Family Roots

It has been about 9 months or so since my grandmother passed away. Years before she died she started divvying up her things amongst the family members - most of it given away when she moved from her house to an apartment, a little more when she moved to an assisted-living facility, a little more when she went into the nursing home. I received the things that meant the most to me - her spoons collected from all her vacation destinations, the twin spindle beds that Bubba and I would sleep in when we went to visit her, the gumdrop tree she would always put out at Christmas, her Blue Danube dishes. Last weekend my parents took a visit to see my aunt - Dad's sister - and they took some time to sort thru more of Maw Maw's things (she never threw anything away!). It was mostly knick-knacks, old letters, and some great old pictures. To me they brought the most precious treasure of all -the family geneology, and memories hand-written by Maw Maw of her childhood and young adult life. I have pored over all of these papers for hours tonight. I am fascinated. From me, it is seven generations back that my family was in Ireland. I learned that from Ireland the family mostly settled in Mississippi and Tennessee before coming to Texas. There are fascinating stories within all these papers, and the OCD in me is coming out, wanting to organize it all and document everything in an orderly fashion. I want to do more research. It's a project I look forward to getting into!

But the most precious stories are the ones such as these, written in my grandmother's hand....

"I remember one time that Papa sent Jane and Clarice (Maw Maw's sisters) to bring some cows home to milk. They let me go along. Papa had told us not to ride the cows, but I am sure I begged to ride so they put me on one. We were going down the lane when the cow saw an open gate and bolted through the gate and I fell off. I was afraid Papa was going to whip me so I made a big deal of hurting and crying. I got by with it that time."