My Sister Lori (Part 3 of 6)

Mom and Lori came home from the hospital a day or so later. We were informed that we would all have to take on a greater share of the responsibility at our house. Mom was 37 and after having her eighth child, she wasn’t able to spring back after this pregnancy as well as she had in the past. We were each assigned additional housekeeping jobs and we each had to watch Lori for at least one hour each day. Since I had my driver licence, I conveniently took Lori in the car for my hour each day. My older sisters were a little upset at that since none of them had a driver licence. All they could do was watch Lori at home. Or they could at least take her on a bike ride. Have you ever seen a newborn on a bike? My sisters did it a lot. Lori was on a bike so often in her first three months of life, that I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if she started riding it herself. Of course, if Mom had realized what was happening she would have put a stop to it sooner. Here was her precious newborn baby siting precariously on a banana-bike seat while the young bike rider steadied her with one hand while grasping the handlebars with the other hand, riding down the street without any caution of automobile traffic whatsoever. It’s no wonder that Mom put a stop to that practice as soon as she happened to see it. This made my sisters more unhappy with the situation. “At least Billy could still take the baby in the car with him,” they’d jealously say. With a car, Lori could be firmly strapped in her seat, although nowadays we think of baby seats as being very safe, and we did too back then, but in actuality we would be very surprised to see a seat from the 1970s and one of today, compared side to side. First of all, the seat was made for a four-year-old. To get Lori to fit in it we had to wrap her in blankets and prop her up with another one. We also had to stuff one blanket in the seat to keep her from slipping out. The seat was blue with a padded seat and a padded bar that came down over the person. It had bars that curved around the back of the seat that it rested on. We thought it was the most safe device for car safety ever invented. (You ought to see what I had when I was little.) Seven years later when I became a father of my own baby, that blue car seat was still in existence, but it had been condemned by every automobile safety group and pediatric group in America. But of course in 1978, it was perfectly safe.