Coal Miner's Daughter by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: None
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2021-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

18

My Kids

Little handprints on the wall,

Little footsteps in the hall,

Little arms that reach out for me in the night…

—“One Little Reason,” by Loretta Lynn

Things got better for me after meeting Patsy. But I don’t know if things got better for my kids. They were used to me being around to guide ’em, and now when they were growing up, I wasn’t there.

Even today, with my four older kids in their twenties, I see signs that it wasn’t good for me to leave ’em alone so much. They all live right close to our ranch, and I’m always getting involved in their troubles. Half the time I worry that I didn’t know ’em well enough when they were young. The other half I worry that I’m too involved now. It’s a pretty emotional subject with me—how I wasn’t around when my kids needed me.

Sometimes when I get all worked up over their problems, Doo says we should just let the kids work it out for themselves. But when I’m home, I’m tempted to be an old mother hen. It’s a funny deal. In country music, we’re always singing about home and family. But because I was in country music, I had to neglect my home and family.

I look at Betty and Jack and Ernest and Cissy today, and I think of how I went out on the road. We had this dream about me making it in show business—and it’s paid off, in money and other things. But in certain ways, I don’t know.

At first, Doolittle stayed with the kids a lot. While we were still living in Washington, he’d cook their dinners and take ’em places like the drive-in movies. He’s always been a good father with his kids. He taught ’em to survive and be independent. But when he joined me on the road, we left the kids, first with my brother, then with our mothers in Indiana.

When the kids came to Nashville, we left ’em with babysitters. Now, babysitters are all right, if you keep the same ones. But we didn’t. We’d hire one babysitter for a month; then she’d quit or we’d fire her or something. It was hard on the kids and hard on me. I’d be in some motel room not knowing if the babies was eating right or going to school regular.

Betty Sue, the oldest—I think it bothered her the most. Me and her are real close to begin with—I’ve known her since I was fourteen. She was always such a bright, sensitive little girl, and sometimes these are the ones that suffer the most. Betty can remember those real old days when we were poor—how I made her bloomers out of cut-down burlap bags when she went to school for the first time.

When I started traveling, Betty was already in grade school. She didn’t want to move to Nashville and she still talks in a Washington accent rather than a Southern accent. Sometimes she talks about moving back there, although she and her husband are doing real good in Tennessee.

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