Snail Silk
The Story of Nora

Bette Bottger Simons

Chapter 11

Labors

Dear Mother,

What would it be like if we could hold each other in our arms again? Strangely, I would be old and you would be a young woman, like my Hilary. When she gets off of an airplane, we hug so tightly. We are so happy to see each other. Before long I will get bossy or intrusive and she will get temperamental, but those first few moments of meeting again are so full of something intense between mother and daughter.

Once I wrote a story about giving birth. I called the woman “Nora” because Aunt Elfriede said you called me that. Of course it was about me, anyway.

Nora’s Task

The ramming had a pattern, like many natural processes. When it would subside, Nora would begin to cry piteously, softly, in anguish.

She longed for the next crest to come. That fat iron rod that slowly punched into her between her legs, into her most protected private place...

She lay on her back now, sprawled in miserable resignation. The room was darkened in the early hours of the morning. She heard nurses in the hospital corridor. One of them would check in on her on occasion, but for the most part they seemed to sense the task was up to Nora who had determined she would accept no medication for the birth of this baby.

She had forgotten her husband. He had stopped coming in when she seemed to get no comfort from him any longer. He couldn’t bear the deep moaning. Life had not prepared him for this, as it had Nora. Nora’s mind wandered from. her labor to a scene of her childhood — Perhaps the one that prepared her for the this labor.

In the institution where she had grown up, the dentist came on Saturdays, to volunteer his time for the childrens’ dental care. All too often a dread request came for Nora. Her six year old molars were pitted with brown spots that her parents could not have attended to, even if they had not died that winter. Her mother’s teeth too, had needed repairs. But even though he worked at two jobs, her father’s wages could not meet the needs of the family in those grim months before the deaths.

Nora began to see her childbirth as an endurance what that thick rod would do to her. It repeated its unmerciful plunge, slowly, surely. Nora rode the pain of it with a bovine groan. “Ahhhhh” deep in her throat...

When the summons came to go to the dentist, Nora was on the dusty playground in back of the Junior Girl’s building. She made her way through the 4 storied brick building and past three more such places, one was the administration building which had a flagpole, cozy in a circle of golden poppies. Her destination was the Templar’s Hospital on the edge of the institution’s grounds. This little rectangular building sat like a cat with its face turned over it’s shoulder. The name of it’s donating benefactors was embossed over the columned entrance between grey coats of arms. Nora came without protest or question.

The blunt ended rod came again to the place that had been personal all her life. In her woman’s secret silence she now lay vulnerable.

She moaned, remembering dimly the class she had taken to prepare for labor, now embracing the bruising cruelty.

“The cervix is stretched as thin as paper”, they had said.

Ephraim, the dentist, always listened to the Saturday baseball game. He seemed eternally cheerful in his white torture chamber, under the left ear of the cat. He listened to the game and flirted with Nurse Martin, whose curls bobbed gratefully under her starched white cap. Raised in that hard chair, suspended under branches of metal and rope, mouth open to pain, Nora felt his hand on her flat chest and her heart beat with excitement and dread simultaneously. Ephraim’s drill bit into the rotten molars with shrill slivers of agony. He donated his time to the institution but he did not bring novocaine with him.

The rod inched forward. Into the twelfth hour of labor, Nora’s endurance became as thin as the membrane. Alone in the labor room, as Saturday’s staff gave way to Sunday’s, she wished for the husband whom she had decided to spare “anything bloody”. She longed to be pitiful for him, as if his caress could end her trial.

Dr. Ephraim praised and babied Nora for the “squeaks” she emitted in response to the drilling. Her mouth full of his hand, waiting for the occasional touch on the white napkin of her untouched body. She was his bravest patient. One Saturday, Nora dragged her scuffed brown shoes through the heavy doors to the dental room and found Dr. Ephraim and Nurse Mar-tin on their hands and knees on the white tiled floor. The baseball game played on the radio while on the floor they giggled as they chased a piece of mercury that had spilled. The silky silver orb undulated out of reach of the wooden tongue blades they were using to try to catch it. They ignored Nora long enough for her to risk squatting on the tiles herself. The ball game was announced with sustained excitement as the pearl-sized drop of mercury rolled up to Nora across three little hexagonal tiles. It was like a greeting. Gleeful at her good luck she reached out a finger as the two players yelled a reprimand at her. Mercury was to be captured with the tongue blades and the paper cup, or it would shatter. Having no cup or blade, she sat silently, left out of the pleasurable game, waiting for her time of pain.

