| Biographical Non-Fiction posted April 4, 2020 | Chapters: |
...23 24 -25- 26... 
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Balancing working and raising a child
A chapter in the book Remembering Yesterday
Parenthood and the Working World
by BethShelby
| Background After the death of our first child as a result of a DPT injection, we have a another baby girl. I go back to work doing art for a newspaper. |
The year was 1961, and Kennedy was just starting his first year of presidency. He was promoting the space race and vowing to see the US put a man on the moon in the near future. Trouble was brewing in the Orient. We were on the cusp of a new war. The US had just sent 3,500 troops to Vietnam. We were starting to hear about Martin Luther King and his speeches advocating racial equality. You always watched the news with interest, but I was more concerned with things that related to us personally. The news was depressing and made me a little nervous.
Now that I was working downtown, we could ride together and drop Carol by Mrs. Burnside’s house. She would take care of her until we got off work. Carol seemed happy with the arrangement. She went to her new babysitter arms as readily as she would to a family member. It seemed to be working out for everyone. When we picked her up after work, she was always clean and happy.
We’d gotten past those first months when we were so afraid something might happen to her. By three months she’d gained four pounds and 5 1/4 inches. She was laughing aloud and babbling sounds and she could repeat bye-bye. She was fascinated with her toes, and her little hands were always busy. By five months she was able to pull herself to a sitting position and was crawling. As much as we enjoyed the time we had with her, we felt comfortable leaving her with someone who seemed to really care about her.
My new job involved finding art in clip-art books and arranging the elements as creatively as possible in the size ad the customer requested. Some copy-writing was involved. If the customer wanted a personalized ad, more specialized artwork was required. After I'd been there a while, I would be doing more fashion drawings. Working for a newspapers always involved deadlines, and everyone worked under pressure. We couldn’t keep the presses waiting.
Most of the women who worked there were young and nice looking. The owner of the paper was a man in his seventies, who felt free to walk up to any girl working there and give her a pinch on her butt or wherever he pleased. Most of the girls shrugged it off, but I gave him wide berth. I’d had enough men problems.
During the first six months, everything seemed to be going smoothly with my job. I liked what I was doing, and my supervisor appeared to be pleased with my work. Then one day, we got word to stop whatever we were doing and come to a meeting in the main area. The plant manager shocked all of us by saying the final edition of the paper was being printed. Everyone would be given two weeks severance, and as of that moment, we should collect our things and go home. The paper, which had tried valiantly to compete with a much older and established daily, would cease to exist. The manager at the television station had warned me. Once again I was unemployed.
The timing was good though. You had some vacation time coming, and you’d decided you wanted to go to Florida and go deep sea fishing. Your company had taken some guys down earlier, and they’d come back talking about how much fun they had. You’d chosen not to go on that trip, but now you wanted to go and take me. We told Mrs. Burnside what had happened. I told her I would take a few days vacation and try to find another job when I got back in town. She was disappointed because she was crazy about Carol, but she understood. Mother enjoyed keeping Carol, so we asked her to keep our little girl while we went fishing.
The fishing trip took us to Clearwater, Florida. We would be going out into the gulf. There were charter boats and Coast Guard vessels doing gulf fishing tours daily. The Coast Guard vessels held more people, and they were a lot cheaper. We were waiting on the dock before the sun came up. Fishing had never been your favorite sport, but this was different from standing on a creek bank. It was fun. I was like a kid, thrilled with idea of riding a boat out to sea.
It didn’t take the captain long to find where the fish were biting. A couple of the crew cut up octopus for bait and baited our hooks. We could hardly get the line into the water before we had a fish. Mostly we caught groupers. By the time we got back to shore that afternoon, we both had long strings of fish. We hadn’t given any thought as to what we would do with anything we caught. What we did was take pictures of each of us holding up our fish. Then we sold them to someone in the group who had thought ahead and had an ice chest ready.
One day of fishing was enough to satisfy us. The next day we visited Silver Springs and went out in a glass bottom boat. By that time, we were anxious to get back to our baby. Our vacations tended to be short, but left us with pleasant memories.
The next job I found when I got back home was a temporary seasonal job that involved pasting up telephone books and making up ads for the yellow pages. This job lasted for a few months. I was just finishing the last of the work, when Carol started running a fever and became very irritable. I took her to the doctor, and he diagnosed her with red measles. This was about a year before the measles vaccine became available. You and I had both had measles as children. It was something every child got at some point, and we didn’t think it was that big of a deal.
