"Echoes of Eden" Dayle King Searle

When my mother’s father, Chet, was a young man courting my grandmother, Thora, he became very ill, and it was discovered he had contracted polio. This was in the 1920s, decades before the development of the polio vaccine, and a diagnosis of this disease was terrifying. Among its victims who survived, a high percentage were left crippled for life.                 Chet wrote a letter to Thora from his hospital bed, telling her to forget about him and find someone else. According to grandpa, as soon as Thora got the letter, she rushed to the hospital, threw her arms around him, and told him there was no other man for her. They were later married and had three children. Chet supported his family by farming. But his bout with polio did not leave him unscathed. From the time he left the hospital to the end of his life he wore metal braces on his legs and was only able to walk with the help of canes.                 As a child I thought little about my grandfather’s condition—he was jus

Whenever my son Colby visits from college, he walks over to my father-in-law’s house to have breakfast and watch The Price Is Right with grandpa. A few months ago he said to me, “I want to go to The Price Is Right so that Grandpa can see me on TV if I get called down.”                 As a mother it is my natural instinct to want my children to be happy and successful and get pretty much everything they want. Grandpa is getting quite frail, so I knew if what Colby wanted to happen was going to happen, it needed to happen soon. And so I went online to check out the taping schedule for the game show and when my son’s college had spring break. Then last week, when those two things converged, I made my husband get in the car, pick up our son and his cute wife, and drive thirteen hours to Los Angeles for a taping of the show.