Quiet

 It made me curious that Nan would always say, "I would give $100 for 10 minutes of peace and quiet". As a child I never knew what she was talking about. Why would anyone want such a thing? A mother could be an octopus and she would never have  enough arms. To be pulled in eight directions at one time is an understatement when it came to our family. Nan never had a duplicate birth like twins or triplets, it seemed so because there was always a baby in the house who needed a diaper change. It might be easier to have one at a time but if you have multiple births it is over in an instant. Of course, not really because you have to feed 4 babies at once and put them in the tub at once and get them to sleep at once.

We had several friends growing up who were an only child and they were always at our house. I thought no one steels their toys and they have their own room. We were never lonely and we were never alone. There was a natural course of events to get dressed for school, eat breakfast and someone would be crying because they can't find their homework. From 1st thru 5th grade I cam home for lunch every day. We lived one block from school. We moved in 5th grade because my father found a better job 25 miles away at a crane company. We walked two miles to school, ate from our tin lunch boxes and walked two miles home. We went to catholic school and there were no buses. 

We ran when the washer stopped because all of the clothes had to be hung in the back yard. We lived in a north eastern state and it is cold from October to April. It was easy to hang the sheets in the cold but how could you take a frozen sheet off the line and then fold it to put in the basket. You had to walk the clean laundry into the house and up the stairs to the bedrooms. Every day was laundry day the worse day was underwear and sock day. If you had 30 pair of socks all wet and never had 60 clothes pins to put them on the line to dry. Nan found the laundry was her cocoon and her quiet place. She would call for us to come down and carry the wet laundry to the back yard but most times we did not hear her on purpose.

Mass on Sunday was not a quiet time. Nan had to sit between the boys and the girls sat on the end of the pew. If you take 8 squirming rattlesnakes out of a basket and let them loose at church you were sitting in front or behind our family. No one could concentrate on the mass because we were a distraction. If the Sunday sermon was longer than 5 minutes there was a parade to the bathroom. One at a time a sister would take a brother so Nan could stay in the pew with her posse.

SSSSHHHHHHHHHH!