Loraine Bauer, 89, was married at age 15 and had three children before she was twenty.

I was much too young because it meant that I was not a very good mother.  You know you love them and you do the best you can, but I didn’t know about being a mother.  I never even held a baby until I held my first baby.  And contrary to what most people would think, I was not pregnant when I was married.  She wasn’t born until fourteen months after we had this marriage.  But that was much too young, even though I married a good person.  He was to the best of his ability a kind and loving husband and father but we wound up divorced when the kids were still little.

You know they’re beautiful children, beautiful physically.  They have also grown into beautiful people.  And I guess hell, they must have gotten that from somewhere, wouldn’t you think?  I must have done something right.  One thing is that I would design and make beautiful clothes.  And even for my little son. 

And I remember one day – you probably have events that for no particular reason memories that staywith you. Well, maybe you don’t.  Maybe you’re not old enough, I don’t know, to have all that many memories.  But I remember one Saturday afternoon. 

We lived way away from any grocery stores or anything like that.  My husband would hitch up the mule and buggy and drive two miles to pick up the week’s supply of groceries.  And I remember one day he was taking our little son with him who must have been about two years old.  And I had made him this lovely little white shirt and a little pair of short brown pants with suspenders that buttoned over him.  And he was sitting there on the wagon seat beside his father. 

 If you don’t have children, when you have them you will have these moments.  When you look at them and your heart – it’s like your heart takes all the pain and all the love for them that you have because he looked so beautiful sitting there beside Daddy.