The following happened just a few weeks after Bert was born in 1930. We lived in the Hillside house and I know he had been newly born when it happened because Ma and Pa's bed was still set up on risers in the playroom. It had been brought downstairs for Bert’s birth to make it more convenient for mother's caregivers.

The morning of the day of this tale, I can remember was bright and sunny. I was about six years old. Ma said she had to go to the doctor. She had no baby sitter so I, and possibly Don if he wasn't in school that day, were left in charge of Dorothy and Bob.

She walked the mile to the doctor's office pushing Bert in the baby buggy. When Ma came home from the doctor she lay on the bed to rest. I must have been lonesome for her because I can remember hearing her talking to someone on the phone. The phone was in the front hall just outside the door to the playroom. I walked out to be with her and found her hunched over with her head almost to her knees. She looked up at me just long enough to tell me to go away because she was very ill and didn't want to talk to me.  That was scary.

A very short time later Aunt "A" (Aunt Agnes, Uncle Bert’s wife) drove into the driveway next to the house and came into the back door. Soon after that, Aunt A's mother Mayma, who was a practical nurse, arrived. That's all I can remember until it was after dark. Pa was home from work and Uncle Bert was there too. All of the grown-ups were hurrying around and not talking to us kids.

Aunt A was upstairs. I know Mayma was up there too. I have no memory of his arrival but I am sure a doctor was also upstairs. We children had been instructed to sit on the couch and not bother anyone. In a little while Pa and Uncle Bert came from the kitchen carrying the kitchen table. They carried it through the dining room and across the parlor, right in front of us kids who were sitting in a line on the couch, and up the stairs to a bedroom, probably Ma and Pa's.

Uncle Bert came downstairs after the table had been carried up and sat with us kids. He was probably not needed and came down to reassure the four scared kids lined up on the couch. I have no idea who was taking care of newborn Bert. Uncle Bert sat in the big wooden rocking chair in front of us like a teacher. The only thing I can remember him saying was that our mother was very sick. I do remember that he was very kind to us. That's the end of all I can remember of that night. My direct memory of the incident is a total blank, as it is of anything that followed after Uncle Bert talked to us.

More of the story was told to me by Ma years later. We were doing dishes together in the kitchen at 3149. I must have been about sixteen then, old enough to be told about unmentionable grown up things.

I don't know how it came to pass that Ma told me the story. She said she had gone to the doctor for her post partum check. He examined her and said that she needed to be scraped out, which he did. When he finished he sent her walking home. She began to bleed so when she came home she lay down to stop it but it had become a hemorrhage. She had barely made it to the phone to call for help when I walked out to the hall and found her hunched over to her knees.

I don't remember if she told me who she was calling to get help but she had her miracle. Aunt A was in the habit of driving over once in a while for pop-in visits. It just happened that she paid a pop-in visit almost before Ma had hung up the phone. She knew it was bad as soon as she saw Ma so she called Mayma, who came right away. Between Mayma and Aunt A they curbed the hemorrhaging and got a doctor there. Not the one who had scraped Ma. He should have lost his license. They also called Pa and Uncle Bert.

The kitchen table that Pa and Uncle Bert brought upstairs was a makeshift operating table. Ma told me that the doctor did whatever it was he had to do to stop the bleeding, and it stopped. She recovered. She didn't tell me how sick she had been. She didn't tell me anything about how long it took her to be back on her feet but with five children, one a newborn and a big house to keep up, she was probably up and at'em long before she should have been.

Years later, after Uncle Bert and Aunt A had returned from their years in Texas and resettled in a suburb of Illinois, I was out in their garden with Uncle Bert. Again I don't know how the subject came up but I remember saying something to Uncle Bert about his being so kind to us children. He answered, almost under his breath, "You children don't know how close you came to losing your mother that day." I had never been told that. Thank God that Aunt A arrived when she did and that it was Aunt A, because she knew what to do. I really believe that if it hadn't been for her Ma would have died.

I tell this story because it is a bit of family history not generally known. Our Aunt A played a big part in saving our mother for us, and the large part of our lives that were formed by Ma’s influence.