Doris: A Tale of Two Sisters

by Helen Harris

Overview

A happy OMalley family of five sisters, one brother, father and mother, lived in a row house in Philadelphia. The smallest, youngest, and favorite of was Doris. However, her life changed dramatically at age eleven, and her family and others were devastated.

We were heading to the mall when I realized she was not moving an ambulance was called and at first we didnt know what happened to my little sister. Finally the diagnosis of nephritis was made, Doris was put on penicillin for one year, but this horrible disease struck again. Soon it was evident that Doris lonely, challenging journey was beginning.

Prayer, confidence, and a mothers love brought Doris to a healing. The determined girl then took matters into her own hands. First, off to school for her elementary certificate then a high school diploma. With some financial support from my husband and me, she graduated as a licensed vocational nurse. At age 47, Doris proudly received her diploma, with perfect attendance, and went out into the world beaming and independent.

Tragically, endometrial cancer crept into the single girls life spreading to full blown cancer. Read this remarkable, inspiring story of loss, faith, and the fighting spirit of Doris OMalley.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781463402709
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	09/21/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	152
File size:	166 KB

About the Author

Helen Harris has been a tireless advocate for the blind and vision impaired for the past 40 years as founder of Retinitis Pigmentosa International (RPI), The Vision Awards, and TheatreVision described movies for the blind. Helen has testified before Congress about major issues facing the blind and enlisted the aid of President George H. W. Bush, whom she met at the White House in 1990. She has received the support of major Hollywood directors, producers, and stars including Charlton Heston, Bob Hope, Jon Voight, Sherry Lansing and many others. She commissioned the first medical book written exclusively about retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and has also been responsible for contributions approximating $325 million for research and treatment for RP and other degenerative eye diseases. Herself a victim of RP, and legally blind for more than 30 years, Helen personally knows all too well the helpless and hopeless feeling of having a disease that is little known, but extremely debilitating. While learning to use the white cane, she sought to prove to the world that despite vision problems, she wasnt blind to life. She took up painting, and with only two art lessons, the young homemaker astounded family, friends and her instructor by showing tremendous innate talent. Encouraged, she plunged into painting with a passion. Art was tremendous therapy for me in dealing with RP, Helen notes. It was a real boost for my self-esteem. As long as I could do something that only a sighted person could do, I didnt feel quite as handicapped. The harder it became for me to see, the more creative I would get in finding ways around it. Helen is also an avid writer, poet, and currently working on three other books, including her memoirs.

Read an Excerpt

Doris

A Tale of Two Sisters

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By Helen Harris

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Helen Harris
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-0271-6

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Chapter One

Doris: The Beginning of Her Life

Five girls and one boy wound up living in the home of Grace and John O'Malley, at 5409 Addison Street in Philadelphia, PA. Four of the girls waited patiently for the new baby, Dorothy Grace, to arrive. Things were different then; babies were born at home, at least the daughters and son of Grace O'Malley were.

Three bedrooms and one bathroom was the second floor of the house, and the first floor was flanked by a wooden porch with railings of square poles topped by a wooden railing that went clear around the porch. Row houses were connected by these railings and neighbors sat out on rockers and swings early morning and evenings after husband and children went off to work and school, then again after dinner. It was a ritual and every house lived by it. Almost every home had cemented front steps and a tiny sidewalk about five feet to the curb. There was a huge oak tree in front of our house, and one next door. The bedrooms at the front of the house were lucky. You could almost reach out and touch the tree from the windows in the front bedrooms. These windows were all the same, too. They went up and down.

There were no sliding windows then. Just wooden framed windows that went up and down, locked by a metal latch that turned to lock the window. If you could reach it, it was easy to unlock the window. I wonder now why kids weren't killed then. It was easy to unlock the lock, lift the window up with both hands and climb out onto the roof which connected each house all the way down the street. In the summer, screens were put into the window area and then it couldn't be closed. If it rained, you had to hurry and take the screens out and close the window. Snow was more interesting; it just lay on the windows and seemed to grow up until it made designs of mountains and terrains out of the frosty white on the edges. Frozen snow that dripped off the corners made long pointed delicious icicles. Kids loved the icicles and we took turns grabbing them. Usually there were not enough for every one so we took turns.

