I can remember just two early memories— being ill and my cousin’s funeral.
I was three years old when I had pleurisy. There is a good explanation of why all seven of us Christoffersen kids lived through infancy and childhood—it was Mom. Without immediate help such as an emergency room, and no doubt great hesitancy to run up a doctor bill, she used the skills she’d learned at Augustana Nursery (in Chicago) to bring us through.
In infancy I contracted Whooping Cough. (Vaccinations were not yet available for the childhood disease.) Of course, I don’t remember anything about it, but Mom said I was very sick. Well, she nursed me through that illness. But three years later, I had pleurisy. By that time Paul, twenty months younger, was the baby in the household. What I do remember about having pleurisy is being “babied.”
I’m sure I was much too large to fit comfortably into my little brother’s wicker buggy, but there I was, wheeled into the warm kitchen, close to my mother’s command center. I don’t remember anything about being sick, but I do remember how good it felt to look up at the wicker ceiling, nurtured as though once again I was the baby. And I remember what she fed me—warm milk on toast. I can sort of still taste it, though I’ve never tasted it since.
And the other event also happened when I was three. I can prove that by my baby cousin Maureen’s funeral at Uncle Borgar and Helen Christoffersen’s home in Prentice, Wisconsin. In a day before babysitters, I suppose that my parents brought John (5), Paul (1) and me to the service (Miriam and Carl would be in school). And what I recall is Aunt Helen sobbing in the bedroom adjacent to the living room. The tiny white coffin held a doll-like baby in a white dress. Everyone was very quiet. And that is all I remember about the day. (Her gravestone is next to her parents at Hillside Cemetery in Ogema.)
