The older I get, the more I admire my mother. I've been her daughter for 47 years now, and it's a wonder she didn't poison me before I hit puberty.
That's not to say we-my brothers T-Bob and Bubba and sister, Moonbeam-were evil kids. What we were, was scorched hell.
Imagine waking up one day and realizing you're 35 years old with a family of six living in a 1,000 square-foot house. With hard water.
To make matters worse, we kids were strong-willed and prone to pounding savagely on each another. Trust me, Mom coped with a lot.

Before I was 10 years old, my siblings and I had:
* Poured Tide in Daddy's goldfish pond.
* Burned down the tool shed.
* Shot out Grandmother's storm door.
* Been hit by a car.
* Shoplifted and got caught.
* Fell screaming from the maple tree in the front yard.
* Chopped down the maple tree in the front yard.
* Got locked in Daddy's Masonic temple.
* Sledded down a hill into the middle of the highway.
* Stormed the neighbor's house nude. Nude!
* Fallen from a moving car.
* Tripped and fallen down a new well.
* Tripped and fallen through a plate-glass window.
* Fallen into a coma (after falling from a galloping horse.)

When we weren't wreaking havoc at large, we were trying to kill each other.
Mother picked Coke bottle shards from split lips (T-Bob got tired of my teasing), and bandaged bleeding ankles (I retaliated with a hoe). She put ice packs on countless bruises and frequently pried my teeth from Bubba's head.
"You need to love each other," she'd remonstrate gently.
Still, she was happy that none of us bore grudges. Scars, yes, but not grudges.
The scariest injury occurred, ironically, when we four put our battles aside for a rousing game of tag.
T-Bob, all excited, was hiding in the ditch when Moonbeam ran by, heading for home base.
"Stop her!" Bubba screamed. T-Bob obediently bent, picked up a rusty paint can and hurled it in a perfect arc.
It hit Moonbeam squarely on the temple. Her eyes flew wide and she keeled over in mid-stride.
"Gal down," T-Bob said uncertainly, peering at his sister bleeding from a two-inch gash across her eyebrow.
Mother ran out and rushed Moonbeam to the hospital, where she got four stitches. To this day a white scar rakishly bisects her brow.
"Y'all gonna kill each other, like the damn Hatfields and McCoys," Daddy fumed.
We never did outright murder each other, and our tempers mellowed with maturity. Today we're thick as thieves and fiercely loyal to one another.
Mother should get credit for that. She's the one who kept us alive.

Julie Smith, whose mother was very tired by the time she came along, can be reached at widdleswife@aol.com.