I miss her. I miss Miss Molly. On her 9th birthday, I wrote a blog on Good Golly Miss Molly (her whole name) and that was well over six years ago. Now I had to let her go and it was so hard. But she was ready.
Molly was about four months old when she adopted me. It was love at first sight for both of us.
My oldest grandson was there at the beginning and he went with me for the end. He’s 23 now and Molly was 15, almost 16.
So many memories of that sweet puppy as she grew older. The first time she saw a swimming pool, the Lab side of my Labradoodle came through with a flying leap.
I remember looking out the window one summer day to see her jumping up to bite at the flowers hanging down from the neighbor’s crepe myrtle. It was a glorious scene as the flowers fell around her. I remember her running through snow and playing with the other animals in our house. And, I remember her barking (I couldn’t get her to stop, no matter what I tried) and counter surfing and trash dumping and doing the ornery dog things she did. I remember how they tried to frill her up at the groomer, which always left her looking at me like “why?”
She was just the ultimate shaggy love of a dog, who lived for nothing more than to love me.
Over her lifetime, I worked at jobs that kept me away from the house during the day and sometimes into the night. I wasn’t here playing with her, but she had company with my other pets. Sadly, we lost the cats to a coyote last year, so we were down to two dogs – Molly and her little sidekick, Annabel. I’ve told their stories in the other blog. Now I’m retired and home more, but not all of the time.
And then came Covid-19. We have been pretty much locked down for months and it was her dream come true. I was here with her all the time and we made the most of it. I talked to her and petted her and was here for her. I knew I wouldn’t have her much longer and this was a gift for us both. This past few months, she was still sleeping on the furniture…
…and playing outside…
…and looking at me with that look.
She was getting grayer and slower and I knew she wouldn’t last forever, but I look back now and see how fast she started really really aging. She was slower, her sight and hearing were going, and she began to lose her footing sometimes. She couldn’t jump up on the furniture and I saw her looking at the couch and realizing she couldn’t get up there anymore. I was seeing it, but not seeing it. Or not wanting to see it. She slept so hard that sometimes I touched her to see if she was still with me. And she rallied. Over and over. Last week, she was going to the kitchen for dinner and she moved fast enough for her ears to flop. I thought she might make it to her 16th birthday.
The end was really pretty quick when I look back. Her back legs started going and I realized how many times I was going outside with her just to remind her why she was there. She walked endlessly around the yard and would stand in one place, like she was trying to remember why she was there (I can relate, unfortunately).
I had to take her to the emergency vet over the weekend when she collapsed and didn’t move. I thought she was dying right there with me on the floor beside her. One of my grandsons helped me get her there, but she stood up before they took her inside (Covid rules) and was so alert that I just took her back home, where she gave a little trot as she went back in the house. She wasn’t going to die in some strange place. Not that day. She made it through Sunday and then I made the call to the vet on Monday. It was one of the longest days ever, waiting for the inevitable. I kept the house quiet and let her lie on her bed in front of the fireplace. She didn’t eat a thing all day – a first for her in her entire lifetime. She went outside and walked her endless walk and slept and I talked to her. Before we left, I put her on her leash and we walked up and down in front of the house. She actually gave a bit of a leap to get out to walk, but it was really the slowest walk we ever took. I thought of all the times she pulled me down the street, even as recently as this year, and the contrast was dramatic.
The end was peaceful. I never saw a living being so ready to just rest forever. She was tired and she went to sleep. My grandson and I had tears as we left the vet’s office. It was hard. No matter how right you know it is, how long she lived, how great her life had been, it was hard for us.
Isn’t that the way it always is? I know from all the losses in my life that we are never ever ready to lose those we love.
Good Golly Miss Molly. You were just the best.
and my youngest daughter catching goldfish in the wading pool. 
Here is my husband playing with our son in the wading pool:
and my middle daughter feeding her brother the wonderful pool water (yikes!)
and my oldest daughter diving from the board. 
Life went on and the kids grew up and I probably didn’t spend as many days poolside until the next generation appeared and we were once again gathering there in the summers. Here are my daughters and the oldest five grandsons at the wading pool:
and then there were a couple of more grandkids at the pool.
And before I knew it, they were growing up.
And then there were improvements at the club and by 2012, the old pool was gone and the new pool was in. This time, it is a spa design with a diving area, a slide, and a beach type area for wading, complete with fountains. My grandkids were bigger
and still doing races in the new pool.
By this time, we had lost my son, who was the kid that hung around the pool and knew everyone behind the scenes and everyone knew him by name. We are lucky to have his daughter, who has now grown up at the pool, following her cousins, aunts and father. And me, of course.
My three daughters are now the mothers of grown children, but still like to hang out at the pool together.
My grandchildren are growing up, with seven of them in college or beyond. In 2020, it’s just my last granddaughter, turning 11 soon, and me by the pool on this sunny day. Some things are the same. The lifeguards are watching the kids, who are calling to their mothers to see what they can do. Kiddos are asking for snacks, running when they should be walking, doing belly flops off the board, diving for objects, making up fun pool games and making new pool friends. The parents are more diverse and have their electronics with them to read books or check their messages. Now they have their drinks delivered to poolside, where they visit and relax. They look younger all the time to me, as they should.
