Stuff from my memory...

I don't want anyone to think I am just "phoning in" my blog posts, so I will dig deep in my past and relate a couple items. I do have to hand it to the bloggers that can maintain a daily entry to their blog and keep it interesting.

Dovey: When I was very little, probably from an infant, I had a babysittter named we called "Dovey". She was an older woman that lived in the house behind us. I can only remember her wearing a light blue flowered robe-type dress. she must have been around 60ish and was very nice if not a bit overprotective.

I have 2 memories of her that are plain as the day (though I was probably 5 at the time) they happened and I would like to relate them. I used to have chronic nosebleeds as a child, and they never really bothered me because they were so frequent. As a matter of fact, they got me out of class many times in elementary school. I would be so busy playing in the yard that a nosebleed would would not dampen my fun. During one excessively productive event while Dovey was babysitting, I came in from playing with my shirt just drenched in blood. I didn't think anything of it, but Dovey became hysterical and started really freaking out. She could understand how I could be so calm when I must have a life-threatening injury. It was not until my older brother explained to her that this was a regular event did Dovey calm down. I did not realize until later in life that heavy nosebleeds can actually be harmful due to blood loss, but at the time it was more of a status symbol. I could even have a nosebleed in my sleep and that was weird to wake up to.

My saddest memory of Dovey was that she had this magic trick she would do for me everytime she babysat. She did it for as long as I can remember and I was jusy at a loss to how she did it. She would show me her hands and at the end of one finger on each hand she would have a small piece of white paper stuck to the tips. She would lean forward then way back and put her hands in the air, then over her head and behind her back, and when she brought her hands back over her head to the front, the paper pieces would be gone! She must have done this trick for me a thousand times over the years of babysitting, and for the life of me, I could not figure out how she did it. To me Dovey WAS magic.

What makes this sad, one day when I was 8 or 9, I finally figured it out. When she first showed me her fingers with the papers on them, the papers were stuck to her middle fingers. When she put her hands behind her head, she folded her middle fingers into her palms and when she brought her hands back, she exposed and pointed out her ring fingers with no papers. It sounds so simple just describing it like this, but to me it was thrilling.

She was so disappointed when I figured it out. I was like we lost a bond we had just between us. Within a week, she had a heart attack and died. God Bless my Dovie.



PS: a short note on the nosebleed thing, I had my tonsils out when I was 13, and had a nosebleed on the operating table. They did an emergency nasal cauterization. I later found out that nosebleeds during a tonsilectomy are a leading cause of death.


PSS: I have not been able to breathe through my nose since.