🌼 Her Laugh Carried for Miles

They were both pretending

A story about Dorothy

😂 Her laugh could travel for miles—and sometimes, I swear I still hear it when I need it most.

I once found her in Kmart just by following the sound. No joke. Dorothy didn’t just laugh—she radiated joy. People were drawn to her like sunshine on a chilly day. And me? I was lucky enough to be one of her people.

💔 Some days, the ache of missing her sneaks up and squeezes tight. Other days, something will remind me of her, and I’ll laugh out loud like she’s still sitting next to me. Either way, missing her never really leaves. It just softens around the edges.

👟 I can’t tell you the exact day we met, but I remember the feeling. I was a stay-at-home mom, stir-crazy and desperate for something to do that didn’t involve sticky hands or stepping on Legos. My friend Roman told me about a volleyball group at the community center, so off we went.

🏐 Roman, bless him, was the only guy there—completely unbothered by the sea of women around him. The ladies all knew each other and spent most of the time chatting while I sat off to the side, soaking it in like warm soup on a cold day. I couldn’t tell you who most of them were now, but I know they were all Dorothy’s people.

A few weeks later, I heard that laugh again—somewhere uptown. She spotted me first, threw her hands in the air like she was spiking a volleyball, and just like that, we clicked. I nodded, like, “Yep—that’s where I know you from.” Dorothy walked straight over and started talking like we were old friends. Roman came up fast, of course—because a man in a women’s volleyball group? That was a story worth retelling.
👏 So thank you, Roman, for being delightfully out of the norm.

💞 Dorothy wasn’t just my friend. She was everyone’s friend. I know I’m not the only one with a Dorothy story—but this one’s mine.

🎉 We partied with her and Tom for years. Our kids grew up tangled together, and Chad and Angela ended up babysitting my three boys more times than they probably wanted. Honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed them for hiding behind the couch when they saw us coming. “Oh great,” they must’ve thought, “Here come those people again.”

And to be fair, they probably kept a better eye on the boys than I did on some days.

🌞 One afternoon, we were sitting around the conversation pit—no fire yet, because it was the middle of the day and way too hot to even think about lighting one. Just friends chatting, while the kids ran around doing who-knows-what. Craig, still a toddler then, was crawling in the dirt, inspecting every rock like he had a job to do. He’d pick one up, give it a good spit shine (yep—with his mouth), then toss it aside like he was digging for treasure.

A friend wandered over, raised an eyebrow, and asked Dorothy if that was really such a great idea. She didn’t miss a beat:
🗣️ “Dirt’s good for kids. Builds up their immune system.”
Classic Dorothy.

🏕️ Then there was the time I left the boys with her at Edwards Lake while I went to a family reunion in Grasmere. The Butterfields were already at the lake, and rather than dragging the kids into town and back again, I left them in her care. When I got back, Cory had a burn on his ankle. Turns out Chad had taken the boys on dirt bike rides and told Cory to tie his shoelaces so they wouldn’t get caught in the chain.

🚫 Wanna guess what Cory didn’t do?

The chain grabbed those laces and yanked his foot right into the muffler. Cory showed up at the reunion limping around like a war hero, milking every ounce of sympathy. And honestly? He loved every second of it.

🧶 Now, I know I started this story talking about Dorothy and somehow ended up telling you more about Chad, Angela, and Cory. But that’s the thing about people like her—their lives are woven into yours in so many ways, you can’t tell one story without bringing in a dozen others.

And as I sit here writing, I swear I can still hear her laugh. That’s the thing about Dorothy—she never really left.

Not as long as we keep telling her stories.

☁️ Wanda-ism: The best kind of friends leave you with laughter in your memory and dirt under your kid’s fingernails.

Pull up a chair. I’ve got a story.