Dot`sThoughts

I haven`t been in the mood for writing the past week or more. My mind was elsewhere. Oct. 3rd was my husbands birthday and my mind was in a whirl. I had planned on heading for the cemetary before the rain started, but my bro showed up. He is the bro who is having his leg removed soon. He was heading for a store and needed help once he got there. So, he asked me to ride up with him and of course I did. The next day I again rode with him to the grocery store. He rides around in the motorized cart and I simply get what he can`t reach so easily. Plus I put everything in his car for him.
I never made it to the cemetary until Monday when I also brought home the planters I had taken down both the one I made for him and the one for my parents who are burried in the same cemetary.
Being his birthday got me thinking of how we first met.My husband was a good husband and a good father. We had been married a little over 50 yrs. We first met when I started working at the Hospital. He was one of the orderlys there. He kept hitting on me from that very first night. I worked the Nurses 3-11 pm shift. He worked different shifts each week.

My first night working there, the head Nurse on the floor asked one of the maids if she would show me around the caffeteria at dinner time. I came on at 3pm and she went off at 4pm. She was going off work when it was my supper hour, so she said she would stay and eat with me. As we were standing up in front where we picked up our trays and were waiting in line to get some food, I was looking around that large room. I spied this blond handsome young fellow sitting with others at a table in the back of the room, down by the double doors. Something about his looks got to me and I asked the maid who he was. She told me his name and that he was one of the orderlys who worked there. Then after getting our food we headed towards the table section . She suddenly asked me if I would like to meet him and I said yes. Funny when I look back on it because I was always very bashful at that age and it wasn`t normal for me to have asked a stranger who another stranger was, or to agree to meet a stranger this way.
On the way towards the back of the room the maid told me that he was spoken for and the girl on the other end of the table was his girlfriend. That stopped any thoughts I may have had about him. I was never the type to come between any man and his girlfriend. I enjoyed meeting everyone at their table and by the time our dinner time was over I didn`t feel so much like a stranger at the hosp.. Later that evening while I was in our floors kitchen making an eggnog for a patient, this blond orderly came into the kitchen and helped himself to a cup of coffee. He kept bothering me while I was making the eggnog. As soon as I was finished I hurriedly left the kitchen to take the eggnog to the patient. Knowing he had a girlfriend made me try to ignore him and hurry out. I learned he was quite a flirt and that everyone seemed to like him. It might help if I explained that the floor I worked on was called the Gold Coast and it was all single rooms filled with people who had money, or acted like they did. So, they got more kitchen privileges on that floor. I found out much later on , that patients on all the floors couldn`t just ask for something special and have it made for them this way. On the other floors they were given a choice of drinks when the evening drinks were passed out. On the Gold Coast they got drinks whenever they asked for them. I made an awful lot of eggnogs.

This went on every day with him showing up on our floor and flirting with me and me trying to tell him to get lost. He would just smile, leave and show back up later in the evening when it was quiet and he wasn`t busy. Then one day as I was heading for the laundry to pick up my Uniforms I saw this older lady with this little girl ( turned out to be her grandmother). One of the laundry women asked her who the little girl was. Her reply surprised me. She said she belonged to the blond orderly. Thats when I was sure I wanted nothing to do with him. Later that evening when he showed up on my floor and again started asking me to go out with him, my answer was " I don`t date married men". He asked me where I got the idea he was married and I told him what I over heard in the laundry. He admitted that he was the Father, but said he got divorced when he came home from service and find her in their bed with another guy. I wasn`t sure if I believed him or not so he pulled out a receipt where he paid the lawyer for the Divorce. I told him that receipt could have been for anything, even for being in trouble for all I knew. Besides as far as I was concerned his girlfriend could keep him and his problems. This went on for months--with his asking and me refusing.

Then one day the girlfriend came up to me asking me why I wouldn`t date Walt and telling me he was a good fellow. I told her- maybe he is, but I don`t date other girls boyfriends. That was when she told me they were not going steady. They were just friends and just went out together when neither of them had anything better to do. Then I told her what I heard and she told me he hadn`t been married in over a year or close to two years. She also told me that when she decided to get married it would never be to someone with kids, she would have her own kids, she didn`t ever want a ready made family. So then I decided to find out if he was married or divorced. I had remembered the Lawyers name on the receipt and called him on the phone. At first the lawyer told me he couldn`t tell me info on a former client. When I told him that his client was constantly asking me out and had showed me a receipt from his office, and thats why I called him to know if he was really Divorced or not. He told me- since he showed you my receipt I can tell you- yes he is divorced.

I still kept refusing Walt`s advances till this one night when I was working with a 104 fever. The head Nurse wanted to call my parents to come and pick me up. I told her it was grocery night so my parents wouldn`t be home for hours. Then she gave me a choice-- if you let me give you a shot of Demerol and promise to go lay down in the empty room for one hour, then she wouldn`t turn me in. So, since I was only earning $18 a week and didn`t want to lose a days pay, I agreed. I spent that whole hour watching my watch. As soon as the hour was up, I went out to the nurses station. Mershon was so surprised to see me awake. Thats when she asked me if I knew what she had given me. I told her yes, a shot of Demerol. She said, no, I gave you a double dose and you should have been out like a light from it. She might as well have given me a drink of water for all the good it did. She told me she had been worrying how she was going to get me home when our shift was over. Well at least that problem was solved since I never fell asleep from taking it. I still remember asking her how to account for the two missing Demerol when I was counting up the drugs at the end of our shift. She wrote down that she dropped and broke them.
As I was walking from the hosp towards the Bus line on my way home, there was Walt again, driving slowly beside where I was walking on the sidewalk. He was begging me to get in and let him take me home. I just kept walking until another hosp worker , standing on the other side of the road , hollered to me saying " Dot, either get in the car and let him take you home, or let the poor boy go home as he has to be back on the job at 7AM in the morning. I felt foolish walking with him still asking, so I finally did get in his car and he gave me a ride home. That was our first time together and it was a half hours ride. We continued to date until over a year later we finally got married. And to think it all started when I first saw that handsome blond sitting at a table in the caffeteria and in my heart I felt he was the one for me. I guess I never did stop wishing even though I knew then he wasn`t to be mine as he was already taken. God must have been listening to my Heart, because we were made for each other. Walt was 5 years older than I was and I am now just one yr younger than he was when he passed away, 4 yrs ago.
I will always be glad I finally gave in and let him drive me home that night instead of riding the Bus .