This morning while I was cleaning up I came across a photo album that my Aunt put together for me as a gift one year. It has all the pictures she had saved of me from the time I was born to the time I got married and had my first baby. It was once again fun to see how much I look like my own baby and toddler when I was those ages. It also makes me think of how quickly this thing called life is going by....
As a child I spent many hours wondering if I would ever be a mommy, if I would get married and have kids, or if maybe I would be a nurse, or an actress, or a singer, or a teacher... I wrote those things down each year in my school memorabilia book which also held a successive account of my toothy grins and lofty aspirations. Now what I want to do with my time is write. I feel like I have learned so much from school and life so far that I don't want to forget it and for me the best way to remember is to write.
Looking at the faded photos of my grandma who is now passed on smiling her wry smile at me or looking with stern expectation at the lively, tow-headed toddler at her glass dinner table, I realize that her story went much untold. There is no account of her feelings toward being a mother and wife, what happened when she divorced my grandpa and married someone else and had a son with him. How did she feel about being a grandmother, about being alone after her second husband's death. We don't know any of her words, her thoughts, because she kept them inside. Now when we talk about her what people remember most is how mean she was, how she would hit her daughters and not say sorry, how she never said I love you...
These are hard and sad facts but they are most certainly not the only things about her... but the truth is that I don't know much about her because she was just my grandma and to my own mom who is a liberal minded 60's flower child feminist mother herself, mostly thinks of her as her own mean mom. (I just realized that tomorrow is my Grandmother's birthday, coincidence?)
I want to be more than that to my kids. If they say I was mean they will also know how much I loved them because I will write about it. If I made mistakes it will be written that I said sorry for them and that I am working on a new way of responding/asking/being. That I will learn from my mistakes and move forward is sometimes the only thing that keeps me going when I feel like it's all falling apart.
I know that this time is but a blink of the eye and before I know it Jianna (6mo.) will be showing pictures of herself at this age to her own children. Hopefully when she does I can be there too and then I will be the Grandma telling her how fast it all goes, smiling my wry smile and hopefully when I pass on my legacy will be more than just grandma and mean mom... I hope I will inspire them toward greatness!
My Grandma Mildred (Millie, Mild-Red...) me, my mom at X-mas dinner at my Grandma's in Moraga
