• Carrying My Grandmother

    There was a time in my life when I dreamt a lot. I would awaken with the dream fresh in my head. Methodically, I would write it down in one of my journals. From time to time I dip into the pages of earlier journals to catch glimpses of my past life. However, I rarely think they are as interesting as I did as when I wrote them. But there are a few gems, such as the year 1990, when I gave birth to Gregory. Tuesday morning, January 25th at 4:00am I awoke to the memory of a dream–so real I was living it–about my paternal Grandmother. She was very…

  • Yesterday

    Recently I heard the song “Yesterday” by the Beatles and I was moved to tears. The memory of the loss of my beloved grandmother washed over me and I knew exactly the moment in time and the place.  Quickly I  returned to a time when I was a young girl of 13.  I sensed that losing my grandmother would change my life, but I had no way of knowing how long it would take for me to understand it. I remember being in in her apartment after the loss. I liked being near her things. She had been an organist in the Methodist church and she had a small electric organ.…

  • My Grandmother’s Way

    “We always put manure on our garden and we never had any bugs, but now they’ve got all those fancy fertilizers. You just watch they’ll be coming back to our ways.” Her voice had a ring of independence. She knew what she was talking about. She was a farmer and a hard worker. I would come upon her in the garden — her short sturdy figure bent over vegetables or stooped picking strawberries in the  hot morning sun. She wore a cotton-checked dress and a big straw hat that covered her freckled face and milky white shoulders. Only her hands, stained by the earth, were weathered. ” I always put a potato in my…