedroom playing and saying “I helpy! I helpy!” and after five or ten minutes, I told Muff I better go…Trevor was starting to get quiet. She laughed and said she understood and we started to hang up.

   That’s when Trevor entered the room, dragging a large, white, stiff sheet of …something. I said “hang on a second, Muff..” and put the phone down and walked closer to investigate. It was the newly painted cover of the sheet rock. I realized then that at one time it had been wallpaper, but had been painted over years before. I had painted over THAT and the wet paint had cause the wall paper to soften and pull away from the trim. Trevor had gotten his hammer and screwdriver…plastic, but deadly….to hammer and chisel along the trim and pull the whole sheet off. He had watched Clint do this to pull the trim off and Clint had let him “helpy” so that’s what Trevor decided needed done. He was so proud of himself, pulling this 5 foot sheet of hard work off the wall, leaving bare, chalky uncovered sheet rock. I didn’t even get on to him…we just stopped for the day and ate lunch and Trevor fell asleep watching a cartoon. When Clint came home, I said “Trevor, why don’t you go show your dad all your hard work you did today.” Trevor’s face lit up and he grabbed Clint’s hand and dragged him to the bedroom. He proudly showed Clint the sheet rock he had dismantled and crowed “I HELPY!! I HELPY MY MOM!”

  Clint hugged him and said “yeah…wow…you really did something in here!” Trevor smiled and showed him how he did it, putting the plastic screwdriver up underneath the cover and tapping it with the hammer, peeling it away from the wall and pulling it down with one fell swoop.

  Trevor says he remembers all of this and how thinking he had to help me, his mama and her big belly with the baby inside. He said he felt like I couldn’t do it without him and he had to be his daddy when he was at work. He said he remembered the box he painted, and how he would think to himself  “I’ve got to get his done before dad gets home!”

    I guess that one was a hard worker that just wants to help his mom and dad. Or..”helpy”, as it were.