Little and willing to please, the girl slowly walked back into the home she was born in but never knew. Her mother was there to greet her at the door but not as warmly as she had hoped. It was her older sisters who showered her with welcome hugs and brought her in to finally join their family for good. Because they were so much older, Ludene was thirteen and already a dark haired beauty, and Nelda was fun, filling those nervous first moments with laughing, they would not be playmates but substitute mothers, like her aunts had been. Yovonne didn’t want any fuss, didn’t want to make a sound or be noticed, hardly disturbing the dust as she dropped her small bag containing a few meager belongings over the threshold of the Idaho farmhouse. Her aunt Myrtle encouraged her inside with a heavy heart, hardly wanting to leave her sweet niece after six years of daily care and love. Aunt Myrtle was the only mother Yovonne had known while her own mother recovered from a thyroid condition the past four years.

Little Yovonne had no memories left of the first two years of her life, both her and her mother being too ill to bond with each other until the family had stepped in and suggested Yovonne live away from home for awhile. Susan Archibald would never have suggested it herself. How could she ask her sisters, already caring for their own children to take in another? But everyone could see it had to be done, for both of mother and daughter.

No one knew that it would stretch into four years. Most of the family guessed Yovonne would move back home at least before she started school; but when the day came, it was Aunt Myrtle who packed her first lunch, helped her choose her first dress, and tied her shoes. Aunt Myrtle walked her to school and dropped her off for Kindergarten even though Yovonne’s own parents were working right there at the same small town school house teaching the older children. That first day, Yovonne quickly glanced at her father, pleasant faced and smart, well-liked by the older children, musical and friendly. He gave her a wink as he passed by in the hall but never stopped the flow of the Dayton, Idaho school day long enough to give her a hug. Men of the depression were not prone to emotional displays of that sort, especially while at work, his place of respect. And also, he didn’t know this little girl much yet, not as much as his strapping seventeen year old son who would be heading off to war in a few years. He didn’t know her personality the way he knew Ludene and Nelda. And in many ways he knew her even less than the little baby girl, Janeen, who died a few years before Yovonne was born, because the sorrow of loosing Janeen was still part of his regular dreams. He didn’t know if he could take another loss like that one and Yovonne had always reminded him of Janeen, sweet and quiet but sickly from the start. Leroy Archibald would need to give it time with this new little girl, Yovonne. He had lost one little girl already and he had feared loosing his wife after the complications and illness following this little girl’s birth. He laughed often and joked as much as he could to cover the fear that was a regular part of being who he was: a World War I veteran, a struggling farmer, a husband to Susan, and a man determined to provide a loving home for his family.