A Poor Excuse For Not Knowing

(My aunt is relating the story of my father’s birth to me.)

Aunt: “I was 14 and at school when the local midwife’s daughter came up to me and told me that my mother had a baby that morning. I told her to stop being silly because my mother hadn’t even been pregnant. I had to ask [Other Aunt] about it, who told me it was true.”

Me: “You didn’t know your mother was pregnant?”

Aunt: “No, in those days children weren’t told that sort of thing. [Other Aunt] only knew about it because she was the oldest at 15 and they needed someone to cook our breakfast. She would tell us that Mum had a headache.”

Me: “You must have been upset to find out that way.”

Aunt: “No. It was just the way it was, but I was upset because now there were seven kids in our family and I thought that only poor families had that many children, and we weren’t poor.”