Dot Laughs

Before I can tell you why Dot was laughing so much she was nearly crying, I need to tell you a few things about my mother-in-law.

My mother-in-law is quite possibly the least greedy person you will ever meet.  She shares everything.  She models sharing to everyone.  She is always putting other people first, always cutting things into two pieces and always giving other people the bigger piece.  Furthermore, although she really enjoys chocolate and sweet things, she staunchly limits the amount of sugar she eats.  She is almost ruthless with her sugar rationing.  I have actually witnessed her separating a  chocolate brownie that I would have devoured in about three bites flat into teeny tiny pieces and eat only two or three bits, wrapping the rest up to save  for next week.

When we traveled to North Dakota, we brought along with us an extremely delicious  loaf of pumpkin chocolate chip bread from the Great Harvest Bread store.  We mostly brought this bread for Dorothy, but kind of for everyone to share.  On our way to Bismarck, we dropped off some things in Valley City that we didn’t need to haul with us to the other places we were going.  We put the loaf of pumpkin chocolate chip bread in the refrigerator at my mother-in-law’s house and called Dorothy to let her know about the bread and some other stuff we were bringing for her.

A week later we were in Valley City visiting.  Dot, Don and little Alex were out as well.  Someone decided to have a snack of banana bread, and Dr. Peds said, “Oh, hey, we brought that pumpkin chocolate chip bread too!”  It turned out, when he went to the refrigerator to retrieve it, that Grandma Kathy had hidden the pumpkin chocolate chip bread way at the back of the refrigerator underneath the other food so no one could see it.  When Dr. Peds questioned what it was doing back there, my mother-in-law instantly looked extremely sheepish.  Upon further investigation, it was discovered that the matriarch of the family, the model of sharing, had actually knowingly concealed the bread to save it all for herself, rationalizing that Dorothy had brought several loaves of banana bread for the rest of us to share.

Oh, we did laugh!  We howled and cried with the hilarity of it.  My mother-in-law could do nothing but sit there with a smug, sheepish look on her face and offer to share the pumpkin bread with us.  We made sure Dorothy got a piece.