Nora’s longing for the rod, the promise of it, was collapsing into agony. No moaning could tide her any longer. Her head tossed out of rhythm now and she cried child-like before the rod overwhelmed her again. She no longer felt prepared. The doctor had stopped looking in on her. It was a long labor.

The mercury bubble had popped into a spray of smaller silver beads. They squealed and were in real trouble. An older girl came in and joined in the chase. Now the game was serious. Nora’s destiny the chair concerned no one.

Nora braced her feet on side rails of the hospital bed. She grabbed them on the side like crutches that would take her nowhere and yet she pulled with monumental strength. And pulled and pulled. “It takes the energy necessary to play a whole game of football”....

Open now, her moaning stopped and huge long grunts filled the air with white tiles. The score was unheard but the crowd was wild with yelling. Pushing on her arches, her grunts escalated to squeaks as her energy stopped on the roof of her mouth and she laid back, ready for yet another monstrous shove. Nurse Martin and Dr. Ephraim, looked at her in surprise as they slid to the corner of the room because she was pushing the whole room now, her feet braced on the silver branches of the dental chair. Her mouth agape with her lips stretched thin over the hard silver ball. The warmth of a gush of something caught her by surprise. Surely it was just saliva running, from her mouth, it’s being stretched so tightly with the ball. Surely she should not be ashamed and lose the advantage of that look of fearful respect on the players faces over there in the far corner.

With dread and pleasure Nora felt the warm form between her legs. It was Sunday morning when her baby slid heavily and normally, from her birth canal.

A short time later the rod reappeared, large and blunt as always.

Nora sneered and was delivered of an enormous orb of silvery mercury that undulated between her legs and out into Dr. Ephraim’s waiting basin.

The baby was a girl. Nora was ecstatic. Someone put a warm blanket on her and she laughed, joyously while a myriad of silver balloons seemed to be drifted into the air above her.

______

Dear Mother,

I sent this letter to the doctor that delivered Hilary. I wish I could have had a mid­wife, like you did, when you gave birth to Jewel and then me.

Dear Doctor Lusk,

Though I could phone you, I am afraid to. Please take mercy on me and read this with care. It has been three hot days now, since you supervised the delivery of my baby girl. I am raging with a fever that stops only to give me deep shivering chills.

There is blood in my urine. My bladder is cramped and I struggle to void continually. I have never been so sick in all my life and I am terrified that you will say I must stop nursing my baby if I come to you for antibiotics.

Each office visit I made to you before her birth took so much courage. You always seemed to be arguing with me, as though I wanted something very foolish. Yet I choose you as an obstetrician, because you said you were agreeable to my having an un-medicated birth and you would allow me to have my baby in the room with me after she was born. Yes, you tolerated the idea of nursing, but you never stopped making my plans seem troublesome. When you last saw me, I was crying because we could not afford for me to stay in the hospital another day and I desperately needed some comfort for what I had been through.

You looked so sheepish when you came to my room, I presume, you took some responsibility for the cause of my distress. I do understand that a sudden loss in hormone level after birth leaves us temperamental, but still, I feel you should have had enough experience to give me some words of comfort and support as you were trusted to help me deliver my baby. I will always remember your words at her birth “Wow, we have a baby elephant here !” I suppose it seemed amusing to you at the time, but to me, it was mean.

That I labored for thirteen hours is no fault of yours, Dr. Lusk, but a man with your experience in delivering babies must surely know that a woman needs a great deal of emotional help, so your saying that I had ruined your Sunday, because you should have been watching your child in her swim match on TV was cruelly timed.

My husband is giving me high doses of vitamin C. I don’t know if that will stop this raging fever. My breasts are hot and the nipples cracked. Each time my dear baby sucks I winch in pain, but it would be more painful not to nurse and I am determined to do the best I can for this baby. Why I must feel you are an enemy to my efforts is beyond me. I would gladly switch to another doctor but we have already paid you. The burden of not spending more of our money compounds my misery. I feel uncomfortable telling you of these feelings but I am so angry that the event of my daughter’s birth has been such a strain, due to your indifferent care. I don’t know why I should need your approval. I feel ashamed to be so vulnerable and needy and I feel so cheated by you. I am writing you to beg you to think of some way that is compatible with my way, to get me well. I fear you will do nothing but undermine me, but even so, if you know how you have treated me, you may be kinder to the next client who has strong feelings about the circumstances under which she wants to give birth.

