Describe a family member.

A family member who died two weeks after I was born made a tremendous impact on my life, known by all as Dolly because she was so small, she was my maternal grandmother: Magdalena Frances Anderson. She was half Scandinavian and the other half was the whole of Europe mixed together. They lived in South Africa up the West Coast near, Saldanah Bay. Family legend would have it that her grandfather was a Scandinavian stowaway, on a whaling ship, who jumped ship when the sailing vessel docked in Saldanah Bay but I have no proof of this.

Coming from a family of six siblings (from oldest to youngest they were Simon, Annie, Magdalena, Carolina, Gladys and Albert). Their father died first, only years after Albert was born and then their mother died about 10 years later when Magdalena was 14 years old. After being orphaned the three oldest (including Magdalena) had to go out to work to support the rest of the siblings. They put the three younger siblings through school to get a good education.

Dolly was a quiet young woman who went about her work as a stenographer (a person who transcribed speeches into shorthand). That was her contribution to supporting her siblings. There she met her husband, a part Nederlands and English conglomerate, who was a book keeper. He died young from congenital heart disease so Dolly ran a boarding house to support her two daughters. When I was a teenager and I discovered there was another lady called Dolly, she was the singer/songwriter Dolly Parton, I was shocked that there could be another person with the same name.

Dolly was a quiet lady who went about her days at home communing in prayer and biblical studies, and believing that God heals all if we just believe. One of her favorite scriptures was “Through God all things are made possible,” even after her first child was a still born. I can imagine her pain. She did not cook like “Martha”, but was a contemplative “Mary”.

Dolly was a quiet woman, her sighs, they did betray her disapproval. Well that’s what my mother said yet I know that I sigh in sheer delight so we don’t really know, do we? She had brown eyes and ears that understood words literally, so she never caught the jokes, well that’s what mother said.

Dolly was a quiet, wise woman who played the piano with liquid ease of twirling notes; she painted; sewed and knitted; and onto me she passed these gifts, through her quiet life and lineage. I could wager a bet that she would cringe at the thought of me passing on the minutia’s of her life via internet; she was not one for the limelight.

I know what she said about me when I was born, I still have the letter she wrote to her younger sisters. Do you want me to tell you?

Look out for one of my next Letters to Unborn Siblings: I will tell you what she said in the letter there.

Take care

Morag