Family ties.

And here I am in Kansas.   Right now I am in the room with my sister,  Dorothy at the Hospice House.  We are awaiting the inevitable harbinger.  Then there will be 2 of us.  This is not something I am looking forward to, but it is what it is, nonetheless.
There are a few places I want to visit while I am here, if time permits.  I want to go back to Strong Street.  Donna tells me the only house left standing there is Hank Wingates.  That is hard to imagine as his was the one I would have placed bets on being the first to fall.
 I want to drive to the cemetary which was located about half a mile from our house.  I remember when I was very young having a kite and the wind pulled the string from my hand and the kite ended up caught in a tree.  How sad I was to see it bucking on the end of the string trying to escape.  I slept very little that night and when morning came, I raced to the cemetery to find it crushed and broken in the field with the string held tightly by the relentless tree.
I want to go out the highway to Bull Creek.  That us past Athey's Sandpit.  It used to be a bridge over it, but now I think it is just a trickle.  I want to walk through the field and see if the old swimming hole is still there where Jake and his pals used to swim while I fished for turtles up on the road.  I think they might have swum nekkid!
I want to go see if the Stroh place is still standing.  That is where my memories of life began.  That was where Donna had the turtle stuck on her finger.  That is where we played in the mud holes and Josephine almost beat us to death.  That is where mother pumped cold water over our heads as she washed our hair under the pump in the kitchen.  I swear that woman had 6 arms since she would tuck me under her arm, hold me with her other hand,  wash and rinse my hair with a hand while pumping furiously with yet another hand.
It was also where Dorothy was born.  I must have been about 6.  As I recall, I did not much like her and I was pretty sure we did not need a baby and yet there she was.  I am kind of anxious to see if I really remember accurately or not.
Since I began writing thiis  earlier today my little sister has passed.   So now there are 2 of us left out of 6.  Tomorrow Donna and I will take a trip to Nickerson.   A walk down memory.  I will let you know how that goes, but for now I am just very tired.

DOROTHY ANDERSON
August 20, 1947
December 19, 2015