Yesterday I met up with my cousins Cindy and Terry and Cindy's son Peter once more before Cindy, Peter and his wife and child head back to Oregon today. It was really nice catching up with all of them. It is a shame that Terry and I haven't seen each other regularly for the last several years since she lives in McKinney. I have been terribly remiss. I could have gotten in touch with her at anytime and just kept thinking that I would do it later.
Yesterday we all got together one more time because Cindy had left something at my parents house and so I brought it back to Dallas with me on Saturday so that they could get it from me before leaving for home. But I really wonder if it wasn't just some last ditch effort being made by a higher power to get us together once more before they left. Cindy texted me on Sunday night and asked that I bring my grandmothers diary with me when I met them. My grandmother kept diaries and I got one of them when she passed away. It is very special to me. I have had it since she died in the 70's and I really think it is one of the things that inspires me to write. I've read it cover to cover more times than I can tell you. I don't keep a diary, but maybe this little blog serves the same purpose.
So I took the diary yesterday and after having lunch we went to the Fed Ex store and copied every page. We made 3 copies of each page so that Cindy and Terry could each have a copy and if anyone else wanted one, it would be easy to make additional copies. As we made the copies we read several of the passages and laughed. Here's a typical passage:
Jan 31, 1974 - Thursday
"Went to a grocery store this morn.
It is a chore to go grocery shopping now - days, everytime you look at something you need to buy it has gone up in price... I don't know where it 's going to stop.
But one thing is for sure this one woman is not going to buy no more than is necessary until if ever the price goes down. How is that for a spirit, eh?"
I love two things about this entry that was probably mundane to her. One is that it was 1974 and she was complaining about the price of groceries. Some things never change. The other thing is the "eh?" at the end of that last sentence. My grandma was Czech. But she had almost no accent except when she said some words that started with a "W" or a "V". She pronounced "W's" like "V's" and vice versa. The other thing she did that I assume was a Czech thing was to say "eh?" after making a point. I remember hearing that "eh?" many times when I was growing up. It's my favorite thing about the diary. I love reading an entry and hearing her voice in my head as I read it!
It is fun to read the entries in which she was obviously very happy, mostly when she had been with family during the day. It is sobering to read entries in which she was alone and lonely with only her diary to express her thoughts to. I sometimes wonder if she ever thought that we would read her words and value them or if she thought the diaries would just be discarded when she was gone. I wonder if she would be surprised to know that 35 years after her death her three granddaughters would get together in Allen, Texas and spend an hour copying one of her diaries so that we could each read her words again.
Grandma was inspiring in many ways. She never learned to drive. Yet she went to see Cindy's family in either Arizona or Oregon several times after my grandfather died. I can't imagine never learning to drive, but having the courage to get on an airplane or bus and travel halfway across the country alone. Maybe that sense of adventure comes from having spent 3 months sailing across the Atlantic as a child to come to America. Her dad had come the year before and she and her brothers and sisters came across with her mom once he had traveled from New York to Texas and found a home.
Well, I should stop speculating about my grandmother and get busy. That garage is not going to clean itself, eh?
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