The Eleventh Child
- Marla Peterson
- Oct 16
- 2 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
My grandmother Helen was 46, the age I am now, when she was pregnant with my father, her eleventh child.
I would never know her, and neither would he.
I don’t remember what I was told about her when I was young, only that it was enough to keep me from asking more. It wasn’t until I was about twelve that my father told me himself. I don’t recall what prompted it. Maybe he thought I was old enough, or that I might hear it from someone else. Probably both.
It was just the two of us in the car, driving down the road in Retreat, the small community where I grew up. We had just passed the Sportsman’s Club, a local gathering place and familiar landmark, when he told me that his mother had been hit by a stray hunter’s bullet when she was eight months pregnant with him.
She died soon after he was born.
This story is rarely spoken of in our family. What I know comes in fragments, passed quietly over the years, with versions and details that never fully align.
At my father's Celebration of Life, at the Sportsman's Club in Retreat in October 2018, a woman came up to me and said she’d never forget being a teenager playing the organ at the church service for Helen Peterson.
She remembered glancing at the front pew, which was full of small children, and a newborn baby.
After hearing the story of my father's life, a friend wrote a song that began with that day in November 1958.
Here are the opening lines:
Helen was as strong as iron, but sweet, they say it's true
On an autumn day, she was hangin' wash when the morning chores were through
Inside her was a baby boy, the 11th child, I'm told
She pinned the last shirt on the line, as something sprang out from the fold
She laughed and said “Lord, John Boy’s kickin’ hard, and ripe to come"
But the stingin’ in her side felt like a shot from a gun...
.
.
.
That's where this story begins.
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