Doris was born in the worst snow storm I can remember. It was freezing and the snow seemed like it would never stop. Dad was called out to work to shovel the trolley tracks. When this happened-he went-even if it was 3 am, as it often was. He worked for the Philadelphia Transportation Company, thus the call. My sister Dolly and I are sixteen months apart. Mary and Charley was six years older than we were. Mary was seven years older, and Sissy five years older. So we seemed to be worlds apart. Dolly and I were like twins, doing everything together.

We knew Doris might be coming. We believed Mom when she said the angels were thinking about bringing a new baby, or the stork story, something like that. At any rate, she seemed to grow very fat and Dolly and I talked about it in code. We were not allowed to ask questions but we did wonder when Aunt Nellie, mom's sister, arrived on Thursday with a huge bag of blankets, diapers and tiny small shirts and socks. We thought she brought them for our dolls. She pretended we were right and we watched the huge bag sit in the corner for four days wanting to open it and play dolls. She said no, that we had to wait for Christmas. Or perhaps they were for the new baby that the angels might drop in with. We sat and watched that bag thirstily, whispering to each other on how we could get to it and play awhile, but we were afraid we might get caught. Getting caught by Grace Coll O'Malley was not something to look forward to – she was very strict. Often we waited till Dad came home. He was a push-over and we knew he always protected us from the punishment of Mom.

Then one snowy night, Mom went to her room and didn't come out. Dolly and I were bundled up and carried by our father down the street in the snow to Mrs. Clayton's house where we stayed for a day or two. When we returned, I remember running up the stairs looking for Mom. Dolly was there. We stood in the darkened hallway, as a very tall man came up the stairs nearly behind us. We watched as the back of his suit, and the top of his dark brown, graying hair entered Mom's room. He turned and smiled, shooing us away as he closed the door.

Silence could be heard throughout the house like never before. Mary and Sissy and Charley were trying to entertain us and Dad did his famous tricks with the phonograph machine as Irish songs played throughout the house.

At one o'clock that night, the big man in the suit opened the door and let us into Mom's room. Mary, Sissy and Charley went in. Dolly and I were allowed in last. Actually, I was the youngest then, so I was last.

I remember walking up to the bed, glad that mom was there and seeing her smile. I thought she had gone away somewhere because it was all so strange.

"Come on in, Helen," she said. "Come here and see what I have here in my arms."

I walked up to her and in her arms nestled a bald baby head but with whispy, blonde hairs upon closer inspection. Her face was beautiful; white, with eyes closed. Her fists were tightly closed and I reached out to unclench them, but couldn't. They kept going back into the tightened closed position. Mom laughed and Dolly and I were befuddled at our new toy, whose fists would not open and stayed that way. We asked Mom "Who is she? Why doesn't she have any hair? Why are her hands like that, with her fists closed all the time?"

She laughed and said: "She's your new sister. Remember the angels I told you about? Well, they came last night and today, March 7, 1941, she was given to us by God, sent down in the huge storm to be ours."

"Is she real?"

By now the whole family and the doctor were laughing at the whole scene as they watched me and my sister try hard to open the tiny hands of Doris O'Malley, our new baby sister, who looked more like a small doll than anything else. Enter Doris. Now we are six children. Five girls and one son of John and Grace Coll O'Malley.

Of course, Aunt Nellie was like a mother to us. She brought in Mom, over from Ireland, and worked as a live-in chambermaid for the Scott family at Seventeenth and Spruce Street in Philadelphia. She was allowed off on Thursdays and Sundays. That's when she came to our house. How we loved seeing that tall, thin woman turn the corner in front of the penny candy store, with her black coat with fur around the collar, and that always-present black hat, matching handbag and shoes. There were no long pants on women then; jeans came along when I was about fifteen, so women wore nylons and fought the cold, icy winters with only those and ankle-high rubber galoshes to cover their beautiful leather shoes. How did they stand the cold, I wonder now? But then we took it all for granted. That's just how it was.

We stared in awe at our new, baby sister. Each of us, ages 5, 6, 11, 12, and 13, welcoming the new, small, sweet-smelling child that looked like a new doll we just got for Christmas. It seemed like hours, before the small thing moved; and then it was just a tiny fist which still stayed closed. It moved slowly, up towards her pink face and down again, hardly moving at all.

