Through the Eyes of my Grandmothers
It was exciting when I finished the writing of Escaping the Jaws of Life. I felt that I had completed something--reached an objective that I had been talking about for several years. It was very healing to write my story. When I would meet someone new, they would ask me, "What do you do?". The all recognizable struggle of my identity was always at task. Do I tell them I was a widow, unemployed, retired, a democrat, a past City Councilwoman, a booted out Mayor, a grandmother, a mother, or struggling business woman? They all felt negative, not something to even discuss. I felt that I could not share with them the whole story without going into my old story of enduring loss. So much was lost that I knew I couldn't regain it ever again. With no real identity that I could tell them, I struggled with the "Who Am I?" complex. A simple answer was "I'm writing a book". Of course, that opened up another question of "About what?". Again, I would spin out into my brain about the story. I'm happy to say that those days are over. Why? Because now I can say, "I'm writing a book again!"
Several years before Larry passed away, up there in the remote country side in southern Humboldt County, I was using the internet to try to create some kind of semblance of who I used to be. I decided to take on the insurmountable task of putting all of my ancestry together. I did this because my mother just knew we had royalty there - or as she would always say to us "we are from the Mayflower families" - uh, mom, the Mayflower families were not royalty! But it was an identity that she could touch with her own "Who am I?" questions. Since I had the time, I did this because I wanted to respect her insistence of this connection, and prove it posthumously. Months went by, and I kept getting warmer. I would get stuck on some broken family tree branch. I posted things up on the Ancestry/genealogy trees. The distraction of building this tree would take me off into other family branches, and then I would get buried in my late husband's family (he was very alive at the time), which eventually proved we were related. It was a nice distraction....but I continually got thrown into the lives of these people, looking at where they were during certain censuses - which included the Civil War, and the Revolutionary War. It was intoxicating, like building my own movie script of what those distant grandmothers and what might have been going on in their lifetime. I was reacquainting myself with American history, so to speak.
In 2005 there was a family reunion being planned in up in the State of Washington and I wanted to present this family tree to my Uncle Ray on behalf of my mother, his sister. I managed to do a wonderful tree with lots of new information, but it sort of dropped like a belly bomb, and there really was very little excitement coming from my removed family about it. It just isn't important to some people. So after the family reunion, I put it away for several years. After my second granddaughter was born, I started up some more research. After all, I was in the throes of my first year of widowhood....another loss of identity - that of being a wife. I filled in all the newest entries of babies recently born, marriages and divorces, but eventually put all the information back in a box, and the file got buried on my computer somewhere.
Since the evolution of my Escaping the Jaws of Life book, I started to realize that several of the women in my family ( two of them are from my husband's line) where remarkable characters of strength. Several of them were widows, with stories of their own. Those stories were worth assembling into written words, and the challenge is there for me to do this. I will identify each character in individual postings. With creative touches from my imagination, I hope I can write them up well. By doing so, their lives will become noticed as the enduring experiences that women can rejoice with. Maybe my granddaughters, might enjoy the stories, or not. So...with the blessings of Bessie Irene Primrose, Yesenia Febronia Dolina, Eunice Prickett, Mary Elizabeth Jackson, Agnes Hensley, and Sarah Besse, I will proceed with the creativity I have inherited and attempt to make them the rock stars that they were in their time.
P.S. I've been directed from the unheard voices through mediums that this is the right thing to do. The biggest push was directly from my mother and my Uncle Ray (who died last year). Both of them are having fun with each other now, and yes, my Uncle is now taking over the fun of making my lights blink, and "bugging" me when I drive on the freeway. Thank you for continuing to read my blog. May this amateur writer have more to say in the future. Comments are always welcome!
Lori
Several years before Larry passed away, up there in the remote country side in southern Humboldt County, I was using the internet to try to create some kind of semblance of who I used to be. I decided to take on the insurmountable task of putting all of my ancestry together. I did this because my mother just knew we had royalty there - or as she would always say to us "we are from the Mayflower families" - uh, mom, the Mayflower families were not royalty! But it was an identity that she could touch with her own "Who am I?" questions. Since I had the time, I did this because I wanted to respect her insistence of this connection, and prove it posthumously. Months went by, and I kept getting warmer. I would get stuck on some broken family tree branch. I posted things up on the Ancestry/genealogy trees. The distraction of building this tree would take me off into other family branches, and then I would get buried in my late husband's family (he was very alive at the time), which eventually proved we were related. It was a nice distraction....but I continually got thrown into the lives of these people, looking at where they were during certain censuses - which included the Civil War, and the Revolutionary War. It was intoxicating, like building my own movie script of what those distant grandmothers and what might have been going on in their lifetime. I was reacquainting myself with American history, so to speak.
In 2005 there was a family reunion being planned in up in the State of Washington and I wanted to present this family tree to my Uncle Ray on behalf of my mother, his sister. I managed to do a wonderful tree with lots of new information, but it sort of dropped like a belly bomb, and there really was very little excitement coming from my removed family about it. It just isn't important to some people. So after the family reunion, I put it away for several years. After my second granddaughter was born, I started up some more research. After all, I was in the throes of my first year of widowhood....another loss of identity - that of being a wife. I filled in all the newest entries of babies recently born, marriages and divorces, but eventually put all the information back in a box, and the file got buried on my computer somewhere.
Since the evolution of my Escaping the Jaws of Life book, I started to realize that several of the women in my family ( two of them are from my husband's line) where remarkable characters of strength. Several of them were widows, with stories of their own. Those stories were worth assembling into written words, and the challenge is there for me to do this. I will identify each character in individual postings. With creative touches from my imagination, I hope I can write them up well. By doing so, their lives will become noticed as the enduring experiences that women can rejoice with. Maybe my granddaughters, might enjoy the stories, or not. So...with the blessings of Bessie Irene Primrose, Yesenia Febronia Dolina, Eunice Prickett, Mary Elizabeth Jackson, Agnes Hensley, and Sarah Besse, I will proceed with the creativity I have inherited and attempt to make them the rock stars that they were in their time.
P.S. I've been directed from the unheard voices through mediums that this is the right thing to do. The biggest push was directly from my mother and my Uncle Ray (who died last year). Both of them are having fun with each other now, and yes, my Uncle is now taking over the fun of making my lights blink, and "bugging" me when I drive on the freeway. Thank you for continuing to read my blog. May this amateur writer have more to say in the future. Comments are always welcome!
Lori