We lived in Quantico, Virginia from January 1967 through July 1969.  Omi didn’t live with us when we first moved to Quantico.  It’s difficult to discern where she was and when.  Between the summer of 1965, and the spring of 1971, Omi’s two daughters and their families moved five times.  Omi was living or visiting with one or the other daughter maintaining no specific agenda.  I went to kindergarten, starting mid-school year, when we first moved to Quantico.   My alma mater – Ashurst Elementary School.  In the spring of 1968, while I was in kindergarten and in the middle of producing some very fine finger paintings, we left to visit Omi for three weeks in Hohenfels, Germany.   Omi had just had an operation and I still have a scar to prove it.  I slid off of the hospital bed which somehow managed to remove a piece of my upper thigh.

During the time in Hohenfels, I convinced Omi that I needed a new baby doll.  This required very little effort.   A young girl in the neighborhood had the most beautiful doll and I wanted one just like it.  Omi and I went to the exchange, I saw the doll, well not exactly the doll, they didn’t have any white dolls left.  She was brown.  I got the brown doll and loved her dearly.

Shortly after that visit to Germany, Omi stayed with us in Quantico.  We were living in a three bedroom house on base.  Omi had the bedroom in the middle of the house with the sewing machine positioned under the only window in her room.  We spent countless hours there together – Just the two of us.  Omi sewing and me trying to sew.  Omi also taught me to knit and crochet.  My Barbies had countless handmade blankets and some very ill-fitted clothing.

Every night before I went to bed, I would sit with Omi in her room.  I remember hearing stories I long now to remember.  I was taught the game of rummy – always winning.  Knowing Omi, this was most likely an intentional loss on her part.  And just before bedtime, we recited these words together:

Lieber Gott

Mach mich fromm

Das Ich in den Himmel komm.  

and

Ich bin klein

Mein Herz ist rein

Soll niemand drin wohnen als Jesus allein.

Omi wasn’t there on the day of 27 February of 1969, one day after Cleve was born.  I know this because Dad did the breakfast cooking.  Peppered fried eggs for Shelli and I – aged six and going on eight.   Too young to appreciate Dad’s culinary efforts with the eggs so black with pepper they were inedible for our young palates.  Omi never would have fed us peppered eggs.

I know Omi returned to Quantico with Tante Uschi and her three boys while their family transitioned either to or from Texarkana.   Bath time, with the house so full of children, was a memory.  Having been raised with only my sister, I was curious about the three young boys together in the tub while Shelli and I waited our turn.

Debbie