Homecoming

My new little sister's name is Cheryl Ann. Where does that name come from? I find out that it's my Dad's idea. There was a TV show called "Waterfront" that came on between 1954 and 1956 starring Preston Foster as a tugboat captain in Los Angeles. I guess it made an impression on Dad; I don't seem to remember the show much at all. Anyway, he names my sister after a tugboat on a TV show - Cheryl Ann. Mom wanted to call her Cheryl August as a compromise, but Dad wins this one.
When I get home from the farm I find my sister in her crib in my bedroom. I'm assured by Mom that it's only temporary, and Cheryl will sleep in their room at night. She's a baby, so I won't have much to do with her right now.
My aunts and uncles and neighbors file in and out, oohing and aahing their approval. Carl and I find ourselves making baby-talk noises to her, and she laughs back at us.
I guess she'll be crawling around the house before we know it, and then she'll be zooming around in one of those wheeled things with a canvas seat, crashing into the walls and the furniture.
My sister is small and we call her "Pebbles" like in the Flintstones.
There's five of us in this small house now, six if you're counting Whee-Zee, and we are.
Whee-Zee knows there's someone helpless in the family.
She may be old and tired and not as fast anymore, but she knows her duty.
She takes up her post on the floor underneath my sister's crib, ready to protect another young life.
Another one of the family.