3. The Second Year Alone — Let’s Skip It
Chapter 3 | by Helen Hinkson Green
Note: This is the next installment of It Takes a Pair, a 34-chapter memoir written by my grandmother, Helen Hinkson Green (1907-2003). It recounts her memories of raising her twin daughters as a single (& widowed) parent throughout the 1940s. It is being published posthumously in her honor, with new chapters released every Sunday. View previous chapters and more information about this memoir.
The only year of my life that I’d really like to block out would be the second year that I was alone as a single parent. It was the year that I woke up to the fact that this was the way it was going to be, perhaps, from here on out. Life had upset my apple cart and that first year’s merciful numbness that “this can’t be for real,” “one of these days I’ll wake up and find this is all a bad dream” had slowly worn off. No more hiding from the truth in protective fantasizing--this was it.
To make matters worse, I had been unable to secure a housekeeper to take back to St. Charles with me to care for the children while I commuted daily to a teaching position I’d procured over in St. Louis County. So, since we had been spending the summer in La Belle at Mother’s, I took a job there because I could find a lovely girl who would keep house for me there, but who would not go as far away as St. Charles since she wanted to go home each weekend to her home fifteen miles away. Mother who was teaching in the next town and staying there during the week was delighted to have me and the children stay on her home, and she came home each weekend to be with us.
I resigned from the job in St. Louis County, picked up one in La Belle, teaching in both the seventh-eighth grade combination and in high school English. It meant a tremendous heavy load of preparations, and I had no free period. Looking back, I realize that I should never have accepted such an impossible assignment, but I did. And the nightly grind of too many preparations, too many papers, too little anything else, too much longing for my own pretty home got through to me. And I’m sure it showed in many ways, including my attitude toward teaching and students. I’m sorry about that. As I said in the beginning of this chapter, I’d like to skip that year of my life.
It really must have come through loud and clear to my sister Va and her husband Jimmy out in Lordsburg, New Mexico, for late in the spring, Va wrote me saying, “Helen get out of La Belle. Jimmy has already rented the other side of this duplex for you beginning in late August (he’s got it subrented to a couple of teachers, who aren’t coming back, until you’ll need it), and we’re sure you can get a teaching job here. There are lots of vacancies. Tom Mayfield, the superintendent, is going to send you a bunch of vacancies for you to look over. So pick one, and come on out. We’ll worry about a housekeeper for the children when the time comes. Let’s start with housing and a job.”
Tom Mayfield did indeed send me descriptions for four teaching positions and told me to pick whichever one I thought I would most like provided I had the proper qualifications for it. I picked the high school English one from among those he sent, and in August we three Greens and Mrs. Loudermilk, a lovely La Belle friend of long standing arrived via Santa Fe in Lordsburg, New Mexico, for my first of two years of teaching there.
And I probably should add that Michael arrived with us also. For Michael who joined us that spring in La Belle went with us wherever we went until that first Christmas in Lordsburg. Perhaps I should tell you about Michael next.
» Look for the release of a new chapter of It Takes a Pair next Sunday.