Those Dreaded Summers of Polio
Way back when I was a little girl I remember a few summers when my older brother and I would be called back inside the house by our mother in the afternoons. She would make us rest on the back porch for a few hours. She'd pull the blinds to stop the sunlight from coming in. We each had a daybed to rest on. We couldn't talk to each other. We were allowed to look at books which was fine with me. I can't remember much about what we were told other than something called polio was going around and if we didn't rest we could get it. I still didn't understand what "it" was but from the tone in her voice I understood polio to be quite scary. Our mother was a nurse. A very dedicated nurse. We loved it when we were put in the backseat of the car and we'd go along with our parents as our father drove our mother to the hospital to work the night shift. I loved seeing her dressed in her white uniform with her starched nurses' cap, highlighted by a black ribbon