I also have a faint memory of a little sister, Amy, who was born a couple of years after I arrived. She cried and cried all the time. It seemed as if either my mother or the hired girl, Elvie, were always carrying her back and forth between the stove and the telephone in our big country kitchen or rocking her in the big armchair by the stove. (I can still see the old wicker rocking chair.) At last she was taken to a doctor who confirmed my mother’s fears—Amy was blind. I can still remember my mother putting a light in front of Amy’s eyes and moving it to see if Amy’s eyes would follow it. Amy was taken to the Mounds Hospital in St. Paul to have cataracts removed from her eyes. The doctors were not as efficient then as now and Amy received too much ether so little Amy went to heaven when she was only three months old. They say that I cared for a little doll just like my mother cared for Amy. When mother paced the floor with her I was right behind her with my little doll.

By Irene Peterson Sandberg