I have had no more than two hours of fitful sleep. My husband is depressed and silent. He too, wants something of me that interferes with my protection of this child. I feel like a wounded lioness cowering over her cub.

I want someone to hold me close and rock me and tell me how courageous I was, how hard I labored, how brave I bore that torment. I want someone to hear how thrilled I am at the little daughter that sleeps there. I cannot take my eyes off of her, yet the fever rages and the breasts burn. I need cooling hands and a blessing. I want to go back to her emergence and hear someone say, “Yes, yes, she is a beautiful baby girl and you have done it !” I want twelve fairy Godmothers to give her twelve good wishes.

Dr Lusk, I see you, in those awkward brown shoes you wear in the delivery room, being the thirteenth fairy with nothing but set of curses.

Please phone my husband about my condition, but do not suggest that I stop nursing. Having written my feelings here I would very much like to forgive you for the carelessness of your bedside manner.

Please help me. I am so sick.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Bette Simons

I never sent the letter. I burned it up. Later, when I studied to be a childbirth educator I learned that birth is a event for a woman that brings up old crisis of the past. Dr. Lusk was not an enlightened obstetrician, but he became a recipient of my strong feelings about how trustworthy the men one depends on in a crisis can be.

Later, I gave birth to two more children and had at least three rebirths of myself as a person.

______

Dear Mom,

I’m, so angry, my jaw hurts. It does that a lot. A dentist says that I grind my teeth in my sleep, from tension.

I don’t know why I’m still tense. My little daughter sleeps through the night now. She’s nine months old, though she did get me up last night. She fussed without ever opening her eyes. I find her bottle and give it to her. If I’m lucky, she sucks vigorously and I tiptoe out, a waitress of the night.

We went to Mexico with friends over the weekend. My husband wanted to do it. I really didn’t want to leave my baby, but he said it would be fun to drive down, with Millie, his old camping club buddy, her husband, and their friends. Everyone else’s children are older than our daughter Hilary is. Maybe that’s why they didn’t worry.

It was ok at first. We hit the motel room and headed for the bed so fast. I didn’t have time to sniff like I usually do and get used to smells that aren’t familiar. We just rolled around and made love, right in the middle of the day. But after that I couldn’t stop thinking about my little girl, even though my sister reminded me Hilary loves her kids, who are three and five. I babysit for her children after school, until she gets home from her job. It’s just a few hours, but she seems to feel so obligated and grateful that asking her to babysit the weekend seemed to be a fair thing to do.
The food in Mexico is really good, the vegetables seem so sweet. I loved eating out and Milt, Millie’s husband, seems so confidant about where he’s going. He and Millie talk Spanish. I just remember all the papers I wrote in Spanish and how grateful I was the teacher didn’t make us do conversation very much. I hung on to my husband’s arm and there was this spot of worry in the pit of my stomach.

I didn’t admit that I would rather be home, but the next day at breakfast, the Steinbergs, Milt and Millie’s friend, got a call from Richard who was babysitting their daughters in their apartment. They had all been talking about Richard and his problems but they let him babysit anyway. He caused a fire in their place, being careless with cigarettes. The girls were ok, but we all drove back to L.A. right away.

I love it that Richard has problems. I have only been gone from my girl a night and three meals. She is in her cherry corduroy jumper and I bury my nose in her soft neck. She seems fine, but little Katie tells me Tommy threw rocks in the house. I have a collection of small samples of rocks we display. Some day I will study them, because they are all labeled as to what they are. Tommy really gets out of hand and my sister gets so disgusted. My sister is probably glad to get back home too, even though she lives in a small apartment.

She divorced her husband last year and gave up the house she was remodeling for them. I feel so sorry for her. She hardly has any money, but she always gets along. She always did.

But now she has done something so awful. She said the Goodwill came by while we were in Mexico and she gave them the old steamer trunk that was in our garage.

This was the steamer trunk that came with us, when we came to California after you and our father died. We were just 4 and 6 years old. It had little girl’s clothes in the drawers that you had made. You sewed the same dress for each of us. I’m not sure what all was in there, but I had planned to look again one day when I had time.

I don’t know how she could have such nerve, giving away what little we have left of our parents. Maybe she wants me to feel some kind of loss, just as she has felt. Maybe she is jealous because I was the little sister. Who wants to have someone around who is dressed the same way you are, only younger, so people think it is cute.

It’s hard to analyze and I’m so angry, but I know I can’t say anything to her.

