That Went Well: Adventures in Caring for My Sister by Terrell Harris Dougan Read Free Book Online

daughters, the little one in glasses wailingbecause she thinks the gondola is going to tip over? Apparently my father could.
    Bammy didn’t much like Europe. When we landed at Orly Airport in Paris, she asked why we had to stand in line with our luggage. “They need to see our passports and make sure we’re safe tourists,” Dad told her.
    “Well, just tell them we’re Americans and they’ll let us right on through,” Bammy assured him. Only seven years earlier, Americans had liberated their country from the Germans, and she expected royal treatment.
    Then there was the language. “What are those people saying about us?” she asked suspiciously as the nasal sounds of French wafted around the airport. “The little snips. They just do that to annoy us,” she said.
    When we checked into the Hôtel Napoléon, she saw her first bidet. “What’s that for?”
    “To wash your bottom,” Mom told us all.
    Bammy regarded it with narrowed eyes. “Don’t these people have toilet paper?”
    When she tried their toilet paper, which at that time felt like sandpaper, she knew she’d had enough of the whole continent. “Well, that’s enough now. Let’s all go home.”
    “Bam, we haven’t even unpacked. Now let’s do that and go have a lovely dinner in a little bistro near here.”
    When she tasted their beef bourguignon, she muttered, “It’s just beef stew, only mine is better.”
    On the plane to England, I made friends with a lovely older gentleman named Mr. Bristowe. He insisted on taking us all to dinner and showing us around London. At dinner, he peered at us all over his rimless glasses and told us how much he admiredour country. I looked over at Irene sitting next to him. She had slipped her glasses down on her nose and was looking at us over them, in the same manner as Mr. Bristowe. My father was afraid Mr. Bristowe would think Irene was making fun of him, but he laughed, patted her head, and made sure she ordered the best pudding for dessert.
    When it came, it was cake. “This is cake, not pudding,” Bammy said.
    “Yes, madame. That is what you call dessert and we call pudding. All our desserts are puddings.”
    Bammy frowned at him, but didn’t say anything until we got back to the hotel. Putting on her nightgown, she muttered, “Pudding. For heaven’s sakes. No one speaks English over here.”
    At Buckingham Palace, Irene went up to one of the guards, who was standing totally immobile, staring straight ahead. Irene stood very close to him and peered up at him. No response. She touched his bright red coat and stared up at his beaver fur hat. She had seen this before at home, under our Christmas tree. A nutcracker! When I approached her to tell her to come along, she was chatting happily at the silent, staring guard. She beamed at me. “This is a dolly?” she asked. She was trying to hold his hand. His mouth twitched, but he kept looking straight ahead.
    Bammy insisted on using the iron she brought along because no family member of hers was going to dinner looking wrinkled. She put two different old inns in Ireland completely in the dark for several hours by plugging our iron into their sockets. When she was told our plugs would not work in their wall sockets, she simply huffed, and said, “Well, they should,” and went right on with her task. When the second outage occurred, Dad was reading his guidebook by lamplight. Suddenly plunged into thedark, he swore and said to Mom, “Bam’s ironing again.” This time his phone rang, and it was Bammy from our room, whispering. “Dick! Did I do that?”
    “Yes, you did, Bam. We’ve been trying to tell you.” What was it about Bammy and irons?
    “Well, how can we go out to dinner in wrinkled dresses?”
    In the small Irish towns we were traveling in, there were no converters to be found. No one seemed to notice we were disheveled.
    When we finally flew out of Shannon Airport toward New York, Bammy let out a long sigh of relief. “They need to come to