If My Heart Had Wings: A World War II Love Story(6)

Then Mom started laying out the pattern pieces, full of confidence and determination. But she didn’t just fold the fabric down the middle, lay out the pieces and cut. Not my mother! Instead, she folded the fabric one way, and laid out a couple of pattern pieces, then folded it another way for the next few, and finally, squeezed the remaining pieces from the scraps that would be left over—if she had actually done any cutting.

But she was in her teaching mode, so instead of just cutting the thing out, she gathered up the pattern pieces, refolded the fabric into a nice little square, and handed the stack back to me.

“Your turn.”

“Mom!” I moaned. “You already had it all laid out! Why didn’t you just cut it?”

“Because you need the experience. So get going.”

“Experience, ” I mimicked, making a face as I spread out the fabric and tried to remember what she’d just shown me.

“But you have to ease my pain by telling me another story,” I insisted. Why not try to get something for myself out of the situation?

“What pain?” she snorted, with a very tiny, indulgent smile. She was used to my dramatics.

“The pain of having to figure this out all over again. So how about... how about telling me about what Lyndon was like as a kid?”

“What? You’re back on that again?”

“Yes! C’mon, I need some diversion .”

“Hmpf,” she sniffed. “Well, I didn’t know him as a kid.”

“Yes, but you must have known certain things about him. Tell me those.”

She sighed and settled herself into a chair where she could watch what I was doing.

“All right, let’s see. He was born on a farm in 1918 to a big family—I think there were four boys and two girls, and he was number four.”

She pointed to one of my pattern pieces. “That’s got to be on the straight grain. You’ve got it crooked.”

I made a face and straightened it.

“Anyway, they left the farm because his father got a job working for a newspaper in St. Paul—I’m pretty sure he was a linotype setter. Whatever he did, I know he worked nights and slept during the day, so the family didn’t see him much. And that meant the mom ended up raising the kids pretty much on her own.”

I was still struggling with her crazy layout pattern.

“Do I fold it this way now?”

“Yes, fold it the wide way.”

“Okay, so what was his mom like?”

“Well, I didn’t really know her all that well. She always struck me as kind of cold and fussy.” To illustrate her point, she added, “She was a card-carrying member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.”

If that had any significance, it was lost on me.

“What’s that?”

“A bunch of old ladies who are dead set against alcohol.”

“Oh.”

“But she wasn’t cold to Lyndon; she was crazy about him. Out of all of her kids, he was her favorite.”

“Really? He told you that?”

“Yes. And I’m sure it was true.”

Her face softened a little as she remembered. “He was very sweet, a real congenial sort of guy, very considerate and, you know, diplomatic. I think he was a sympathetic ear for his mother. She probably got lonely raising all those kids by herself, and I think he sort of became her friend.”



Lyndon Raff, 21—shortly before he met Mom

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I HELD UP THE SCRAPS I had left over.

“Do you still think I can get two pieces out of this?” I asked, incredulously.

She got down on her hands and knees, folded the material this way and that, and showed me how each would fit.

When I finished cutting out that last pattern piece, I was triumphant.

“Ta-da!” I shouted, throwing it into the pile.

“Good job, kiddo,” Mom enthused. “See, you can do it!”

Then, as she helped me gather up the scraps and wayward pins, she said lightly, almost too lightly, “By the way, don’t mention any of this stuff to Dad, okay?”

“What stuff?”

“You know, about Lyndon.”

“Why not?”

She sighed.

“Let’s just say he doesn’t want to hear about it, so don’t mention anything. It’ll be our little secret.”

“Okay,” I said, shrugging.

As if I ever mentioned anything to him anyway.

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T HAT EVENING DAD HAPPENED to be away for a business meeting, and since Dawn was working as a camp counselor in the mountains, Mom and I were alone for dinner, which was a rarity. To celebrate, we were having sweet omelets topped with maple syrup, something Dad would never have tolerated.

“Okay, so anyway, back to my favorite subject,” I began. “How did you and Lyndon start dating? You met him at camp, came home, and then what?”

This time, instead of giving me a doubtful, sort of suspicious look, she actually smiled a little. Either she knew that trying to put me off was useless or she was actually starting to enjoy these little trips into the past.