Sing a new song
Greet the bright yellow rays of sunshine
Floating through your window pane
It’s a pretty little world
–My vintage Hello Kitty cup I’ve had since I was 3

*****

When I was a little girl growin up in Gering Nebraska I lived with my grandparents. My mom, my brother and I all lived with my moms parents. We were there for 5 years. But my dad’s had also grown up in Nebraska and his parents were still out on the farm about 15, 20 minutes outside town. It was normal for us to go spend a weeked there, sometimes with cousins, sometimes just us. Every single morning I could count on hot cocoa on the stove and cocoa pebbles as a legitimate cereal choice. Heaven.

Neither of my grandparents weren’t the “play with the grandkids” type. (Was that even a thing?) We were expected to entertain ourselves. And so in both cases I was pretty comfortable doing my own thing and making my own fun, and/or hanging with my brother and (2 boy) cousins. Boredom was also an option. My Grandma Sue and Grandpa Fred were the ones who lived on the farm, in a big old farmhouse (at least in my kid memory it was big), where there was a large fenced in yard, a ride-on toy John Deere tractor, and a whole bunch of farm dogs. There weren’t a lot of toys, but there were some. And there were also the little trinkets and treasures around the house.

Among the treasures at my grandparent’s farm house was the little cabinet in which my grandma kept her bell collection. I loved to look at those bells, and sometimes she let me open the cabinet and play with them. There was one bell in particular that always drew my attention. It was small and brass, with little engravings on it. But what really drew my attention was the jagged bottom of the bell. Unlike most bells that have a flat bottom, so that when placed on a solid surface, the entire rim of the bell sits flush with the surface, this bell had these little jagged edges all the way around. It was my favorite.

To this day I could not tell you what any of the other bells looked like, but I’ve never forgetten that jagged bell. I also remember accidentally dropping that bell on my face as a child, presumable as I held it up to look from underneath and as you’d expect, those jagged little edges pressed a lifelong memory into my brain as they hit my curious, little face.
  [readmore title= “Click through to hear more about my attachment to inanimate objects.”]

My grandpa was the youngest of 24 kids.

He was also a small town optometrist, a double purple heart reciepiant who was shot behind the ear in WWII, a husband, a father, and a grandfather. But nothing is more impressive to people than when I mention he was the youngest of 24. The “runt of the liter” as he used to say.

With our Mormon pioneer heritage one might assume this high number of progeny was due to polygamy. It was not. Although, to be fair there was more than one mother (and father) and a little math involved. It goes like this: My grandpa, Lincoln Whitaker (named after Abraham Lincoln as they shared a birthday. Pardon me for the elongated sidenote here but, I like to imagine they were in the hospital like, “we have to come up with another name?” when some doctor or nurse walks by and casually mentions it was Lincoln’s birthday and they were like, “Lincoln it is!”) Anyway, my grandpa was Lincoln, and his father John, was married to a woman and they had 16 children together. Then she died. John eventually remarried another widow who had 4 kids of her own. (That’s 20 so far.) And then they had 4 more together. So yes 2 different mothers and 2 different fathers for a total of 24 children. But keep in mind that one of those men–my great grandpa John Whitaker–fathered 20 of those children.

While I always knew my grandpa was the runt of 24, the longer version came in bits and pieces. I remember once hearing a family member joke that his first wife must have died in childbirth. But it was just a “joke.” Turns out she died of the typhoid fever epidemic of 1907.

My grandpa’s mother, again who was also a widow, knew death as well. She came into the marriage with 4 of her own children, but she actually had 5. (So technically, he was the youngest of 25?) When her first husband died of a sudden head injury, their oldest child had died of black diptheria just 4 months prior.

It’s easy to talk about the death of other people generations before you. Even make little jokes. But these were sizemic shifts in people’s lives. 16 children lost their mother all at once. I’m here because of the death of that woman. Because of an epidemic.