I’m so glad to be back home with my baby, folding her diapers while she crawls on the floor. If only there wasn’t this old soreness in my jaw.

Love

Bette
______

Oh, mother,

I don’t know who else
to call God is a swear
word in my life I’m in
labor
in a
movie
theater
it’s
South
Pacific
I feel the agony oozing up on each side under my
belly Oh, God !
It doesn’t end until there is that punch deep in the heart of
me That’s a song
Deep in the heart of me

now I can’t get the song out of my head and I have to get up and over the legs over other people in this row to the bathroom to pee it’s stopped for a while I go slowly uphill in the dark some enchanted evening Little Hilary with her grandparents ok thought we might as well spend time in the movies not go home doctor said not dilated enough what he must have done to me it hurts so like he put his hand in me who was he don’t know I’m not depending on any doctor for much help this time no medication on my chart I’ll have to remind them they have shaved my public hair off I’m like a little girl I am so grateful for the white sheets, the bed yes I took that little white pill why did I do that so grateful for nurse it made me sleep what happened to my labor now I have to pee again I hang onto the bathroom door everything is in slow motion the contractions oh mutti I was your second now I feel your pain too so confident it would be different this time know what I’m in for sure to be shorter many hours already a spot of blood on my pants just at 5:30 Friday so Don can take Hilary be with me he looking mad and quiet me it’s ok my belly so big the button turns inside out, hard but soft like enormous casaba melon so proud to be pregnant doctors shame me so much weight but lost it fast last time I look in mirror and rub my big melon baby gives little punches when little kid worst name watermelon belly but I couldn’t suck it in if I wanted to then maybe not now deep in the heart of me I don’t scream, I moan like a cow, in slow motion other bad kid thing those war movies Nazis black boots us German oh, God, I’m crying I can’t do this anymore why me why so long why so hard? I’ll push it out pushing pushing push it out save me this pushing nurse has me in operating room so bright so bright Don long gone to Norms restaurant, or the waiting room so soulful love him no help though feel I’m in the room where appendix taken out really alone this time “ no spinal” I have to say they’re all talking laughing in other room is it about me natural childbirth they get mad sometimes I can’t care it’s my baby but they leave me hands strapped hard to push on metal things I push the pain away it’s like fighting it biggest b.m. in history but it’s my baby doooc...tor, I yell baby can’t fall on floor warm head coming out they all scramble back in here with me and me pushing like a strong man me pushing it’s out it’s a boy oh mutti oh my oh God Oh Don I have a son they take him away he’s crying red my son my son oh I have my baby oh God but the cramping is still wrenching me I want to see placenta but don’t ask need to say please give me a shot of novocaine for the stitches he does I feel the needle anyway can’t numb it deep he says but he’s not angry deep in the heart of me hardly felt the cut on the peritoneum just heard it like scissors through thick cloth so miserable with contraction before each stitch I yell “ouch” loudly this is not like me — yelling the doctor is happy that I’m so thrilled I say “Thank you so much” he says, “ anytime” he’s a sweet fellow He didn’t get mad at me I did it I had my baby safely no medication white pill can’t count I have a son my son and I oh my husband come and see I am so good!

Thank you for giving birth to me,

Your Nora

______
 

Dear Grandmother Hildegard,

I am sitting in the baby’s room, rocking our new little Steven, while Don reads to Hilary and Andy. Did I ever tell you that I thought of your name, Hildegard, when we named our girl, and of my father’s name, Alfred, when we named our first son?

This handsome baby I am nursing is named Steven because his father was adamantly against Garth, or Matthew, or Timmy. Steven is just right. I’m so grateful to have three children.
I brought Hilary and Andy each a huge baby doll I found on sale, for a gift so they wouldn’t be so jealous of Steven when I brought him home from the hospital. Andy has colored his doll’s face with black marking pen. Hilary baby’s hers.

I’m so lucky I have a husband who genuinely loves playing with his children and allows me to tend to this, my last baby.

Sometimes Don is like one of the children too, he doesn’t listen if I say it’s time for stories, not roughhousing on the floor. I feel like Mrs. Gradler, even though I’m the opposite of what she was. I learned to love little children when I was a first grade teacher. My marriage has been so healing for me, yet there is this spinster mother that wants to organize things and give out P’s and F’s if no one shapes up fast enough.