Sorry for the mirror image, but you get the drift and you would correctly assume from this that I was marching for women’s rights, the climate, and civil rights – all causes I’ve been working for most of my life. I wasn’t a marcher most of my years, but I’ve worked to better my community for all who live here in these areas and others.
I immediately made assumptions about her, based on my own prejudices. I saw someone who was proudly proclaiming that she was a Republican and would only vote Republican and there is no point trying to talk to her about anything. She is right (and probably never wrong) and proud of it. I watched her play with her child and thought how much that t-shirt had changed how I was reacting to her. All my own prejudices were on my nerve endings, an emotional and visceral reaction, which is pretty amazing since I spent most of my voting life as a Republican.
The family moved to Oklahoma City at some point, where my grandfather started his automotive parts business, J. C. Hamilton Co. Here is a photo of the family during that time. My father is on the front fender behind his brother, Ed. Bill stands on the running board between his sister and parents. It’s the only photo I can find of the whole family together, but you get the idea. 
Years passed, the children grew up and the boys went into the family business. Sarah married my other Uncle Ed and started their family. When the United States joined World War II, all the men went into service. Here is my Uncle Bill with my grandfather. 
My grandfather was about 5’8″, so Uncle Bill was the smallest of the brothers in the family, besides being the baby. I still don’t know where my father got his height of 6’2″.
And then this article from the local paper.
All I had ever heard was that he was shot down while parachuting into Germany and was buried there, far from home. Then I found this touching letter, written to my father. I’m not sure how this got into this group of papers, but it showed a big brother trying to find more information about his little brother, probably trying to get answers for my grandparents.
The letter shows they didn’t know right away if he was killed or captured, as this letter was written well over a month after he must have been killed, according to the newspaper clip above.
The words served all my teams well through the following years, both at the museum and at Oklahoma State University, where I did the same kind of work with college students.
It looks like my family has made it. You can just look at the way we dress and see that we are successful…not to mention on trend, with it, cool.
My grandmother kept my mother’s dresses to make quilts. I have a few well worn quilts and some unfinished quilt tops from then that show the thinness of the fabrics. There was no waste in those days. They couldn’t afford it.
My mother always looked stylish after she started working. Here she is when she was young.
I only have photos of three of my great-grandmothers. This is my father’s paternal grandmother, shown with him. These were their everyday clothes. They weren’t poor, but they had lots of children to keep dressed.
This is my mother’s paternal grandmother, shown with my mother and her brothers. My mother may be wearing one of the dresses that ended up in a quilt. My mother told me her grandmother dressed the same way until she died, wearing layers of clothes as they did in the late 1800s. The earliest information I can find out about her is that she worked as a house servant in Texas when she was 14. Later she married and traveled to Ardmore, OK by covered wagon, where they set up the West Wagon Yard and did pretty well, although she always lived very simply.
This is my mother’s paternal grandmother. They were poor, living on a farm in southern Oklahoma. Both she and my grandfather ended up, literally, at the poor farm. I’m not sure if they were suffering from dementia or just couldn’t afford to live on the farm anymore, but I learned that they both died at the home in Vinita, OK. She was buried there and the family managed to bring him home later. 
So, I stand in the middle of the generations, looking back at my great-grandmothers who lived difficult lives, but managed to patch their children’s clothes and keep the families together, to my grandmothers, who both were poor as children, but worked hard and raised their families, to me, who was born to a comfortable lifestyle, which my husband and I worked hard to provide for our children.
Our family has made it, if you look at the generations. I have grown children and grandchildren who can afford to buy expensive, torn clothing to show how well we are doing. I think I understand why I haven’t embraced this trend. I’m stuck in the middle of those who had nothing and those who have much. I look back and I look forward and I appreciate the progress. These are my people and I love them all.
He said this was his first time to come here and I told him I come whenever I can. I asked him where he was from and he said, “Checotah,” which is about an hour and a half away. Then he told me that he didn’t have much of a Bucket List because he didn’t have much money, but he had a Thimble List. I told him this was definitely a great place to have on it. He told me he had never seen the ocean, but was planning to go next year. He told me that even if you were Rembrandt, whom he admired, you could never outdo the Lord’s work. I told him it was definitely a place to restore your soul.
I watched the shadows from the clouds spread across the valley and took in all the beauty around me. 
We all need a Thimble List, which I define as a list of places to visit and things to do that are not unobtainable, not far from home. I can’t criticize him for just now getting to this beautiful place because I didn’t see it for the first time until I was in my late 50s or 60s. It’s only 2 1/2 hours from my home, but I might have missed it.
Way back in the 1950s, when I was younger than my granddaughter now, we used to drive to visit my grandmother in Ardmore, Oklahoma. At that time, until the turnpikes and highways were built, the drive from Tulsa took at least four hours and involved going through multiple small towns and then winding along the narrow roads through the Arbuckles until you hit a flat road into Ardmore.
This doesn’t look too bad, but it was narrow with big trucks going by quickly. It used to scare me, sitting in the back seat looking at the drop off. I can now drive myself through the mountains in California and Colorado without freaking out, but it took me a long time to get over this minor childhood trauma (I had a great childhood).
Maybe my granddaughter will remember doing this – maybe not. That’s ok since we have plenty of other memories we’ve shared. For me, this was a trip back in time, into my heart and soul, for the sweetest of times, the times of love and family.
Confetti Thoughts 