Remembering Dorothy

 

      My maternal grandmother was born Dorothy Iva Krueger on March 2, 1912 in rural Kansas near Emporia.  She married Harold Lenn Parks and had one daughter; my mother.  Grams died in hospital in 1984 at the age of 72 from a burst aortic aneurism.  I was 30.  I was not there.

 

      Grams was very special to me from a very young age.  Don't make any mistake, my mother was great.  I was not one of those children who was turned over to their grandmother to be raised because of some shortcoming of his mother.  Grams spoiled me and I ate it up.  I always believed that she loved to be with me.  I loved to be with her.  She loved to teach me and I loved to learn from her.  She loved to play with me and I loved playing with her.  She loved to feed me and I loved her food. She loved to listen to me and I loved to talk to her.  And if that was not enough, she made me believe that I had magic hands that could take away her headaches and I loved taking away her headaches.

 

      One of the oldest stories I remember her telling me was from when I was a year and three quarters.  I do not actually remember the incident, but the story was told me so many times I feel like I can.  My mom and dad lived several blocks away from my grandparents in Emporia.  One sunny hot summer day while my father and grandfather were at work and my mother was hanging out laundry, I decided to take a little field trip.  Barefoot, dressed only in my briefs, I walked alone to Gram's house.

 

      When I arrived at Gram's back porch, I climbed the stairs and knocked on the door.  She opened the inside door and gazed through the screen door at the child outside.  There I stood with a sheepish look on my face, looking down at the big toe of my right foot.  I was lifting the toe upward and on the tip of it was a chunk of wet black mud created in the previous night's rain.  Grams found that very funny.  She was amazed that my mother was not with me and that I had found my way to her home.

 

      Meanwhile, my mother was frantic.  My sister was only months old and sleeping soundly in her crib but where was her son?  She yelled out the front door.  She raced to the curb checking the street for a dead child.  She yelled again first one way and then another.  Back into the house to bundle up my sister to take her along on the search.  The phone rang.  It was Grams.  All was well.  The toe was clean.

 

      Soft-spoken, understanding, patient, compassionate, loving... Dorothy.

     

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