JAN 3, 1945

Mr. B. came to the house today and made pictures of the babies to send to Odis. From his letters, I think all of Camp Pinedale is waiting to see them.

Paul was wide awake gazing at me with those eyes so lie Odis' but Lila slept the whole time.

We call her the Sleeping Beauty.

Not very original, I'll admit, but she is a beauty, and she does sleep all of the time

I would love to get to know her as well as I do Paul.

Kathleen, who has had three babies (one at a time), says wryly, "Just you wait until she decides t wake up!"

I'm waiting. 

Feb 5, 1945

I am strictly on my own with the twins now, night and day. Before the three of us came home from the hospital, Odis engaged a nurse named Margaret who came every afternoon late, took over with the babies fixed formula, slept in the same room with them at night and did their washing in the mornings.

In order to pay Margaret's salary, Lt. C. allowed Odis to work part time in a tire recapping place in Fresno in his hours off from duty at camp. (Shh - he in an M.P.)

I slept with Julia Quinn while Margaret was here, much to Mother's horror, but the doctors said I must "regain my strength." And I see now I am going to need it.

February 11, 1945

Mr. B. took more pictures of the babies today. Hi is a nice man whose hobby is taking pictures of children to send to their soldier fathers, and charges only for the film. 

He will come once a month and take pictures of the twins for Odis.  I have to write "Lila" or "Paul" on the backs, however. Odis wrote after I had sent the first ones, "its plain hell to have two babies, show their pictures to the fellows, and not be able to tell them which one is which."

February 27, 1945

I thank the Good Lord every day that the twins and I have this two room apartment with Mother and Daddy. I should feel so alone if we were living by ourselves.

My sister, Julia Quinn, whose husband John, is in the Navy, and her three year old Johnny are living here too in this wonderful big old house, and as Julia Quinn works, Mother has complete charge of Johnny all day. And he is quite an adorable handful, that one! Lately he has been "cussing". He doesn't get it from any of us. Daddy has only one "cussing" word and that is "Dine." (If he gets too mad he says "Hot Dine.") I suspect Johnny learned the words from other men who stand on the corner with Daddy and Johnny every afternoon when they walk to town.

Anyway, Julia Quinn and Mother have spanked Johnny several times about his salty words. Today, he came running in my room and stood still, muttering under his breath. "What's the matter, honey?" I asked. "Aw", he said, "I just came in here to cuss."

I didn't tell on him.

March 2, 1945

Odis is still in "limited service" and is definitely going to stay in the States - even though he has to de a despised M.P. with no chance for advancement. He is so gentle and good and kind. He is the soldier's friend if they all but knew it. In fact, most of the boys in the M.P. squadron are gentle and peace loving. It isn't their fault that they have some physical handicap which prevents their going overseas to fight.

Odis and his buddies never flaunt their authority, but the average soldier resent the Military Police beyond all reason. The remarks we used to overhear about those "Section eight blankety-blank M.P.s!" Even the other soldiers' wives will not associate    with us M.P. wives. But, we stick together, and try to laugh off the prejudice and the cartoons and the jokes about M.P.s being forced to associate with other M.P.s only because of the "stigma."

But Freddie, Kathleen's eight year old, thinks Odis in more important that a four star general. Odis had to have a special 8 by 10 picture made in full M.P. regalia for Freddie to hang on the wall. I wonder what the photographer thought?

When Freddie says, "My Uncle Odis, who is an M.P. in the Air Corps---" you can tell that, to him, Odis is next in line to President Roosevelt himself.

Holy Saturday, 1945

 Yesterday at the noon hour, a tornado hit Bunkie, uprooted trees, knocked garages askew and completely destroyed the Parish Hall. Among other things, the Parish Hall was used as a lunch room for St. Anthony Parochial school children, and had it not been Good Friday and a holiday, the children would have been inside at the time the tornado hit. By a wondrous coincidence it was empty and no one was hurt. The Hall meant a lot to most Catholics in Bunkie, and today I have been thinking about some of its personal memories for our immediate family. In 1910 when St. Anthony Parish was a mission of Hessmer, the Hall was built on Main Street and used as a chapel for the few Bunkie Catholics, and the first service held in it was the wedding ceremony of my mother and father in September of that year. There the Altar Society was organized with my grandmother a charter member, and one of its first presidents. Later the chapel was enlarged and moved to Holly Street and it was there that Kathleen made her First Holy Communion and I my Solemn Communion and received the sacrament of Confirmation and presented with a Bible by Bishop Van de Ven with the inscription, "First Premium for Catechism. Father Van Lint."

When construction was started on our present beautiful brick church, the chapel was moved to a lot on Knoll Avenue where it became the Parish Hall. There we had Sodality meetings and parties and danced many and many a mile, and before Johnny was born, my aunt Tal and my cousin Monetta gave Julia Quinn a stork shower there.

It was filled with happy and sad ghosts for many of us, so perhaps it was best that it was completely destroyed all at once instead of collapsing but by bit and finally having to be torn down one board and nail and memory at the time.

