Margaret Sanger
I remember Mrs. Sachs-begging me for the "secret." But it truly was a secret, not mine to know, or to tell-yet.
So I looked to her, I smiled and I said "You'll be alright." The words sounding wrong, the message: I am helpless, please have hope.
I hoped much for Mrs. Sachs, right up until her seams were undone by her own knitting needles.
This early harvest of thinly rooted seeds was killing the tiller of the soil. It was a thought much like that which turned belief into conviction, thought into action, desire into necessity.
No more need die, this much I knew,
Yet I knew equally as well, that many more would.
I was sixth in a lot just one short of a dozen. Mother strengthened us with her faith and commitment. We tired her with our entry. So many of us came and she weakened exponentially, as did the neighbor lady with seven of her own.
Yet just across the way, mothers flourished in their roles. The children were happy, seemingly free of the burdens we knew so well. Their mothers played croquet, and smiled and laughed, without the dark tint of pain.
How simply happy they looked. The smaller families. The sun did shine brighter on the small family.
Mothers by choice did not sip turpentine or make love to slippery elm.
They curled their hair, and smiled at will, sometimes, for no apparent reason.
We must! have choices. It could not continue-women dying from the lack of knowledge and will.
Mothers who knew lived longer, fewer died giving birth, and the infants, they born of the choice, they lived! Longer!
These women made sweaters with knitting needles, removed paint with turpentine and planted slippery elm.
These women enjoyed a luxury that should have been a privilege. It was the pursuit of this privilege that became my self-imposed duty.