However, I was six when I had measles and Carol was less than a year old. Almost every inch of her was covered with the itchy red bumps, and she was a miserable little patient. In the years since, measles came to be thought of as a thing of the past, until last year when they made a comeback. Now doctors have harsh words for parents who fail to get their children vaccinated against this childhood disease. Carol was so uncomfortable. She’d pull up to a standing position and beg to be held and walked.
After we got past the measles, I stayed home for a while. Nan had finished high school, and your mom wanted her to come to Jackson to look for work. She needed to earn money for college. I’d finally gotten my driver’s license, so I could take her around. She had several interviews but no luck finding anything. After a month, she went back home and took a job at a blanket factory.
I still hadn’t found another job, when Carol caught an intestinal virus and couldn’t keep anything down. By afternoon, she seemed to be getting weaker by the minute. I called the doctor several times during the day, but he didn’t think I needed to bring her in. He suggested tea enemas, and other things but nothing was working. When you got home, we decided to take her to the emergency room.
We’d barely gotten out of the driveway, when her eyes rolled back, and she bent backwards and went limp. We were horrified, and you broke speed limits on our way to the hospital. When we got there, the emergency personnel grabbed her and put her on a gurney and got an IV started. It wasn’t long until her eyes fluttered open and her color improved. She had gotten so dehydrated that we could have lost her. It was too close for comfort.
At eight and a half months, she took her first step, and by nine months there was no stopping her. She was developing a sizable vocabulary, and we thought we had a little genius on our hands. I printed up a bunch of flash cards with words identifying objects in the room. I would hand her a card and tell her to put on the object where it belonged. If I'd kept that up, she would have been reading by three.
Carol had a personality all her own. She let us know right away when something wasn’t right. She was not a morning person. Upon awakening, she was aways in a bad mood. After an hour or so, her grumpy attitude would wear off, and she seemed eager to please. Most of the time, she was very obedient and acted more mature than normal for someone so young.
We hadn’t talked about having other children. I was an only child, and I felt deprived by not having siblings. I didn’t want that for Carol, but I figured we could wait a couple of years. I wasn’t ready to be pregnant again. We were using birth control, but it apparently it wasn’t foolproof because when Carol was thirteen months old, I got pregnant again.
You suggested I should just stay home and take care of Carol. Since women were paid so much less than men, you didn’t think my salary was making that much of a difference by the time we paid for child care.
You signed up to take some evening college classes on the GI bill and the goverment paid you to do that. I hated that you had to carry all the financial burdens alone, but you didn’t seem to mind.
I realized that if I had gone into teaching or another field, I might have brought in more money, but art was the route I’d chosen. It was a little late to rethink it now. I decided staying home wasn't such a bad option. I could paint and sew and have fun playing with my little girl. I was still young. A career could come later.
Now that I was working downtown, we could ride together and drop Carol by Mrs. Burnside’s house. She would take care of her until we got off work. Carol seemed happy with the arrangement. She went to her new babysitter arms as readily as she would to a family member. It seemed to be working out for everyone. When we picked her up after work, she was always clean and happy.
We’d gotten past those first months when we were so afraid something might happen to her. By three months she’d gained four pounds and 5 1/4 inches. She was laughing aloud and babbling sounds and she could repeat bye-bye. She was fascinated with her toes, and her little hands were always busy. By five months she was able to pull herself to a sitting position and was crawling. As much as we enjoyed the time we had with her, we felt comfortable leaving her with someone who seemed to really care about her.
My new job involved finding art in clip-art books and arranging the elements as creatively as possible in the size ad the customer requested. Some copy-writing was involved. If the customer wanted a personalized ad, more specialized artwork was required. After I'd been there a while, I would be doing more fashion drawings. Working for a newspapers always involved deadlines, and everyone worked under pressure. We couldn’t keep the presses waiting.
Most of the women who worked there were young and nice looking. The owner of the paper was a man in his seventies, who felt free to walk up to any girl working there and give her a pinch on her butt or wherever he pleased. Most of the girls shrugged it off, but I gave him wide berth. I’d had enough men problems.
During the first six months, everything seemed to be going smoothly with my job. I liked what I was doing, and my supervisor appeared to be pleased with my work. Then one day, we got word to stop whatever we were doing and come to a meeting in the main area. The plant manager shocked all of us by saying the final edition of the paper was being printed. Everyone would be given two weeks severance, and as of that moment, we should collect our things and go home. The paper, which had tried valiantly to compete with a much older and established daily, would cease to exist. The manager at the television station had warned me. Once again I was unemployed.
