Things my grandmother told me: a Blog Off post
Every weeks the blogosphere comes alive while bloggers of every stripe weigh in at the same subject matter. This week, it is "Things my grandmother told me." Here's my take.
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This become my grandmother Stewart, Guellma Gevene Flowers-Smith-Stewart, whom we called Gevene with wonderful affection. Gram become a pressure of nature, her person become cast by adversities I can't consider however to have interaction with her while she become alive become a lesson in pleasure. You'd in no way realize she'd been dealt so many blows.
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| Gevene in an unguarded moment, probably telling one of my brothers to go toss off (in terms less gentle than that). |
She lost her mother to the Spanish flu and was the subject of a custodial tug of war between her father and her grandparents in the early 1900s. Her grandparents, my great-great grandparents won the battle, and my great-grandfather George took Gram's sister Dorothy back to Canada in about 1918 and Gram never saw either of them again. I know I have a fair number of Canadian readers and please, if you're from Edmonton and related to George or his daughter Dorothy Myrtle Flowers please reach out to me. Even if you're not related and you know somebody whose last name is Flowers please let me know.
Anyhow, Gevene was adopted by her grandparents who treated her as a domestic servant. My great-great-grandfather Harper Smith was an amazing man by all accounts. He was a physician who was the son of a physician and a pillar of his community. Still, he treated his grand daughter pretty shabbily but he made her who she was.
I idolized my grandmother Stewart and she showered the love she never got as a kid on my siblings and me. Though she could be thorny, we always knew that she was in our corner, no matter where we ended up.
In the late 80s my folks were in Orlando and we decided that it would be a good thing for me to take Gevene down to meet them for a couple of weeks. The complicating factor was her dog Joy, from whom she was inseparable.
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| Gevene, Joy and my niece Sarah. Sarah you have been loved very, very deeply by way of your terrific-grandmother. |
So we decided that I'd drive from Pennsylvania to Florida with my Gram (who was then 85) and her dog. Gram was up for it and looking forward to an 18-hour road trip. I'd never driven that far in my life and I was anxious to see how we'd do. I made hotel reservations at the halfway point and expected to take two days to make the trip.
We left Pennsylvania at around 6am and headed south on I-95. Within an hour Gevene began telling me the tale of her lifestyles. I didn't even must pry, she had some testimonies to get out of her device and I become an all-too-willing target market for them. Here's a number of what she instructed me.
When Gevene became in her 20s she turned into working at a newspaper and he or she fell in love. The guy she cherished was as good-looking as she turned into stunning and as pushed as she was. However he was a Catholic and my high-quality-brilliant grandparents determined that as a Catholic he changed into an unfit healthy and they made her smash it off with a man she loved. My brilliant-first-rate grandparents had some other plan.
Despite her heartache, her sense of duty and obligation compelled her to go along with their wishes. And really, what option did a woman in the 1920s have? Though it must have been a terrible time for her, I wouldn't be here if things hadn't panned out the way they did.
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| Gram with a completely younger Sarah |
The man who became my grandfather Stewart was the younger brother of my great-Aunt Scharma's husband. Walker Stewart was out in San Francisco and seeking his fortune (Gevene's description was a lot less kind than that) when he got hauled back to Pennsylvania to marry the woman who became my grandmother. Though it was no love match at the start, there developed between them an affection that was as improbable as it was volatile. Together they had three kids.
She loved her sons and her daughter, and a woman I'd in no way visible cry over whatever teared up as quickly as she started talking about her kids. I couldn't get over her passion whilst it came to her children. Bill, Ray and Nancy (my mother) had been her existence and in hearing her speak approximately what it turned into like to be a mom humanized that whole crew like not anything ever had earlier than. She fretted over the errors she notion she'd made and shined inside the the stuff her youngsters accomplished.
Gram talked about her son Bill and how proud she was when he enlisted in The Navy. She told me about what it was like when she sent her daughter off to Germany to marry my Dad. She told me about her youngest son Ray, because he was the apple of her eye.
I can nonetheless listen Gevene's voice as she mimicked my mother's as a bit lady whilst she talked about my uncle Ray, "He's true however he's awful however we adore him."
Gram instructed me testimonies and matters approximately that period of her existence that I've by no means advised a soul and possibly by no means will. She did however, inquire from me to repeat the tales of who she was and wherein she got here from. I do my quality with regards to that. I tell my nieces and nephews how much she cherished them and all of them understand her interestingly-named own family tree due to the fact I tell them. Every one of those youngsters knows that he or she had a excellent-splendid uncle named Le Purcell Mon Monier and a notable-extraordinary aunt named Zorilla Y Marille. Brothers Reid and Walker Stewart had pretty normal names when as compared to the Smith extended family!
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| Gram, Sarah and Doggie Bruno |
Gevene and I stopped on the halfway factor among Pennsylvania and Florida and were given as far as a lunch at Shoney's. I become all equipped to prevent for the night time however she desired to hold going, so we did.
We made it to Florida that day and my parents were thrilled. After all was said and done however, I came away from that drive with a sense of the people who begat me I never could have had otherwise, and in addition to that, my Gram told me all her secrets. Well, some of them anyhow.
Sixteen years after her demise her fingerprints are all over my life. I appear to be her for starters, my purple hair and blue eyes are natural Gevene. Every time I flip my bed or scour my rest room I'm reminded of her. When I see a cardinal, I don't forget her love of purple shoes and hats. When I see my nieces and nephews, I think about how proud she'd be to have visible them growing up and turning into adults. When I see my extremely good-nephew Xavier's crimson hair and blue eyes I cannot help however to suppose some small part of her lives on in that little boy.
Sometimes when I'm walking though a department store I'll catch a whiff of Shalimar or Estee Lauder and it's as if she's there. Gram always smelled good and those two scents were her favorites. Every time I walk through a Macy's or a Dillards I get a reminder and a visit.
I've recognised more extra human beings than I can rely who're dead now, however I pass over none of them extra than I pass over my Gram. Her hand might also as well be pressed in to my coronary heart. I am her grandson, via and through.
She lives on although me, I'm satisfied of that. It's not so much Gevene the man or woman so much because it it is Gevene the persona. My quirks and particularities, my obsessions and compulsions mimic hers and my impulse to giggle comes from her at once.
I never knew any of that until that drive down I-95 and I'll cherish that drive for the rest of my life. That drive introduced me to the person of my grandmother and it granted me something I never could have had otherwise.
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Throughout the day today, bloggers will give their takes on this subject. click on 'em!