It’s hard work being a mother and I don’t have help, the way my neighbor, Doris across the street does. She has housekeeper after housekeeper after housekeeper. I wouldn’t neglect my children like that and give them so many losses. Even with all the help she has, I am usually the one who has her children and mine, playing here. I love it, but I wish she would help more. I don’t say anything, but I am jealous of her a lot, even though two of her children are adopted and mine were all delivered by natural childbirth, which not too many women do.

I was going to have Steven, the way the hospital wants it done and not argue anymore, but when it came time to turn over for a spinal, I said, “I can’t, it’s ok, I’ve had two other children without it.”

I’m glad I learned not to depend on a doctor for any kind of support, because this one was really mean, in his manner, that is. If I were a mid-wife or OB I would be so caring to a woman during pregnancy and labor. I’d never try to make her ashamed of getting fat, and I’d say supportive kind things during labor, not “don’t push, in any angry voice.” I didn’t let him take my thrill away. They put Steven on my stomach when he came out and I saw the umbilical cord. It was so strong, shiny and slippery-- twisting and curling-­such a miracle, that my body made that to allow him to be formed. They put him aside and had him wait what seemed like such a long time, to get circumcised. He cried and I longed to hold him and when I finally got him when I was back in the hospital room, I held him close and kissed him. It’s going to be wonderful to have another baby and his labor was so much easier than the others.

Nursing is easier than with the others too. I’m really an experienced mother. I wish we weren’t going to San Francisco for the weekend in four months. Don has a conference and I don’t know how to say “no.” But I don’t want to leave this baby. I don’t want my children to ever feel abandoned. Yet I can’t abandon my husband either. I guess being a mother isn’t so easy after all, but this is a beautiful, handsome baby who has fallen asleep in my arms.

Love,

a contented mother

______

Dear Mother,

I have learned how to have a baby without getting mad at the doctor, how to make bread and how to have a good vacation. Let me tell you about the worst vacation I ever had.

I remember standing in the bright sun up in the mountains, breathing rapidly from the altitude, I was already angry that USC was so disorganized about the way they were handling the registration for our family vacation at the Idlewild School of Arts. It seemed to take forever to get our campsite and the locations of the children’s day camp areas.

Don and I would be taking recorder lessons, maybe we would get better for the chamber group that met at our house each week. All four of us in this group always started out sessions saying we hadn’t practiced. This week of vacation Don and I would get good.

But what about the baby, Steven? How could I leave him with the Bluebird group and be in my recorder class at the same time? I didn’t like the way things were organized at all.

I imagine the tent didn’t even go up well. I got my period. The children wouldn’t listen to Tom Sawyer that I brought to read to them and Don beat me at chess. The mosquitoes bit and I had a headache. Things did not get better for me that week. But our oldest, Hilary, took to the Eagles group with aplomb. Andy, eager as always, jumped right into his compound of little campers, the Squirrels or something, and got involved.

Steven and the Bluebirds where another matter. He was only two and even though the teacher, an experienced nursery school person, seemed so soothing, I left him crying and felt awful about it. She said he would be ok, but I knew Steven was a shy child, so choosing to go to my class was not pleasant. I didn’t consider an alternative. I thought I would do what my husband wanted.

One of the first things we learned in the class was that we were going to put on a performance at the end of the week. Now the work was really grim. Don’s recorder was out of tune. We seemed to spend a lot of class time with the teacher trying to do something about it. Memories of piano recitals and Steven crying tugged at me.

At noon, after we retrieved all the children and went to our campground. Things should have gotten better, but Don decided to pout. He used to do that. Get silent and not talk. I would jabber away and get more and more miserable.

The trash in the community bathroom never got emptied. Our campsite was in the hot sun. The vacation continued like this. My daily quest was to let my husband know how miserable I was because he wouldn’t talk to me, and to note that the trash wasn’t getting emptied every day. Steven wasn’t getting any happier and the concert at which we would perform was getting closer.

The days passed. I did some crying. I smelled the pines and the children played in the creek nearby.

During the concert of the last day, I got so panicked I don’t think I played a single note, I just bobbed my head and held the recorder in my mouth, hoping I would be able to join in, but it went too fast for me, in spite of all the practice.

The week had gone too slow. I felt miserable about looking forward to that performance and worse about Steven.

We took pictures during the week to remind us of the vacation. When I look at them now, I am still angry, but I see that I am angry at myself. I was thirty- seven years old. Why was I such a helpless woman? Why was I so unable to assert myself.