Soon she began to wince and contort her little face and then the first sound came out, whimpering at first, till it soon was an all-out cry. Mom asked us to leave the room but I remember turning back long enough to see her pull back her night gown, open the top and put her breast into the small child's mouth. I wondered what the heck she was doing that for, but soon it made the baby stop crying. After some time, a very long time, it began to make small sucking sounds.

Mom seemed to have trouble making the baby do what she wanted it to do. Finally she did and soon the small blanket got quiet, the baby dropped off the breast and back into wonderful sleep, and still the fists were closed.

Mom told me to hurry, Mrs. O'Neill and Aunt Nellie would get mad. So I left the magical scene. My dad was sitting at the bedside, staring at it all with a look of awe I had never seen on his face.

Dolly and I were put together in one bed and given paper dolls to play with. Paper dolls were just that, cut out dolls with different colors of hair. Some boys, some girls, all sizes and shapes. The clothes were also cut-outs. They had to be cut out of books, carefully. The clothes had paper tabs on them that wrapped around the doll's body.

We changed the paper clothes often. There were books full of them, each waiting for us to look at and choose a new outfit. Some were dresses, shoes, hats, gloves, and coats. There were even paper toys for the dolls to play with.

Old Julia, who Mom had taken in off the street to live with us, brought breakfast to the bedroom in the cold days. We ate with her as Mom stayed quietly next door with the new baby. Sometimes the baby did that breast thing with Mom and sometimes she went to the bathroom in her funny underwear, which had two pins on each side, holding it on.

It was hard to leave the room, when Mom did the breast thing with the baby. One day I asked her what she was doing.

"I am feeding her", she said.

"But you have no spoon or bowl", I answered.

She laughed, very hard, and answered me. "She cannot use a spoon, yet. She is too small."

"Then how does she get her food out of you?"

"That's what babies do", she answered and she took me closer and showed me how the gentle sucking began and how the tiny mouth found its mark and began to swallow the white stuff coming out of mom.

"What is that?"

"It's milk."

"How does it get there?"

"God put it there for new babies, so mothers could feed them."

At certain times, Doris cried real loudly, and for different reasons, we discovered. Sometimes she cried because she was hungry. It must have made Mom tired, I thought. Dolly and I watched sometimes through the crack in the bedroom door. One day, we saw her unfold the blanket and take all the tiny, new baby's clothes off.

"She is so small", Dolly said to me, and I agreed ... like a doll with that blonde, bald head and fists now opening, one finger at a time. Mom washed Doris off and then dried her, putting on baby powder afterwards. Her diaper with the big pins was filled with number two!

We laughed with each other as Mom cleaned baby Doris up and put on a new white cloth diaper with two, bright yellow pins on either side to hold it on. A tiny, white shirt and crochet booties went on next and then a flannel, little gown with tiny rose buds on it. A string held it at the neck and then she wrapped her again in those wonderful-smelling, small blankets. There were a lot of blankets and they were washed in the basement in the washing machine with the wringer which rung the water out.

That was long before electric automatic washers came out. As a matter of fact, I bought my mom her first washer without a wringer in 1961. My brother Charley and I went half on it and he paid $11.51 one month, and I paid $11.00 the next month. Mom didn't use it for more than a year.

As the new baby, Doris, grew, we saw new things appear, including a wooden high chair, with a table top that flipped over to the front after she was placed in it. That was her little table. She was so small that blankets had to be put around her to hold her up straight till she got old enough to hold herself up. Mostly Mom fed her in her lap. Soon she was on bottles of water and juice as well as the breast milk from our mother.

Later, table food was mashed up and little-by-little mashed potatoes, corn, and peas were in front of the growing Doris and she seemed to spit more than she swallowed but she did grow.

Soon the Sunday of her Baptism came; six weeks after her birth. I remember standing on the stairs, looking through the square poles of the stairway, crying as they all got dressed to take her to the church away from me and Dolly. I was too small to go. Mothers were not invited. Only the father. Uncle Pat who was the godfather and Aunt Nellie the godmother went. I cried and cried, thinking I should be going with Doris. I always felt that I should be wherever Doris went. I was always with her, it seemed. As she grew older, I had taught her how to play with paper dolls. Her first, rubber, baby doll which took a bottle and wet a diaper, was named Betsy Wetsy. This rubber doll had no eyelashes, and her eyes never closed. Now this all has changed: dolls' eyes can open and close, and they wear beautiful clothes. They even have real blonde hair, with shoes and socks just like real babies. There were no boy dolls though, just girl dolls. It seems strange now.

