I had already experienced many life changing events when my beautiful daughter, Maryellen, was born. None of them felt equal to the impact of being a mother. I suddenly viewed the world and my future from a totally different perspective. I had felt responsible for my brothers after our father died. When my mother became ill I instinctively believed that I must be responsible for her care. I was devoted to Mike and dreamed of graduating and beginning a career. All of those things paled next the wonder of raising a child. It felt as though I had been given one of the greatest blessings ever granted to a woman and I wanted more that anything to be as awesome a mother as my own Mama had always been. 

I had fallen totally in love with my little girl. I was exhausted from lack of sleep as I adjusted to  to Maryellens’s schedule. Some nights I was barely able to drag myself from the bed when I heard her tiny cries. Once I was awake and snuggling with her in my arms I learned to love those nighttime moments when it felt as though we were the only two people on the earth. She was a cuddly and pleasant baby who did not seem to mind the inexperienced mistakes that I made as a new mother. The two of us stumbled along together as she more and more became the focus of both me and Mike. Her future was now more important to us than our own. 

Mike continued with his studies at college but I had decided to suspend my education for a time. I needed to learn how to care for a child and I was still checking on my mother as often as possible to be certain that she was well. Maryellen and I met many of our neighbors in the small apartment project where we lived whenever I took her out on the lawn to enjoy some fresh air and sunshine. I walked around the neighborhood pushing her in her stroller. The older people who lived there always smiled and waved as we passed them on our daily journey. Life was slow and happy, mostly without incident which felt good given the challenges of the recent past. 

Mike had grown close to two of his fellow teaching assistants, Egon and Marita. Egon was a brilliant student from Germany who almost instantly became like a brother to Mike. Marita was from Chicago and a graduate of St. Thomas University. The three of them were a trio in the Sociology Department of the University of Houston. Over time they would also come to visit with me and Maryellen. They were both taken by our beautiful daughter and it soon became apparent that they were taken by each other as well.

Christmas Eve at Grandma Ulrich’s house was quite special as Mike and I showed off our five month old daughter. She was the center of attention as my aunts and uncles and cousins played with her. The family was growing. Alan and Susan had a two year old daughter named Carla. My cousin Jack had married a Susan of his own and the two of them brought their one year old daughter, Shelley, to the festivities. My cousin, Sandra, who was sixteen like my brother, Pat, had bloomed into a beautiful and poised young woman. I found myself thinking of how proud her father, my Uncle Bob, would have been of her. Obviously Aunt Claudia beamed as everyone marveled at Sandra’s loveliness. The party was a magnificent celebration of the  incredible family that had supported me and my brothers and my mother in the dozen years since my father had died.  

As nineteen seventy one dawned Mike was beginning to question his plan to become a college professor. He did not enjoy the interchange of teaching like I did. Furthermore, he was eager to be a provider for his growing family. An opportunity to work at one of Houston’s largest downtown banks part time convinced him that it was time to get more serious about life. When his boss offered him a full time position, he jumped at the change and suddenly his destiny changed. 

Ironically his buddies Egon and Marita had come to similar conclusions about how to spend the rest of their lives. They had fallen in love and were ready to settle down more permanently, so they too found work and abandoned the idea of being professors of Sociology. Instead they began to speak of marriage and the possibilities of having a family of their own. No doubt each of us was anxious to settle down as the fate of the nation continued to feel so chaotic with the War in Vietnam seeming to be unending and protests against the conflict becoming more and more dangerous with students being killed at Kent State University. The outside world felt unhinged and it seemed important to find happiness and stability wherever possible. 

Mike’s salary was good enough to allow us to move to an apartment with two bedrooms instead of only one. It would be nice to give Maryellen room to play while we had our privacy again. With the help of my brothers we simply carted our belongings across the parking lot and enjoyed arranging them in our larger space. Somehow this little move made us feel as though we were making progress as adults. I celebrated my twenty first birthday and felt as though I had officially crossed into adulthood even though I had already had so many adult experiences. 

Shockingly tragedy struck our family once again when we learned that Sandra had died. She had appeared to be in the peak of health when she was suddenly stricken while at school. Doctors found that she had an aneurysm that had been probably been in her brain from the time of her birth. After a brief stay in the hospital she succumbed to her condition. We were all devastated beyond any description that words might convey. She was only sixteen, two months younger than my brother, Pat. She was the daughter of my favorite uncle, my father’s best friend who had died so young. I grieved intensely for my Aunt Claudia because I now understand the intensity of love that a mother has for her child. It made me ever more protective of my own sweet Maryellen. 

When summer came we celebrated Maryellen’s first birthday with friends and family. As we all sang happily to the little girl who had brought so much joy into our lives I silently felt grateful that my mother was doing so well. It had been two years since her bout with mental illness and I had actually come to believe that she was indeed cured of her depression. She was enjoying her job and seeming more and more like herself. Mike was doing well at the bank and my brothers were advancing into their own adulthood. 

Just as I was lulled into believing that perhaps only blue skies were ahead my Uncle Andrew died. He was still a very young man in his forties when he suffered a massive heart attack on his way to set up a business selling historic coins. I worried that my mother would lose the momentum of her recovery from depression, but somehow she handled his death as well as anyone. She would often relate the moment when she told my Grandma Ulrich that her son was gone. Mama said that a single tear rolled down my grandmother’s cheek, an image that I have never forgotten. It was especially poignant to me now that I had a child of my own. Somehow I felt my grandmother’s pain and understood her just a bit more than I ever had. I was now firmly ensconced in the role of being a mother.