We got the news this morning that Grandma Enid's sister-in-law, Emma, had died last night. She was a wonderful, salt-of-the-earth kind of person.

What I know about Emma was:
she was married to Enid's brother Julian McCaffery, the cut-up who played trumpet standing on his head,
and
whenever Grandma Enid got off the phone with Emma, Grandma was smiling. (Emma probably was, too.)

Here are some of Grandma's memories, triggered by the event: stories of Emma telling her the facts of life, other stories about births and deaths, and a few clips of humor writing that were on the same page from her writing tablet.

***

A tough problem: sorting out the facts of life…
(by Enid Ritter)

Before I was sixteen, most of my knowledge about sex consisted of horror stories: about insides ripped asunder, women maimed or invalided for life, the pain of childbirth, and so forth.

When my oldest sister got married, the subject of birth control came up, and there were continuous discussions about the problem.

I was about twelve, and asked, “Couldn’t she just lock the bedroom door?”
Mama looked at me, a little horrified, and said, “Well, you don’t want to be mean to the man you loved!” (No hint of the pleasures, or the duties, of love.)

I thought about it for quite a while… ‘Mean?’ Compared to nearly bleeding to death? Mrs. Tolafsson screaming into the night giving birth to Marilyn? And Phyllis’ friend who died of a hemhorrage ten days after childbirth? What could be meaner than that?

When I was about fourteen, my brother Julian married a lovely Canadian girl, only a few years older than myself. When I was sixteen and Lenore was eighteen, we traveled at Lenore’s expense to visit Julian and Emma in Washington State and their newborn baby Eddie.

Again, the subject of making babies came up, and Emma confessed she was awfully worried that she might get pregnant again too soon …

By this age, I knew what cause pregnancy. I popped up, “Couldn’t you just not have relations for a few years, until this one gets a little older?”

Em looked at me, aghast. “Enid,” she said, “When you’re Married, you Got the Passion.”

With that one phrase, from a woman not more than a teenager herself, I finally understood it all…


***

…a shorter version, as told to Erica Ritter:

Emma set me straight about the facts of life, one time:
Eddie had just been born, and she was learning how to take care of him. She was worried, given how much trouble he was, that she’d have another before he was big enough to handle.
At sixteen, of course, I knew how everything worked. “Why don’t you just not have sex for a few years, until he’s bigger?”
Emma looked at me. “Enid,” she said, with earthy emphasis, “When you’re Married, you Got the Passion.” I got it.

***

Log Cabin

The mornings’ sawing and nailing, and the quarter-mile walk home through the pasture, didn’t take any of the lightning out of us. We girls came inside all talking at once, eager to tell Mom how much fun we had, starting a log cabin that we planned to finish another day.
As we rattled on, Phillis casually mentioned that Florence 'accidentally' sawed down a tree that Lenore was climbing in.
“Why sissy, how could you do that?”
“It was a small one, just the right size for the corner. There were two, right near each other, and I thought she was in the other one.”
“Why Lenore, why didn’t you yell down and tell her she was sawing on your tree?”
“I thought she was sawing the other one.”

…
They started that log cabin pretty good, but didn’t get back to doing it until much later. I went down by myself a few times and played in the half-height walls with their corners marked by straight poles.

When they finally did go back, somebody had done a lot of work on it – but it wasn’t good, it wasn’t the way they wanted it. Whoever finished it had made a real mess of it. The girls weren’t even interested in working on it after that.

***

The Miracle of Birth
according to Enid (and Ray)

Our sons were comparing notes about witnessing the wonders of the birth of their daughters. My husband, Ray, said he wished they’d done that in our day – he fathered four children, and would have been happy if he could have seen even one of them born. I said, I personally delivered four babies, and never saw a one of them born, either. Then Ray gave his account of the delivery of our third child:

The location was [CD-- Coolie Dam?], on the edge of the Nespelliam(sp?) Indian reservation. (Now called Collville.)
What Ray and I both remembered from our first two childrens' births:
My other labors had been long. When we had arrived at the hospital for the boys' births, they took me away for more than a hour, returning to have Ray join me in what they call the “labor room,” and then wheeling me off to the "Delivery Room" when I was ready.

This time, I wasn’t in labor yet, but had been uncomfortable enough to go in for an exam. Turns out, I’d been sitting on her head for more than a week. I got down to business within minutes, and was taken directly to the delivery room. The child was born right away, and taken to be cleaned and wrapped. The doctors kept me a little longer to finish the exam.

Ray, meanwhile, found the current issue of Colliers magazine in the waiting room. He started a story, only to find that it ended with “To be continued.” He checked the end of the next one before starting it, to make sure it was there – only to discover that someone had torn out the middle. Starting a third story, after checking ALL the pages, he was interrupted by the nurse coming into the waiting room.

Determined to finish, he rolled the Colliers under his arm and jumped up, ready to follow her into the labor room, per usual. Instead, the nurse folded down a corner of the blanket and showed him a dusky red face, puffy eyes, and gobs and gobs of black hair, so long that it reached her nose.

“Don’t you think she’s cute?” the nurse gushed.
He said, “They usually are,” and sat down to continue reading his story.

The nurse had never seen such a blase reaction from a father, and she was concerned. “Were you hoping for a boy?” she asked.
“No, we have two boys. My wife and I are hoping for a girl this time.”
“Well, this one is a girl.”
“You mean she’s ours? I thought you were showing me one of those Indian babies.”

***

Life and Death:
According to the Ritter children: in order of age, Erica, Corinna, Teresa, and William.

Teresa: Where do the bury people after they die?
Erica: In the cemetery.
Corinna (to Teresa): Don’t you remember the ducks?
William: You mean at the zoo?
Corinna: No! Not the zoo! They don’t feed you to the lions.
Erica, explaining: Most people that die, die of something, and it wouldn’t be good to feed you to the animals.

Erica grew up to be a science educator, William a comic who interned at the Oregon zoo, Teresa's now a young mother and children’s illustrator, and Corinna a registered nurse.