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10
Back Porch
ones who missed the memorable night when the hippie clan streaked naked through the neighborhood. As usual, we slept right through it.
Being a friendly sort, She invited me over for coffee and conversation. When I accepted the invitation, I knew the place would be littered. After all, I had seen the house-cleaning. I even expected one or two holes in the walls. However, when I walked through their front door, I thought, “How is this place still standing? Am I taking my life into my own hands by coming in here?”
After I sat down I just had to ask, “What happened to your walls?”
She handed me a cup of coffee. “Just some wrestling matches.”
“Did anyone get hurt?
“Naw.” She laughed. “We were just having fim.”
Fun? I could see clear through to yonder! Holes, man-sized holes, that showed bedrooms and bathrooms all the way to the back wall of the house!
I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “What about those missing two-by-fours? Did anyone’s noggin get cracked?
‘Yeah, but nothing serious.” She giggled and added, “They lived.”
I just sat there and drank my coffee as I listened to the history of those holes.
As the days and seasons passed, the hippies and the neighborhood twined together like a child’s loosely tied braid. They became part of the neighborhood, though not always a welcome part.
Then, wonder of wonders, after many years of marriage, I found I was going to have a baby. I was the first among our student friends. They were as happy that it was not them as we were that it was us!
I was filled with such contentment it spilled from every pore of my being. We fixed up the spare room into a nursery with freshly painted crib and chest of drawers.
We were having a baby, and it became a community event. Tiny little clothes began trickling in. Friends popped in to compare my belly with bowling balls, basketballs, and toward the end, beach balls.
Finally, in the summertime of my life, amidst baseball games, dinner with friends, and looking for a lost puppy, labor began. Dan fell asleep. I got his stopwatch and curled up into a great wing-backed chair to await contractions.
As I was timing the contractions, people started arriving. It was as if someone had been keeping a night-time vigil and said, “Oh-oh! Their lights are on. We’d better check on them.”
So it began: timing contractions, massaging my belly, someone cooking breakfast, and somebody taking pictures of me during the contractions.
Then it was time for hospital and baby.
My husband could not stand the anguish of seeing me in labor. Our friend Maggie, a nurse, came with me into delivery. Maggie spot-cleaned the baby, wrapped him in blankets and whisked him downstairs to his dad and our friends for their introduc-tion. After bringing him back, she gave the baby a thorough washing, effectively bleaching his red hair to platinum white. I only had everyone else’s work, until he got older, that my baby was a red-headed child.
While I spent a couple of days in the hospital felling in love with my son, my home became a beehive of activity. Everyone pitched in to put a spit-shine on the old place. It practically sparkled when we came home.
Family and friends were there to welcome us. Dinner was cooked, and a round donut-hole cushion was found for me to sit on.
It was after dinner when the hippies came over “to see the baby.” She asked, “Can I hold your baby?”
“Sure,” I answered as I handed her the child. As the baby sank into the ample folds of her bosom, the entire house became quiet. She cuddled the baby as if he were the most important person in the world. To me, he was. Then she handed him back to me.
“I don’t have any money to give you a gift, but I want to give the baby something.”
I listened and waited.
“The baby’s room faces our house, and I don’t want to scare him. So I’m going to give him the gift of quiet.”
I looked around and the hippies were nodding in agreement. It touched a cord in me so deep that I began to cry. For this was truly the greatest gift I had ever received.
Most everyone else was skeptical, but as days blended into weeks and months, the hippies kept their word. Quiet reigned during that last year of college, and the hippies became more solid than most of the other citizens of our neighborhood.
And our baby thrived with quiet naps and gentle love.
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Congratulations and Best Wishes, Grace, on your newest endeavor. Wishing you much success!
Love, Dad Frank R. Blackmarr, Sr.
CHIROPRACTIC CENTRE
Dedicated to Caring
Dr. Mark R. Shuttleworth
Chiropractor
665 E. Pass Road #3 Gulfport, MS 39507
(601) 896-3002