Sleeping In

This morning I slept in. I realize this is not a particularly newsworthy event, but it is an appreciated event.

When I was young it was accepted common knowledge that the older you got, the less sleep you needed. Life experience has now taught me what sleep researchers finally figured out--it's not that we need less sleep when we age, it's that it becomes more and more difficult to get enough sleep when we age. There are a number of physiological reasons for this, but the upshot is that we senior citizens are often walking around sleep deprived. That's the reason we tend to doze off so often during the day!

This photo has nothing, really, to do with that, except it is a sleeping picture that always amuses me. I took it in 1969 when my first baby, daughter Anne Marie, was quite new. No one in our little family was getting enough sleep during that period, because she was not a good sleeper. One Sunday afternoon Jerry lay down to rest with the baby. When I looked in he was sound asleep with the pacifier in his hand. Little miss Anne Marie was, as usual, bright-eyed wide awake!

I am thankful for the blessing of sleep today.

Mother's Love

Rose McLaughlin, age 21, obviously
adores baby Terry Loel.

I am working now on redoing my Mother's old photo album that covers the years from 1936 to 1952. I've looked through this album many times throughout my life. Working on it, however, has me studying and thinking about the photos in a different way. The pages I worked on yesterday are from 1937 to 1939, the years my parents' first two children were born. These were the years when the country was struggling to find a way out of the Great Depression. Work was scarce and people took whatever they could find. We would consider ourselves extremely poverty-stricken if we had to go through the everyday circumstances of those days.

Mother with Terry and second daughter, Grace. Mother
has made matching dresses for the three of them, and has
fixed Terry's hair with a cute ribbon. I love the look of
love and pride on Mother's face.

Looking at the photos of my parents in that time, with those first two babies, you would not know how difficult survival was. They are not seeing these little ones as burdens. The adoring love and pride is clear on their faces. We have more pictures of Mother with the children, which is why I titled this Mother's Love, but our father was very good with little children.

It amazes me that in this time when so many people have so much more than my parents even imagined having, a lot of people seem to look upon children as burdensome nuisances. Some babies never get a chance at life, being disposed of like they were diseased tissue. Some are neglected; I cringe at what I hear some parents saying to their children as they drag overtired, over-stressed, crying children through the stores. Some expect the schools, the child-care facilities, or a relative to feed, teach, and raise their children for them. Some people are amazed that anyone would want more than one or two children.

Well, I got a little off topic there. I really only meant to talk about the treasure the old photos are, as they show the love and care my parents had for their babies!