Mom's Poem

(1939 finished training and wrote poem)

I wanted the training. I got it.

I scrubbed and I worked like a slave.

Was it typhoid or TB? I fought it.

I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the training. I got it.

Came out with an RN this fall.

But somehow life's not what I thought it.

And somehow an RN's not all.

You come to get your training, good reason.

You feel like an exile at first.

You are battered around for a season.

And then it gets worse and still worse.

You're put on the wards your first inning.

You're given sick patients to mend.

It's been this way since the beginning.

And this it will be to the end.

In spite of the burdens so hard to bear.

In spite of the tired feet.

There's something still in this busy life.

Something that's warm and sweet.

If I had my career to choose over again.

I would still chose the life of a nurse

and would welcome a cap with a black band

for better or yet for worse.

Poem by Edna Miller