 April15, 1945

"Pvt. and Mrs. J. Odis Maxwell announce Paul Odis Maxwell Delilah Adele Maxwell 

So read the birth announcements which were designed and printed by our good friends Myrtle and Howard Fore and sent out by Odis and me when the twins were born.    They were the understatement of the year.  Part of what they did not tell was the incredible sensation the babies caused from Bunkie to California. Everyone who knew us was astounded. Letters, cards, wires and gifts continue to pour in.

I think what amazed everybody was that ninety pound me, who had been told over and over that she could never have a baby, was able to produce such fine, healthy ones. Lila weighed almost seven pounds, Paul almost six. They were perfect. They did not have to be put in incubators. They came into this world crying lustily, as the saying goes, and if I may say so are still crying lustily.

As Kathleen so aptly puts it when she comes in, "Not one baby, but TWO!" Not one baby, but TWO! Need I say more" (And those people who explain brightly, and they think, originally, "How nice - you have your family all at once!" really get strained smiles from me.)

I am not going to fib and say two babies are no more trouble than one. They are ten times more trouble, and what is more, I feel a little sorry for them. It is hard for a mother to decide just which baby needs her attention first. Lots of times, I ache to rock one, but I should feel terribly guilty if I picked it up and left the other lying there -  so I just let them both lie there, begging with all the beguiling tricks they know.

I try to be fair about alternating baths and feedings. It is absolutely true that twins do everything together - everything, that is, except sleep - they manage to take turns at that!

But they are beautiful and adorable and mine and I love them to death. And when I put them in their double stroller and wheel them uptown and people stop to ooh and ah, I nearly burst with pride.

There is only one things about the strolling, however, Here lately; on warm days I attach a small pink bow, with scotch tape, to Lila’s still bald head, because despite my adhering faithfully to dressing her in pink and Paul in blue, people still ask me, "Which is which?"

April 23, 1945

I shall be so glad when the babies are old enough for cow’s milk. Canned milk is so hard to come by these days.

Mr. and Mrs. Roy down at the corner grocery are wonderful. They save almost every can they can get their hands on for the twins. And friends save theirs for them, too. Odis could get all the milk they need at the P>X> at camp, but it would cost a small fortune to ship it from California to Louisiana. But, just as I am down to my last can, someone comes in with several more. Bless them. There are so many babies these days. I read where most of them are boys. Will they have to grow up to be soldiers too?

May 8, 1945

A Prayer for Lila and Paul on V.E. Day

 This morning when the bells began to ring and the whistles to blow, you, Lila, were sound asleep; and, just as they started, you, Paul, shut your eyes and went to sleep, too, neither of you knowing nor caring that half of this horrible war is over. May you both always be as completely unaware of war as you were at that moment.

May you, Paul, never wear khaki, olive drab nor navy blue. May you never have a serial number, a chevron on your sleeve, a bar on your shoulder, ribbons on your breast. May you never know the horror and dirt and weariness of battle. May you sleep every night in your own comfortable bed, and never on a cot in an army camp, a bunk on a battleship, a pallet on the floor of a prison camp, a foxhole.

May you, Lila, never see your husband march off to war. May you never know the worry, the loneliness, the emptiness, the lost feeling of being half alive until he comes back to you. May you never watch the cute, funny little things your babies do, and feel your heart break because their father isn't there to watch them , too.

To your children, Paul, and to your children, Lila, may their "daddy" never be an air mail letter, a picture on the wall, a blue or gold star on a service flag---

Mother

Webmaster footnote:  Germany and Italy surrendered on May 7, 1945.   The war with Germany ended on May 8, 1945.  This day was called V-E Day. V-E meant "victory in Europe." 

May 13,  1945

Kathleen's Kitty, aged 17 months, has a most peculiar name for Paul. She says "Lila" as plain as day, but she calls Paul "Lila-too" or "Lila-two" - we aren't sure which.

Kathleen has given me her play pen for the twins. She said Kitty must have absorbed the words of the song "Don't Fence Me In."

So far, they are very happy in the play pen. They look at each other and "talk" their baby jargon, and laugh or frown as though they understand every word the other is "saying."

Perhaps they do.

June 2, 1945

If only Lila and Paul didn't (to use a nice word for it) regurgitate so much. Just as I get them dressed, here comes a fresh spurt of undigested formula. And me! I smell of "essence de vomite" all the time. I always notice a strange look on the faces of people who get too close to me.

June 29, 1945

Odis has come and gone. His furlough was all too short. Paul took to him at once, and they look exactly alike. The resemblance is amazing. At first, Lila screamed every time Odis came near her, but in a day or so, she developed such a crush on him she would hardly notice me. She flirted with him constantly, and dimpled and said "da-da-da" and he loved it. ( I didn't tell him "da-da-da" is the first "word" all babies "say".)

After seven and one half years, there is another woman in Odis' life. I can't say a word, however, because isn't there another man in my life,  too?

How could I ever have thought that I wanted all my children to be girls!

July 1, 1945

DOUBLE, BOUBLE-----

Whoever said that twins were such fun should really learn to count beyond one. We mothers of twins always have two baths, and formulas and washings to do. Yet, some of the time - though it doesn't make sense - we actually wish we might have had quints! 

