The Stork

One of Mom’s memories ……..                                              Elsie Lehecka Vogel

 

Being an only child at five years of age, I was so lonely.  I wished I had a brother or a sister.

 

One day, I begged my mother to write a note to the “stork” asking him to bring us a baby.  My mother -- no doubt at this point thinking it would be an easy way to placate me -- wrote a note to the stork and we tied it to a bare tree branch.  Every day I would run to the window to check to see if the stork took the note.  Many days went by and still the note fluttered in the wind.  

 

But, one day it was gone!  I immediately told my friends and any townspeople that would listen that we were going to get a baby.

 

It so happened my father’s brother, named Joe, and family lived in the neighboring town and several months after the missing note to the stork disappeared, they had a baby girl.

 

I can still recall my happiness, sitting in the back seat of our car as we made our first trip to see Uncle Joe and his family, because now we could take MY sister home.  I knew the stork made a mistake and brought our baby to Joe Lehecka instead of my father, John Lehecka.  I recall my disappointment and heartbreak and tears shed as the family tried to explain to me that the baby wasn’t ours.

 

However, when I was 12 years old, the stork brought me a baby brother named Thomas John and I became a built-in babysitter.