Friday - 02/26/2021 — An awful lot of my memories aren’t really mine at all. They’re my sister’s. As I’ve shared with you before, I recently read transcripts of my grandparents’ diaries from the early to mid 1900s. And one thing I noticed is that a story my sister has told me often, never showed up in our grandpa’s diary. You’d think it would have.
I must have been too young at the time to remember how our grandfather yelled, “Get in the house NOW, and stay there!” But my older sister definitely remembered it. It seems Granddaddy had come across a rabid dog slinking across the yard on a collision course with us kids. My sister grabbed me and herded me to the house.
Thank goodness he was there. Thank goodness he saw it before it reached us. Thank goodness Diana took care of me.
He handled the problem the way farming folks dealt with such things, dragged off the body and – I suppose – buried it before he’d let us come outside again.
For my sister it was a defining moment. For me, even though I didn’t recall the event itself, it was a shared connection with my sister. For our grandpa, it was just something he did but didn’t think to mention it when he wrote in his diary that night.
I know I’ve asked my sister several times, “What else do you remember that I don’t?”
It’s a question that doesn’t have any logical answer, of course, but it’s one I’ll keep asking.
