After School

When I come home from school, the first thing I do is look for my mother. She’s often at her sewing machine. When I say, “Hi, Mom!” she turns off the machine, takes off her glasses, and smiles at me: “Hi, Honey!”

Baby Tricia is napping upstairs and Rory, our toddler, is sitting in the playpen beside the sewing machine, banging two blocks together. My brother Brian and my sister Heather come bursting into the house soon after me and the three of us crowd around the machine. My mother laughs at us, all talking at once. Soon, Brian and Heather run off to get themselves some Chips Ahoy cookies and milk, then go outside to play. Some days I go outside too. Some days I go up to my room and do my homework. Many days, like today, I prefer to stay with my mother for awhile, especially when there’s a nursing baby in the house. 

My mother gets Rory out of the playpen and we go into the kitchen. She puts him in the high chair and gives him a handful of Cheerios. Then she and I have a cup of tea. Mine is mostly milk and sugar, but I feel very grown up to be allowed this treat. I tell my mother every single thing that has happened to me that day. I show her my tests and my homework assignments while she looks at the mail. She’s always proud of my schoolwork.

  Tricia wakes up and starts to cry. My mother takes Rory out of the high chair and carries him on her hip as we go upstairs. She puts him on the floor of Tricia’s room and I find some toys for him.  I talk to Tricia to distract her while my mother changes her diaper. Sometimes my mother lets me change the diaper, if it’s not too messy. We go back downstairs to the kitchen.  My mother carries Tricia, so I help Rory crawl down the stairs backwards. I get some of his toys from the playpen. Tricia’s hungry, so my mother nurses her.

My mother keeps a large upholstered rocking chair in the kitchen where she nurses all of her babies. The rocking chair is wide enough for me to sit beside her while she nurses. I can sing to the baby or gently smooth her hair or let her grab my finger with her tiny fist. When my mother switches sides, I can sneak a look at her nipples. They seem so large and dark brown compared to my tiny pink ones. Over the years, I’ve sat beside my mother while she has nursed first Brian, then Heather, then Rory, and now Tricia. I know she nursed me in this rocker, too. In a few more years, she will nurse her last baby, my brother Dana, here.  

“Nursing is really important for babies,” she tells me. “All babies should be nursed, if it’s possible. But if it isn’t working, then of course, the baby should get a bottle. Today at the Le Leche League meeting, there was a woman with a baby who isn’t gaining weight. She was so skinny, I was afraid for her. I don’t know if she doesn’t latch on well or her mother doesn’t have enough milk or what, but that baby is starving and her mother should stop insisting on nursing her.”

“You must have lots of milk, because Tricia is really chubby!”

My mother laughs. “Yes,” she says, “one thing I’ve got is plenty of milk!”

I think about this for awhile, and then I ask: “Did Nana nurse you?”

“Yes, she did.  And of course I nursed you. But when you were born, I had to fight the people in the hospital because they wanted you to stay in the nursery with the other babies and they wanted me to nurse you on a schedule, the way the babies who got bottles were fed. But I wanted to keep you in the room with me, so I could nurse you whenever you cried. I was just a teenager and I was intimidated by those people, but I kept fighting with them and finally they let me do what I wanted.”

“I’m going to nurse my babies too,” I declare. She smiles at me. I’m proud of her for winning the fight with the hospital.  

When Tricia is done, my mother puts her in the baby swing. The dryer buzzes, so we take the clothes out and fold them, making one pile for each member of the family, covering the top of the dryer, the top of the washer, and the nearby counter. I put a pair of underpants on my head and pull my pigtails out through the leg holes. My mother puts a pair on her head, too, and I put a pair on Rory, and the three of us dance around the kitchen, laughing and singing. 

I go upstairs to my room to do my homework while my mother starts supper. When I come back down, there’s a casserole in the oven and my mother is playing a game with Rory, while Tricia sits in her baby seat on the table. My mother tears off two little pieces of napkin, dampens them with her tongue, and sticks them to the ends of her pointer fingers. She places her two fingertips on the edge of the tabletop and sings the nursery rhyme, “Two Little Blackbirds.”    When she sings, “Fly away, Jack!  Fly away, Jill!” she moves her fingers quickly to her shoulders, then back to the tabletop. The tiny pieces of napkin, the blackbirds, are gone.When she sings, “Come back, Jack!  Come back, Jill!” she once again moves her fingers quickly to her shoulders, then back to the tabletop. The blackbirds are back. Rory is entranced, and asks her to sing the rhyme again and again.  

Brian and Heather come back from playing and search her shoulders, trying in vain to find the pieces of napkin. I’m the only one old enough to have noticed that the fingertips which come back to the tabletop the first time are not the pointer fingers, but the middle fingers which, of course, do not have pieces of napkin stuck to them. I’m careful to keep my mother’s secret, and let the other kids figure it out for themselves.

Before we have a chance to tire of this game, my mother switches to “Feed the Elephant.”  She pulls the sleeve of her sweater down over her hand, and pulls the edges together so that her covered hand looks like the end of an elephant’s trunk. Then she gives us small items like nuts or raisins so we can “feed the elephant.” She gobbles up our offerings, nibbles our hair, and tickles us into the bargain. Before we know it, my father is home and she’s getting up from the table to kiss him hello.