The Beginning of Mimi

Mimi's given name was Johnie Virginia Dossey. She in born 1915 in Texas. I remember my own mother calling her mother "Johnie V," and never heard her refer to her mother as "Mom." That is funny and depressing all at once as I do not call my mother "Mom" either. We are a family that has been rather un-mothered for three generations, perhaps longer. I have no idea how to mother humans and that is exactly why I never got around to having them.

Mothering, it seems, has been lost to my family.

Mimi graduated from a woman's college, back when that was practically unheard of. She was scary smart. She was the only child of a loving couple we kids called Daddy Bill and Big Mamma. Big Mamma was actually a tiny lady . . . until her later years when she packed on the weight and succumbed to dementia.

I'll write more later about Daddy Bill. He was the one physically healthy person I can recall in my family. He lived to be 103 years old and he did that back in the 1980's, before we really knew we could all live that long.

The Dosseys have been traced back to a Scots-Irish heritage. Having a northern European descent in an important thing to do know about my grandmother and me as it relates to health woes.