family life

They were the picture of postwar contentment: Dodie, Ed, and Sally in front of their first home, a cozy bungalow on North Selby Boulevard in Worthington, Ohio.
One of the hastily built developments for returning WWII veterans, this new subdivision boasted a park, a school, nearby shopping, garages for those first cars, sidewalks, community activities, and lots more.
Here they settled, set up housekeeping, and began to enlarge their family..
It took awhile, that last project. Poor Dodie carried a child, a sister for Sally, full-term, but in the last weeks knew the baby had died.
It would take years to get over that sad, sad stillbirth.
Another pregnancy ended in miscarriage.
But then, Hallelujah!, Ed and Dorothy welcomed Edmund Johnson Gravett, Jr., "Ted" into the family.
At first Teddy was fragile, couldn't keep his meals down, fussed all the time. But Dodie was not about to listen to the pessimism of others, even her mother, and she dug in, giving up breastfeeding to try one formula after another until her son started to gain weight.
Teddy was a gorgeous child with amber curls, a cupid's bow mouth, and big blue eyes.
Sally, six at his birth, was fascinated and tried to help Mommy take care of Teddy.
Life was mostly sweet.
There was the new wringer-washer for all those diapers and other clothes and a long clothesline in the deep backyard where the clean wet laundry could blow dry.
Out behind the clothesline was the vegetable garden where plump juicy tomatoes bloomed in the summers
There were hollyhocks with hummingbirds inside the picket-fenced front yard.
There were neighbors -- Dottie Zimmerman across the street with her kids. Linnea and Sally were best pals.
There were "events:" fireworks just off Indianola on holidays. The families could bring lawn chairs down to the street and watch.
There were neighborly parties and blackberry picking in the nearby ravine. School was within walking distance; the park with its big memorial cannon was even closer. The first television moved into the living room shortly after Ted arrived.
Like all good post-war wives, Dorothy worked hard to keep house, feed her family, sew dresses for herself and Sally, and care for little Teddy.
Ed washed his car, mowed the lawn, and built a scooter for Sally from an orange crate and roller skates.
Every few years the family made the lo-o-ong drive to Florida to visit Ed's family in Fort Lauderdale.
But some problems were already showing their scary faces. Ed liked his liquor more than he could tolerate it. Sometimes he would take out frustration on his wife. And Dodie worried about "what the neighbors would think" when family members didn't behave as she expected.
The Gravetts of North Selby expected to raise their family in their little home, but in the 1950s, Ed's career took an upward tick and the family knew it had to move north.