When I was little I didn't have a father, but my Uncle Beau treated me just like he did his own daughter who was two years younger than me. My grandfather (Mama's stepfather) had a daughter that was two years older than me and he too treated me like a daughter. In fact, we adored each other and I looked forward to the days I could spend with my Papa Daddy. To me there was nothing strange at all about my family. Nothing odd about growing up in a shelter for young prostitutes or those who had been abused by the men – fathers, uncles, grandfathers, even brothers – that they should have been able to trust. I grew up in a house full of sisters and I loved every minute of it.
I was fourteen when Wesley moved into our neighborhood and it was instant puppy love. He was a year older, smart, athletic and popular. Many of the neighbor girls swooned over him, but he seemed to single me out. Sometimes I wondered if it was me he liked or the ready supply of treats Mama always had waiting for us.
With my family it wasn't unusual for someone to simply be accepted as family, whether they liked it or not. It didn't happen with everyone, but Wesley was one of those that did. He was taken on fishing trips with Uncle Beau and his twin sons, to baseball games with Uncle Johnny and his ward, and was given a job in Uncle Lee's workshop. My family loved him.
When President Wilson called for troops in the spring of 1917, my Wesley was one of the first to enlist. Several members of his family had been members of the military and he wanted to continue that proud heritage. Both families had long assumed that one day Wesley and I would marry, and we had even talked about it, though there had been nothing official. On the night he enlisted as we took our usual evening stroll through the park, he proposed and we agreed to wait until he returned to marry.
Only a few shorts months later we received word that he had been killed in action. I was devastated and rarely if ever left my room. I couldn't eat and I couldn't sleep, but Mama had seen it all before, though under much different circumstances. She slowly coaxed me back into the land of the living as carefully, lovingly and patiently as she had coaxed so many other girls over the years.
My mother married a wonderful man when I was eight. He was a police officer and had brought several girls to Mama's little house over the years both before and after they married. It had become his habit to bring his rookie partners home for dinner, and it wasn't any different when he brought Clark Butler home one night nearly two years after Wesley died.
I had given the wedding dress Mama and Mama Nanny had made for me to wear when I married Wesley to my cousin Hannah a few weeks before and was starting to slowly move on with my life. And there was Clark. He later told him that he was smitten from the first time he saw me. I was certain he came to dinner at our house nearly every night because of one of the other girls there, but was I ever surprised to find out that it was actually me he was interested in…and he was more than willing to wait until I was ready to love again.
Eventually I was ready to love again and Clark and I were married in a simple ceremony. We were blessed with three beautiful children: Geoff, Clare and Nolan. Shortly after Clare was born, Mama brought me a gift…the silver vanity set that Mama Nanny had given to her. She fondly reminded me that as a young child I told her that the set was mine because of the beautiful C engraved on the back of the mirror. I had not even considered the old set when I named my daughter, but I knew then that one day it would belong to her.