If I could relive those days. This is what I would do. I would stop asking the office when they were going to empty the trash in the community campground. I would get a large trash bag, put the trash in it and take it to them, asking them where they wanted me to put it. I think I wouldn’t even be sarcastic. I would say, “I don’t mind helping, since someone keeps forgetting and this is important to me.”

I would stay with Steven in his nursery. I’d have fun with him and the other twos. I would even go over and visit his brother with him. That’s what would have made him happy.

I’d forget the recorder class, even though it was paid for. I’d let my husband decide if he wanted to stay with it. And I certainly wouldn’t be in the concert. I’d sit and hold Steven and listen to the poor suckers who had ruined their vacations practicing all week.

I’d take time to read Mark Twain for myself. I might even buy an umbrella for shade and tell Don if he didn’t want to talk to me, I was going to go look for some USC Professor that wanted to discuss Mark Twain. I might even have asked him to tell me what made him miserable, besides his lousy recorder.

You can see I’m old now, because I’m saying “If I had it to do over again...” Hindsight, without the hormonal fluctuations of the menses, is easy. Besides, I had to be this person I was for a while, in order to be who I am now. I had all these rules in my head about the way things should be and I couldn’t obey them all and neither could anyone around me, especially the trash pick up boys. No wonder my husband clammed up.

That sun helped to wrinkled me up the way I am now, and that week at Idlewild helped me learn, eventually, how to have a real vacation.

Your daughter,

Bette

______

Dearest mother,

Julie and I were about to give up looking for our birth home in Highland Park. She was convinced that Abbott Street had been cut off for new construction. Both of us had an old childhood memory of the house coming right to the edge of a sidewalk that went up a terraced cement hill. We didn’t remember there being a street next to the sidewalk. I didn’t want to give up. The letter carrier had said the address still existed and it was on an “alley”, so I drove around anyway, ignoring the feeling that a big sister usually knows best.

I thought I would remember this house on the hill by the big pepper trees that were in the yard. We played there under the pungent smell those ferny leaves could make, among the purple iris that had so many snails, the wooden frame house towering above us.

Clara told me that our father was angry I wasn’t a boy. If it’s a fact, it’s something I neglected to worry about consciously most of my life. My memories of the house are dim. But the sun coming through the trellis into the window upstairs, in the big bedroom, the one where you labored to give me birth, that is an image that stays with me. And the picture of your mother sitting on the front stairs of the house, with Jewel in the wicker “stroller”. That’s what we looked for.

We found the address eventually. It was on a mailbox in front of a shack. We said nothing. Then we realized the site of the old house was across the walk and a different house stood there. We walked up the stairs, to the street above. Surely this was the walk we took to school. It was a sunny day and the neighborhood was deserted. I picked up a bunch of plant material, some kind of fronds that looked like giant paint brushes, that had been dipped in orange. When I got home I washed off some of the smog and put them into a basket vase. They look quite nice, mother.

Before we came home, we went to the elementary school. It is an old one and hasn’t changed, but nothing seemed familiar, except that the school is full of children learning English for the first time.

Love, Bette

______

December, 1992

Dear Mother,

It’s a rainy day in Sherman Oaks. I just mended the roof of our old house, the one where I live with my good husband — the house where I had three babies, who have grown up and left home. I’m old now. I’ve skipped a lot of what happened to me since your death, but I feel I’ve said enough for now.

I love this old house. I had so many houses and many rooms to live in before this one, that I love staying put here.

Did you once tell your Jewel to look out for me? She lives not far away and on many weekends helps me with chores in my child care center. Did I tell you she’s been called Julie most of her life? We are both hard working women, we weren’t close for many years, but now we have put aside the childhood hurts that come from feeling there’s little enough love, and certainly not enough for two. Sometimes we still talk about you. “What was she like?” I ask her.

I look at your pictures. I think you were shy, but loved to laugh with friends, like she did with her Elizabeth. The letters I’ve written you here are often sad, but I don’t feel like a sad person. I feel grateful for what I’ve been given. I’ve stopped feeling sorry for the little girl who never saw her parents again, after that cold New Jersey winter. It has occurred to only recently, me how painful it must have been for you to leave two little girls and not finish out your life. I’ve lived a long one, already.

Thank you dear mother for being a good mother. I feel the way you nurtured me lasted for a lifetime. The pain of having lost you, taught me how to care for little children separated from their parents. I have run a child care center for many years.

So now I have told you most of what happened to me after we were separated.

With love,
Your Nora Eleonore
Betty Eleonore
Bette Bottger
Bette Simons

Your daughter

______