A Book About My Grandmother

I was fortunate to have all four of my grandparents survive well into my adult years. Sadly, I never got the opportunity to get to know my paternal grandparents, the first of whom died around Christmas in 1978, when I was 21. That was my grandfather. My paternal grandmother died some years later, in 1986, and it is to my great regret now that I never got to spend any considerable time with them getting to know them and the stories of their lives. However, my maternal grandparents I did get to know and spent a good amount of time with them growing up, either visiting them or having them come visit us. (My grandfather died first, on February 4, 1989, and my grandmother died two years later, on St. Patrick's Day 1991.) I always loved my grandparents home in Springfield, OH. It was a big old brick place with creaky floors, an equally creaky stairwell up to the second story and a unique smell that I will never forget. I got to hear some stories of my ancestors, albeit fewer than I would have liked to know, and some stories of their lives as well, again, not as many as would have been to my liking, but then, they didn't seem overly eager to talk about those things when I was growing up. However, as they grew older and they seemed to know that their days were numbered, my mom spent a great deal of time visiting them in their home and collecting, via audio tape, their stories and those of their ancestors. When my aunt Mary Lucille and Uncle Don celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary some years ago, my mother presented to them, as an anniversary gift, a book she had put together called "Where You Come From", a collection of stories about our ancestors and our grandparents lives. Immediately, I wanted a copy of my own, and my mother obliged and gave each of us our own copies for Christmas one year. I still treasure my copy of it all these years later and since then, some other stories have been uncovered that maybe one day a companion edition could be written to include those.

A number of years ago, my mom wrote a little book called "May: A New England Childhood" as a way to preserve the story of my maternal grandmother's early childhood. It had black and white illustrations that she did and she gave a copy to my younger sister to share with her own children. To the best of my knowledge, she is the only one to have ever gotten a copy of it but my mom had a copy lying around with other children's books she wrote and illustrated that she tried to get published without success. When my beautiful cousin Jill got married this summer, my mom asked her what she wanted for a wedding gift, and Jill replied that she wanted something having to do with our family. So my mom resurrected her copy of the book she wrote about our grandmother and did color illustrations to replace the previous black and white ones. My mom then got the idea to self publish it through a vanity publisher, and the result is that she is now a published author of the book, "May: A New England Childhood", which will soon appear on Amazon.com! It can be bought through the AuthorHouse bookstore for now. I am hoping that maybe the library where I work will consider buying it. I think that my mom ought to publicize it to the libraries in Holyoke and Springdale in Massachusetts where my grandmother grew up, as a kind of local history interest sort of thing. Libraries are always interested in acquiring stories of local history and to have a story of one person's memories of life where she grew up at the turn of the 20th century could be very interesting to those who live there, I think. I think she also ought to have it publicized in magazines that appeal to older people like Reminisce and Good Old Days. Those publications are immensely popular among our elderly populations who like to read about the times gone by that they remember.

I am very much looking forward to receiving my very own (and maybe even autographed!) copy of this book about my grandmother. Even though I will never have anyone to whom to pass it down when I am gone since I am single, still, it is something that I will treasure and maybe I can will it to a library to be added to their collection so that future generations may enjoy it for years to come. It almost makes me wish I had married and had kids so that I could pass on my family's stories to another generation. Hopefully, my cousin's and sister's children will keep those stories alive well after we are all gone. Having this little book published by my mom will certainly help in that respect.