We lived in my grandparent's farm house, all that was left after the farm was sold. The farm house was built in the thirties, three bedrooms one bath. The rooms were small, even the master was small only ten by ten. The thin walls meant you spoke in whispers if you had a secret. My sister and shared the room next to my parents. We knew all the right noises, my mother telling my father he should control himself, then the sound of the bed moving, muffled sounds from them with a clear word from time to time. The noise stopped, my mother opened the door and went to the bathroom to get a towel, if we interrupted her she would tell us that being a woman of responsibilities was hard.

Later, like when we were eleven and thirteen she gave us the talk. She cautioned us, said keeping our legs together wasn't always easy, but being pregnant before we were married was really bad, so keep our knees together. Birth control was an aspirin, hold it with your knees. Sex happened before we were ready, we were sexually active while we were still kids. The babies came, two for me and one for her. I mean kids, I was fourteen and sixteen, my sister was fifteen. My mother wasn't much better she had me at fifteen.

Rural Ohio in the seventies was rural. We did manage to get married. Life in rural Ohio was pretty much close to nature. We were not the only girls in high school who were mothers.