The timing was good though. You had some vacation time coming, and you’d decided you wanted to go to Florida and go deep sea fishing. Your company had taken some guys down earlier, and they’d come back talking about how much fun they had. You’d chosen not to go on that trip, but now you wanted to go and take me. We told Mrs. Burnside what had happened. I told her I would take a few days vacation and try to find another job when I got back in town. She was disappointed because she was crazy about Carol, but she understood. Mother enjoyed keeping Carol, so we asked her to keep our little girl while we went fishing.
The fishing trip took us to Clearwater, Florida. We would be going out into the gulf. There were charter boats and Coast Guard vessels doing gulf fishing tours daily. The Coast Guard vessels held more people, and they were a lot cheaper. We were waiting on the dock before the sun came up. Fishing had never been your favorite sport, but this was different from standing on a creek bank. It was fun. I was like a kid, thrilled with idea of riding a boat out to sea.
It didn’t take the captain long to find where the fish were biting. A couple of the crew cut up octopus for bait and baited our hooks. We could hardly get the line into the water before we had a fish. Mostly we caught groupers. By the time we got back to shore that afternoon, we both had long strings of fish. We hadn’t given any thought as to what we would do with anything we caught. What we did was take pictures of each of us holding up our fish. Then we sold them to someone in the group who had thought ahead and had an ice chest ready.
One day of fishing was enough to satisfy us. The next day we visited Silver Springs and went out in a glass bottom boat. By that time, we were anxious to get back to our baby. Our vacations tended to be short, but left us with pleasant memories.
The next job I found when I got back home was a temporary seasonal job that involved pasting up telephone books and making up ads for the yellow pages. This job lasted for a few months. I was just finishing the last of the work, when Carol started running a fever and became very irritable. I took her to the doctor, and he diagnosed her with red measles. This was about a year before the measles vaccine became available. You and I had both had measles as children. It was something every child got at some point, and we didn’t think it was that big of a deal.
However, I was six when I had measles and Carol was less than a year old. Almost every inch of her was covered with the itchy red bumps, and she was a miserable little patient. In the years since, measles came to be thought of as a thing of the past, until last year when they made a comeback. Now doctors have harsh words for parents who fail to get their children vaccinated against this childhood disease. Carol was so uncomfortable. She’d pull up to a standing position and beg to be held and walked.
After we got past the measles, I stayed home for a while. Nan had finished high school, and your mom wanted her to come to Jackson to look for work. She needed to earn money for college. I’d finally gotten my driver’s license, so I could take her around. She had several interviews but no luck finding anything. After a month, she went back home and took a job at a blanket factory.
I still hadn’t found another job, when Carol caught an intestinal virus and couldn’t keep anything down. By afternoon, she seemed to be getting weaker by the minute. I called the doctor several times during the day, but he didn’t think I needed to bring her in. He suggested tea enemas, and other things but nothing was working. When you got home, we decided to take her to the emergency room.
We’d barely gotten out of the driveway, when her eyes rolled back, and she bent backwards and went limp. We were horrified, and you broke speed limits on our way to the hospital. When we got there, the emergency personnel grabbed her and put her on a gurney and got an IV started. It wasn’t long until her eyes fluttered open and her color improved. She had gotten so dehydrated that we could have lost her. It was too close for comfort.
At eight and a half months, she took her first step, and by nine months there was no stopping her. She was developing a sizable vocabulary, and we thought we had a little genius on our hands. I printed up a bunch of flash cards with words identifying objects in the room. I would hand her a card and tell her to put on the object where it belonged. If I'd kept that up, she would have been reading by three.
Carol had a personality all her own. She let us know right away when something wasn’t right. She was not a morning person. Upon awakening, she was aways in a bad mood. After an hour or so, her grumpy attitude would wear off, and she seemed eager to please. Most of the time, she was very obedient and acted more mature than normal for someone so young.
We hadn’t talked about having other children. I was an only child, and I felt deprived by not having siblings. I didn’t want that for Carol, but I figured we could wait a couple of years. I wasn’t ready to be pregnant again. We were using birth control, but it apparently it wasn’t foolproof because when Carol was thirteen months old, I got pregnant again.
You suggested I should just stay home and take care of Carol. Since women were paid so much less than men, you didn’t think my salary was making that much of a difference by the time we paid for child care.
You signed up to take some evening college classes on the GI bill and the goverment paid you to do that. I hated that you had to carry all the financial burdens alone, but you didn’t seem to mind.
I realized that if I had gone into teaching or another field, I might have brought in more money, but art was the route I’d chosen. It was a little late to rethink it now. I decided staying home wasn't such a bad option. I could paint and sew and have fun playing with my little girl. I was still young. A career could come later.
 Recognized |
Jackon Mississippi in 1961. I continued remembering my married years while addressing my deceased husband.
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