Our number three daughter

I promised to tell all about Jane. You heard about her Rosebud moments. She was the best baby ever. And I feel she must have been neglected. When I think about those days when she was new born, I wonder how did I have time to do all the things I remember. I began taking painting lessons with the vague hope to earn money to help with College costs when all four would be involved with that kind of school. And each year I made all our Christmas cards, and I made all the clothes for the girls. And who knows what else. This all sounds like bragging, but I am really admitting that I must have neglected the children. Jane flourished in the admiration of her sisters. They felt Jane was born to be their real live doll. They had a little doll baby carriage and Jane rode in it until she was a year old. And then she was walking.

Jane was very affectionate. And her laugh was infectious and she could make a whole room laugh with her. Early it was evident that she was very smart. It did not matter what or how we tested her. Numbers or colors or telling stories, nothing fazed her.
I think I told you about the drawing she made of two girls with arms and legs coming out of the heads, one of them with the legs bent at the knees. Not the way our legs bend at the knees. Strait out sideways. When I asked her to tell me about the drawing she said that is me and Anna and Anna is tired. I have that drawing reproduced on a white mug and drink my morning coffee from it. Some times I don't notice the drawing, but often it hits me how funny it is and I laugh all by myself and remember.

Jane's teachers in school soon realized how smart she was. I don't think she ever had any trouble in school for she worked hard and her red hair and her freckled nose grew on people. In college she excelled and when she met the person who was going to become her sister in law she learned what she wanted to become, a librarian. That idea might had been brewing for a long time for she had summer jobs in middle school when she worked summer jobs with the school librarian. She also worked in our local fabric store and spent most of her salary on reduced pieces of yardage that might still be buried in the bottom of one of her drawers.

Jane married Tom when she got her first degree in college. Their wedding was unusual. She an Tom wanted to get married at University of California at Davis. The wedding was out doors and her color was yellow. She was wearing my mother's unused wedding dress made by my mother in 1914. The war at that time prevented my mother and father from having a formal wedding. My sister made a beautiful crown made with 'pillow lace' and starched stiff with sugar used as starch. Jane and Tom wanted dinner served outdoors after the ceremony. They wanted several kinds of sausages and home-baked beans. It was a hot day. Gilbert visited the department which raised large amounts of yellow flowers (I forget the name but they were also called the Hawaiian wedding flower.) He asked if Jane could use them for the tables. After the wedding and after the dinner as people were leaving, Gilbert sold the flowers to the wedding guests.

Jane got her degree as librarian at the University of Oregon. The couple then moved to San Francisco where Jane was employed by the City Library. The Mayor of the City now Senator chose Jane to work with a big hot shot from Philadelphia who was hired to select the libraries to be closed because of financial shortages. It was a big feather in Jane's career.

Jane and Tom have two children, Emily who is sweet and smart and Benjamin who is a grand kind of person. I could not call him sweet and smart, but he is. I am hoping he will become a writer of renown. He showed such promise when in kindergarten.
Emily is everything she promised to be. Constantly daring fate with her bravado.