Listening to Three Year Old Wisdom
Hank Atkins walked across North Africa, then across Sicily, and then from one end of Italy to the other in WW2. They put him on a boat back to the U.S. so he could join the fight in the Pacific, but Japan surrendered before he could leave Fort Benning. He went home to his family and his girl, Margie, and they got married in December, 1946. Hank and Margie had six children; the fourth was Dorothy, their only girl, born in 1956. She was a shy girl from the beginning they said, and always careful. Maybe it was because of all the trouble her brothers got into over the years. Maybe she got it from her father; you don't survive four years in front line infantry by luck alone.
- Algeria, 1943
Dorothy grew up in Central City, Kentucky, but the family moved to Chicago in 1970. She struggled in school when they got there; it seemed all the children there were so far ahead of her. The school held her back in the 9th grade, and that help a little. She seemed to get acclimated to her new surroundings and finally adapted to the social structure in school. She started dating in her senior year, his name was Donald. By the time graduation came, Donald asked Dorothy to go steady. Always the careful one, she told him, “maybe”. But Donald was a persistent young man, and he continued to call on her through the summer, and finally got her to say yes. They went steady through their college years at Loyola University in Chicago.
- Dorothy and Donald, 1980
Dorothy studied nursing and Donald studied accounting. In their senior year, Donald proposed marriage, but Dorothy said they should wait a while and see. Donald knew her well; this was just another one of her decoys, so he bided his time. As graduation day approached, he asked her again and was rewarded with a “maybe.”
Donald got a job in Chicago with Sears and Roebuck, while Dorothy went to work as a nurse at the Cook County hospital. Two years later, they had saved enough money for the down payment on a house, and Dorothy finally said yes. They were married in June of 1982 and moved to Elk Grove Village. Of course, Donald immediately started talking about children, and by now you know what Dorothy had to say. It took another two years before she finally said yes, and another year after that before she became pregnant. But in July of 1986, Dorothy gave birth to the first of their three children. They had a baby girl and named her Margaret. She and her two brothers grew up in that house in Elk Grove.
Margaret married a man from Colorado in 2012 and then Donald died in 2014. Dorothy said she wanted to stay in the house, but Margaret knew this was just one more of her mother’s decoys, so she kept asking. Dorothy finally sold the place and made the big move; drove her car, following Margaret’s husband in the Ryder truck, to Loveland in August of 2015. She took the spare bedroom with them, and set to work being nanny to Margaret’s baby girl, Gwendolyn.
Now Gwendolyn is a precocious little girl, much like her mother. She celebrated her third birthday in October of 2015 with a song about herself, her family, and grandma Dorothy.
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Gwendolyn and grandma have become fast friends, as these relations often do. They have tea parties, play marching band in the backyard (Gwendolyn loves percussion), and Gwen has even taught grandma how to sing "call and response" songs.
Gwen and “Gamma Doedy” especially love to read books together. They often read in the afternoon, during quiet time, and Gwen is fond of Richard Scary books then. At night, grandma usually reads her a Dr. Seuss book like Best Nest or In a People House. Last night, grandma and Gwen read Horton the Elephant and when they finished, Gwen asked grandma if they could read one story from Richard Scary's Best Storybook Ever.
Grandma said, "Maybe another time, Gweny."
And Gwendolyn answered, "But this is our time Gamma. I don't want you to miss a minute."
You never know how much you can learn from a three year old. Which brings me to the moral of this story:
Mamas, don't let your maybes grow up to be decoys.