August 15, 1945

The war is over. The Japs surrendered yesterday. There is no jubilation like on V.E. Day.

This afternoon, Lila and Paul were asleep, and Mother, Johnny and I were in the living room listening to the radio. I was crocheting. Addie Blume came in, the tears streaming down her face. "Oh Lemmie", she said. "How can you just sit there and crochet. Don't you know this means Herbert and Odis can come home?"

It is late, but I can't sleep. I haven't felt a thing until now. I have been numb, but now I am crying. I tell myself that I am crying for all the wives and mothers and children who will hot have anyone coming home - but, deep down in the honest part of my heart, I  know there is one reason and one reason only for my tears. One completely selfish, happy reason. It is because I have just realized that one of these days soon I shall have my husband back again - and because my babies are so very young, they will never have to remember that, for  a while, they did not have their father.

Webmaster footnote:  The war with Japan ended on August 15, 1945.   This day was called V-J Day.  V-J meant "victory in Japan."

November 19, 1945

Odis is back from the war safe and sound and whole. He did not have to go overseas. He did not have to kill.

I had all his civvy clothes cleaned and waiting for him. They are a little tight, but he looks so happy in them.

I am grateful that he came back when so many did not. I am grateful for our babies. I am grateful that he has that wonderful job Daddy found for him before he even got home.

Why, then, do I have this senseless feeling of resentment and impending catastrophe? Is it because I know we have lost three years out of our lives that we will never get back? Is it because I may be a little jealous of the material things the 4Fs and deferred ones have accumulated during the war when work was plentiful and money was flowing? Or is it because for eleven months I have been tired to my very bones.

I wish I knew.

December 1, 1945

How do you make a three year old understand that death is irrevocable? My father died suddenly nine days ago, and I think the saddest thing about it all is the way Johnny grieves for him. The whole time John was away, Julia Quinn and Johnny made their home with Mother and Daddy.

Daddy loved all six of his grandchildren very, very much, but Johnny had a special place in his heart. He was just a baby when John went to war and he turned to Daddy. He was the son my father never had.

Daddy worked by night and slept by day, and it was Johnny who awakened him every afternoon at 3. "Wake up, Papa Sou," he would say. "It's time to wake up, Papa Sou." After Daddy had dressed and eaten, he and Johnny would walk to town. They would visit with Daddy's cronies, drink a coke at the drug store, stand on the corner together.

When Daddy died, though Johnny begged to go to the funeral home, Julia Quinn and John would not allow it. They were afraid. "He is so young." they said. But, that night after the funeral, Johnny said suddenly, "I want my Papa Sou." "Son, you know Papa Sou isn't here anymore," John told him. "I can't ever see him again?" "No darling," Julia Quinn answered. "Why couldn't I see him at the funeral home? Why? What is ' dead?' I heard them say Papa Sou was dead." "He was asleep," John said.

Then lashing out in grief, he reproached them. "You said he was dead," he screamed. "You didn't say he was asleep. If he was asleep, I could have waked him up. You know I waked him up every day. But, you wouldn't let me go to the funeral home where he was asleep. If you had let me go to the funeral home, I could have waked him up. But, you wouldn't even let me try. You wouldn't even let me try." It would have been heart-breaking for us, I know, but wouldn't it have been better for him if they had let him try?

Dec 3, 1945

Today is the twins' first birthday. We had a minor celebration. Our hearts just weren't in it.

Julia Quinn and Johnny have left us. John was separated from the Navy the day after Daddy's death, and has found employment in Baton Rouge. Mother is lost. Today, she said, "Let me take over the cooking. I must have something to do." For almost four years, we lived for the war to end -  everything will be all right then, we said. All the soldiers in the family have returned safely, except Aunt Lucy's two boys, Roy and Earl, who were killed  three days apart - Roy in the Pacific, and Earl in Germany. John was wounded and received the Purple Heart among other decorations. His branch of the Navy, the Frogmen, had the most dangerous tasks of all. We have taken our service flag out of the window. Julia Quinn and I have thanked God over and over that we never had to change the blue stars in it to gold.

December 17, 1945

Odis has lost that wonderful job in the oil field -  the soldier he  was replacing came home. He has found another job but with just half the salary he was making. We will manage someway, though. We have lived on a shoe string since he was inducted into the army in November, 1942. But, while it lasted, it was nice having several shoe strings for a change.

December 26, 1945

This was an empty Christmas without Daddy - it was exactly one month since his death.

The Lacours' had no celebration other than mass and Holy Communion, and Santa Claus coming to see the children. Odis and I took the babies to Mama and Papa Maxwell's for the day. I think it was the unhappiest Christmas I have ever spent - and it should have been the most wonderful - with the war over, Odis at home, and the twins old enough to be big-eyed over all the toys they received. I did have a blessed moment of peace when I went to confession Christmas Eve after dark. Our church was as beautiful as ever - the holly wreaths, the smell of pine, the creche all arranged but for the empty manger awaiting the Baby.

All we can do now is pray for Daddy - and wait. "Time is a wonderful healer," people say.