She surely deserved it.
The following morning, on July 8, 1961, at 1:00 a.m., just eight days after we were married, our son made his way into this world. He weighed six pounds and eight ounces. Shortly afterward the nurse came into my room holding the most perfectly formed and tiniest bundle I’d ever seen. I gingerly unswaddled him and checked all his fingers and toes. With tears of joy streaming down my face, I checked his tiny head and face and every part on his body. My baby, my very own baby! Oh, the joy of it! I named him Keith Gregory. I loved Gregory Peck, and we ended up calling him Gregory because I didn’t want my son to be called Keith Junior or Junior.
At that time new mothers were kept in the hospital for seven days. During that time the hospital staff taught me how to care for him and breastfeed him and to burp him after each feeding.
“I know all that. I had a lot of brothers and sisters,” I told the nurse.
“Oh, did you now? And how many did you have?”
“My mother gave birth to fourteen babies, but only ten of us survived.”
“Wow! It must have been difficult for her,” was all she said.
Keith didn’t come to North West River to visit me while I was recovering, and I didn’t expect him either. He was working and couldn’t get the time off. The road leading to North West River was not yet paved and was in very bad condition. After seven days I was flown back to Happy Valley clutching my newborn in my arms.
Keith was beside himself with pride, but seemed to have trouble expressing it. However, it was evident as I laid our tiny baby on the bed how he felt. He sprawled onto the bed, scooped the tiny bundle into his hands, and stared at him for the longest time. What is he thinking? I wondered. By the look on his face, I could tell he was overwhelmed, as tears trickled down his cheeks.
Chapter 9
Trying to Adapt
So much had happened in little over a week that I couldn’t think straight: getting married, living with Keith’s parents, moving into a new house, a baby shower, and being rushed off to a strange place alone to have my baby! My mind was in turmoil. I was happy to be married, happy to have my own place. I was delighted with wee Gregory, and took great joy in bathing him each morning. I loved the smell of baby powder as I stuck my face into his tiny body now dressed in his new rompers. He was a good baby and hardly cried at all.
Three weeks into my marriage, after returning from the hospital in North West River, I was able to take stock of my situation and what I had to work with. I didn’t have a bathroom. I didn’t have a kitchen sink because there wasn’t a sewer system on our street yet. I didn’t have a washing machine, so I had to go next door and borrow Aunt Winnie’s huge galvanized tub and scrub everything on the washboard as my mother had done. Oh, how I had hated that job, and I still hated it. Wanting to be a perfect wife and mother and having been taught to be responsible, I struggled to keep up. I’d just turned eighteen in January.
Back then there were two sizes of cloth diapers, long ones and square ones. I took pride in getting my baby’s diapers as white a possible by bleaching them and adding “blueing” to make sure that when I hung them on the clothesline they would be perfectly white and without stains. Every garment had to be straight. All the long ones, then the square ones together, his sleepers and night gowns, tiny shirts, facecloths, and socks all had to be in order. When I brought everything in from the clothesline, I ironed everything. Even the hems of my bed sheets and flannel pyjamas. I could hear my mother and all the women I’d worked for in Cartwright echoing in my brain: “If you’re gonna do a job, do it right.”
Aside from caring for my newborn, I took pride in keeping my house clean. After scrubbing my floors on my hands and knees, I then added paste wax and polished the linoleum until it shone. We didn’t have much furniture, only what came with the house. I was grateful for that, because we certainly couldn’t afford to buy any. I grew up very poor, literally living from the American military dump, so that didn’t bother me too much.
The only source of heat we had was a stove that burned wood and/or oil. When the temperature during winter dipped way below zero we had to bundle up. I tried my best to keep the baby warm. However, when it got below minus twenty-five and minus thirty I worried about him freezing to death. It got so cold during the night that when I got up to check on him and pulled the covers down, his warm, wet body would meet with the cold air and the steam would billow up into my face.
Mrs. Penny would drop by every day to see how I was doing and to give me advice. She tried to show me how to care for my house and my baby. She didn’t know that I grew up caring for my many siblings. I didn’t want to be disrespectful to her; after all, she was my mother-in-law. I had to bite my tongue many times to stop from saying something I might later regret.
What had just happened to me? Where did my hopes and dreams of marrying a tall, dark, and handsome man go? Where did my freedom from responsibility go? Thankfully I was too busy to give it much thought. I never had a friend in the place and had to rely on my sisters-in-law for a lot of my needs. Sal went back home to Cartwright shortly after my wedding. My Aunt Winnie was a great help. I adored her. She had soft brown eyes that seemed to reach into her very soul.
Though I’m not sure to what degree, Aunt Winnie was living with a drinking man who occasionally abused her. I’d become too busy trying to adapt to my own situation, trying to cope with so many new things at once, to give it much thought. Now I was discovering the indifference of my husband. It was very unsettling.
Chapter 10
My First Job
Keith was working as a civilian for the Canadian Armed Forces when we got married. Therefore, we did have an income, but it wasn’t enough to support us. There was so much to learn about finances. I hadn’t yet experienced that aspect of my life. Aside from the two years as a cook at the mission school in Cartwright, the only thing I’d ever done was domestic work at ten dollars a month. I gave some of it to my mom for the children. Or to buy them candy. Keith came home from work one day and suggested I should find a job. I was awestruck. I had a job caring for our newborn and our home! Why would he even suggest it? A week or so later he came bounding through the door.
“I was talking to somebody today and he mentioned that there was an opening for a cashier at the PX on the American base.”
“Whass a PX?”
“It’s a store where the Americans shop,” he said flippantly. As if I was supposed to know!
“So? What do you want me to do about it?” I asked, confused.
“Would you like to try it?”
“I don’t know. I never did anything like that before. What will I have to do?”
“Just stack shelves and work the cash register and stuff,” he replied.
I didn’t know anything about cash registers, or store clerks, or stocking shelves. I didn’t know how to express myself and was always fearful of ridicule. I was, however, taught to obey. Then fear engulfed me. I didn’t want to leave my baby with strangers.
“Who will care for our baby?” I asked.
“We’ll get somebody to come in,” he said. “The money will come in handy for our new addition I want to build.”
“What new addition? I like it just as it is,” I argued.
“No, it’ll be too small for us in a few years.” Keith said.
I lost the argument and I hadn’t any choice but to get someone to care for my three-month-old baby.
The very next day Keith drove me to the PX and I was hired on the spot. I can’t recall how and I don’t remember anything about an application or an interview. What was I to do? I didn’t get much sleep that night. I had no decent clothes to wear and I had no idea what was in fashion. When I was younger my sisters and I would squabble over garments from the rag-bag of clothes mom got as payment for her sewing. When I was