Little Allie

“I made muffins for you, Uncle Craigie!” Allie was at the counter in the Pennysaver office with her mom, Coral. They had come to visit Craig and me at work, walking to the Pennysaver from the apartment that Craig and I shared. Coral and Allie loved coming to stay with us in the Finger Lakes. They lived almost three hours away, outside Buffalo.

The girls at the office just loved beautiful, adorable Allie, and thought she was so cute when she told her beloved Uncle Craig about the muffins.

One of the times Coral and Allie walked over to the Pennysaver was a totally bad day for all of us. It seemed that they had barely said good-bye, when a woman came rushing in looking for me. A dog bit Allie in the face shortly after they got around the corner from our building, and this woman took them into her house. Poor, tiny Allie was sobbing and her mom was a basket case. I was not any better.

We had to walk to the apartment so that we could get Coral’s car and go to the emergency room, quite a distance from where I lived. Coral drove and I sat in the back beside Allie in her car seat, holding a cloth on her face and trying to comfort her. It just made me sick that my beautiful granddaughter had received such an injury to her face, and that she had to suffer so much.

We were sent from the emergency room to a surgeon in a medical complex nearby, so that he could put sutures in Allie’s face. She was a brave little girl. The dog’s teeth had come down from her forehead, skimming over her eye and basically just about taking a chunk out of her cheek. The doctor did a beautiful job, and even though plastic surgery was suggested as a possibility when she got older, this has not been done. She is still a beautiful girl, a Junior at Duke University. We barely notice the scar on her cheek.