Doris liked to crawl on the floor, and we were always on the alert that she might swallow a pin or toy or worse. So, they washed the floor. Every day Mom swept the floor with a broom. There weren't vacuum cleaners. We had a huge broom that was used every day, and a huge kitchen mop for cleaning the kitchen floor every single day.

Soon, Doris began climbing onto the sofa, and up onto chairs so our jobs became more 'watch-the-baby' then ever. Sometimes, it was a pain in the neck. Dolly and I wanted to play other games, but Mom always said, "Take her with you, Helen"; "Watch Doris, Helen"; "Watch Doris!"

Watching Doris became a big part of my life. Soon, Dolly was playing with a little girl across the street, Madeline O'Hara, instead of with Doris. I was always putting Doris first. Dolly is 16 months older than me, and she wanted to play more games with her friends who were not interested in Doris hanging around. Doris needed watching all the time, so she wouldn't swallow something, or fall down the stairs.

Mary, Sissy, and Charley loved Doris too. We all treated her like a new toy, a doll of sorts: a beautiful, blonde-haired doll as it began to grow. We did not understand why she was blonde, since we were all chestnut brown. Charley had slightly lighter color to his hair too, but Doris was a strawberry blonde with big blue eyes. "Watch her at the cellar door!" Mom would yell. "Watch her at the front door! She might go out, and get into the street!" "Watch her at the back door! She might fall down the cement steps or wander off into the alley where the garbage was collected each week!"

The homes in Philadelphia were row homes, and behind each row there was an alley more narrow than sidewalk. You could walk down the alley, and get out the other end where it took a "T" shape, and then go right and come out on Addison Street or left and come out on Osage Avenue. The bakery with Otto Schmidt was on Osage. We had friends to play with on both streets. So, all doors were tempting to all of us. Grace O'Malley had her hands full, watching five girls and one boy, and she did it all herself: cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, and eventually when Mary was 12, she went out to work. Dad came home at 4 or 5, then Mom went to work at 6 and came home at 12.

Working around the clock, Grace O'Malley did not have time for anything. Only children, family, cooking, cleaning, school work, and then out to work scrubbing 32 offices every night at the Steven Girard Building at 18th and Market Streets in downtown Philadelphia. It took her an hour each way by trolley, every day and night. The walk to the trolley was about 8 blocks. We walked our mother to the trolley and late in the summer we went to meet her as she came home at midnight. The young days of Doris and her loving four sisters and one brother were special. The mornings were hectic as Mom got six year old Dolly, and Mary, Sissy and Charley to school.

That left me and Doris home; Doris, the new baby, and I, the five year old, who became the baby sitter and guardian of the lovely, bald-headed blonde baby sister. This was the picture I had of her in my mind since the day I saw the big, dark suit come down the hall, enter Mom's bedroom and close the door behind him, locking Dolly and me out. That was the birth of young Doris O'Malley, the last of the O'Malley children to be born in that small bedroom, with no drugs, no nurse, only surrounded by her sister, Aunt Nellie, and old Julia Loftus, the alcoholic 70 year old that we took in, and who in turn took care of us as life began another day in the O'Malley household.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Doris by Helen Harris Copyright © 2011 by Helen Harris. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Forward....................vii
Doris: The Beginning of Her Life....................1
Doris....................19
Doris is Cured....................22
The Love Story....................24
Doris' Life as an LVN....................31
The Ultimate Nurse....................34
What Doris Knew About My Life....................37
Jennie....................41
She's Not Heavy, She's My Sister....................45
The Planning of Richard's Wedding....................51
A Lifetime in 16 Weeks....................64
The Beginning of "Depends"....................78
Nashville....................83
The Journey to Los Angeles....................86
The Good Samaritan Hospital....................91
The Intensive Staph Infection Cover-Up....................106
Meeting the Third Opinion....................108
The Undertaker in Philadelphia....................121
Bandit and Beanie....................130
Afterward....................137
Footprints....................139
About the Author....................140