My Benchmark Cousin

Cindy is my benchmark cousin. By that I mean she is the first baby I can clearly remember being born. I remember her older sister, Susan, being a baby, but Susan is hazy and surrounded by gauze. Cindy, on the other hand, is the yardstick by which I measure time and memory.


You know when you are a little kid, say nine, and someone says, "I got this, I've been driving for fifteen years" and you think, "Wow, fifteen years. That's a long time. I haven't even been alive that long." When you are a little kid, most of the people around you are older than you are. Then the balance begins to shift. 

Grandma's back yard, in the winter

In the summer of 1977, I went to Danville to spend a couple of weeks with the Whitt family. I generally liked to be there on July 4 because we could see the fireworks over the mill and Dan River by standing in grandma's back yard. This year my Aunt Maxine was hugely pregnant with her seventh child. Maybe she wasn't so huge, but I didn't have that much experience around expectant moms. While I don't remember her due date, I was really hoping she would have the baby while I was there. I don't know what I thought this would be like because Maxine would have gone to the hospital and left a bunch of hungry people behind her. If she had birthed Cindy while I was there, I imagine my parents would have jumped in the car and retrieved me.


It was hot that July. We had a few days at 100 degrees. This was BA, "before air-conditioning". No one in our family had central air. Bobby may have had a window unit in his room. It was hot, hot, hot. Maxine worked in the garden early in the morning. She hung laundry every day. I remember her running up the hill chasing Bobby with a broom. Well, you can bet her teenager son was faster. I remember dabbing her feet with cotton boll soaked in alcohol. She said that felt so nice. 


My visit ended. I think Uncle Wallace and Aunt Colleen brought me home that year. I was so sad that the baby wasn't there yet!


A week or so later, my parents and I were sitting on the back porch in Portsmouth. It was evening; almost dark...probably close to 9 p.m. when the phone rang. Cindy was here. August 2, 1977. 


So when someone says they were born in '77, I think "I could've changed your diapers." 


Happy Birthday Cindy!




(Footnote: You can find James' and Lena's house in the linked photo of the cotton mill. Press CTRL and + at the same time to zoom in.)