FURTHER READING: ADELLE DAVIS

Priscilla, Megan and Geoff, with Dear Hubby's Granny out in California

Dearest Friends,

What other books, you may be asking, did I wag home from the Family Bookstore?  These three might surprise you: Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit and Let's Have Healthy Children, both by Adelle Davis, and another book called Nursing Your Baby.  You can blame all three choices on my sister-in-law Priscilla.

Though she might not admit this, despite time spent at both Yuppie U (aka SMU) and as an airline stewardess, Pris had the heart of a hippie hidden deep inside.  The first time I met her, when John and I were just dating, she was absorbed in a book by Adelle Davis, a nutrion guru whose advice about choosing real food over manufactured, and urging the use of supplemental vitamins, seemed to be taking the counter-culture by storm.

Pris was pregnant with her first child when John and I got engaged, and was the first person I'd ever known who wanted to use natural childbirth techniques, and have her hubby (John's brother Mike) in the delivery room with her.  I had one friend who had natural childbirth there in Bahrain, but it was not by choice, and she had no training for it.  It was the only option there at the local hospital -- a good reason not to get pregnant yet.  Priscilla had even joined La Leche League, and was planning to breastfeed!

When we went to visit them in Houston, just before moving to Bahrain, she was newly pregnant with her second child.  Shortly after that they moved to California, where her inner hippie came into full bloom.  Despite her mother's pleadings, her second child was born right there at home, with a midwife in attendance, Pris became the leader of her La Leche League group, and she nursed baby Geoff for a full three years.  She was quite the pioneer, for her day and age.  I wasn't nearly that brave, but having a personal role model and fountain of knowledge made it much easier for me to step out of my comfort zone, and to blaze a new trail from the one I had been raised to follow.

Between her influence, those books, and my broadened view of the world, I suppose it's only natural that I would start to question my original career plans.  The more time you spend in third world countries, the harder it is to justify putting all your energy into convincing people that they must toss out last year's wardrobe to make room for the latest fads.  I had come across some amazing textiles in our travels, however, and the textile labs had been my very favorite classes at UT, which may have led me to consider the possibilities indicated in this hilarious "10-Year Plan" I found tucked into the back of one diary:

• '77 - Bahrain, John offshore
• fall 77 - return to States, go to work, buy house (24 yrs. old)
• winter 77/78 - pregnant
• fall 78 - 1st child born (25 yrs.)
• winter 79/80 - pregnant
• fall 80 - second child born (27 yrs.)
• fall 82 or 83 - begin graduate degree in Textiles
• fall 83 - first child in school (30 yrs.)
• fall 85 - second child in school, get job teaching at University (32 years)

 I seem to remember feeling very strongly that you must have all your children before you were 30, for God forbid you should be an ancient 50 by the time they got out of school!  What a joke that turned out to be.