NOTE: The following narrative is excerpted from the book “The Hardest Life I Could Ever Love”, written by Mary B. Blahnik and extensively edited by Fred Blahnik.
My new “career” was poised to change dramatically yet again……and it would forever thereafter be referred to as motherhood.
On May 16th, 1940, Jimmy warned of his pending arrival. My placenta had already ruptured previously, but Jimmy understandably decided to wait a while longer for a warm, sunny day to make his grand earthly debut. The “Icemen Days of May”–well known to the ethnic Czech people clustered in our immediate region akin to ants in a colony–were at last over.
In the darkness of the morning on May 17th, Dad drove over to our close neighbors Souceks in order to call Dr. W. B. Grise so he could inform the good doctor his medical assistance would soon be required. Mama came to be my midwife, and Jimmy was triumphantly born at approximately 10:00 a.m. on a Friday morning with a swelling–or exaggerated bump—prominently displayed on his head resulting from his contumacious refusal to cooperate with the birthing process.
Dad beamed proudly and rivaled any peacock in flamboyance; the brand new father now boasted a slightly greater than eight pound son. Jimmy’s birth served to somehow validate Dad in his own eyes; he seemed to feel it made him just as good—in some instances perhaps even better–than many of his neighborhood friends and acquaintances……dare I say unspoken competitors? My naturally humble husband now stood more erect, there was a new steeliness in his eyes, and he walked with a decidedly new bounce in his gait.
The name James Peter had been waiting patiently for our firstborn if the youngster turned out to be a baby boy. That name was in honor of the newborn’s deceased Grandpa Blahnik—James–and an uber-proud Grandpa Peter Snyder, since this was his first grandchild.
The sun shone brightly that day, Fred was planting corn in the fields, and several neighbors stopped by to see if our new baby had arrived yet…..and then to pointedly inquire what sex the infant was. A new era had inauspiciously dawned on the nondescript Blahnik farm northeast of Austin, Minnesota, even though the buildings and fields and trees appeared exactly as they had the day before…….the week before……the year before.
No, things would never again closely resemble the way they had stood previously at the carefree “Blahnik Boy’s Place” in the days and weeks and years which followed this landmark birth.
Incidentally, during that mid-twentieth century era babies born at home were weighed on a small household scale which had a ring at the top for the “weigher” to hold onto, as well as a hook at the bottom for attaching to the baby’s diaper to suspend the infant in mid-air while it was being weighed.
Jimmy spent his earliest months in a baby buggy we bought from our neighbors immediately to the south–the Watkins. As he grew older Jimmy graduated to a wooden playpen Dad’s nephew Earl Ondrick had designed and built. The contrivance could be folded up conveniently to shuttle around our house and yard as needed.
Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins watched admiringly at each new accomplishment Jimmy mastered, since he was the youngest member on both sides of our expansive family and represented the hopes and dreams and promises of an entirely new generation.
As Jimmy grew a bit older and could skitter around outside by himself, he soon developed a wanderlust feeling on nice temperate days. Quite frankly, the impish little fellow could no longer be implicitly trusted when left alone outside.
One bucolic Sunday afternoon little Jimmy disappeared from our farmyard. Dad and I searched desperately to find him……in vain; Jimmy could not be located anywhere, and as a first-time and probably overreacting mother I was rapidly approaching hysteria!
Finally, we spotted a Lilliputian set of footprints in the dusty field drive that led over the railroad tracks to Fred and Catherine’s place. Sure enough, we followed the tracks in that direction–and found Jimmy perched in their kitchen, serenely munching on one of Catherine’s delicious cookies just like the cat that swallowed the canary…..and wondering what all the fuss was about!
Yet another time, those telltale miniature footprints led me to our neighbors’ house across the road from where we lived—the Larsons. Alice Larson later confided to me that Jimmy showed up on their front doorstep—totally “out of the blue” and not scared in the least—and loudly and belligerently demanded, “WHERE ARE THE GIRLS?!?!”
A true Casanova was unmasked that day, and I had a minor epiphany and realized with a somewhat sinking heart that Dad and I would be sharing living quarters with a natural-born lady-killer from that point forward.
By this juncture in my life, I had finally learned to partition my time so that I could be—simultaneously–a successful homemaker and a doting mother.
Fred's Soapbox 