My Grandmother

My grandmother. She is one of the few truly good people I have known, and she was also a good Christian-not a hypocrite like so many others who use it for their own purposes. And I know that if I can ask myself at the end of any given day if she would be proud of me and answer "yes" then I have done well. That is what I strive for.

She was born Olive Beauchamp Dry on January 8, 1901, in Stephenville, Texas. Our family descends from the Beauchamps of English royalty but we also had a pirate, which I always thought was more exciting. There is almost no mention of this obvious black sheep of the family, but since I have long felt like our branch were the black sheep of the line, this pirate appeals to me - maybe he is as misunderstood as I am by the family that shut my brother and I out after what our mother did. Maybe they never gave him a chance.

Before we moved to Alabama we spent so many happy days visiting Grandma! Then, I remember my happiness when she left Texas to be nearer to us. My visits with her were spent helping make oatmeal raisin cookies, enchiladas and hamburgers. Those were my favorites, and to this day my kids all love her enchiladas. She would line the the ingredients up on the counter and my brother and I would work a little assembly line. And the hours I spent playing in her yard, making up imaginary games - I now look back and laugh as I can imagine what I looked like as I "galloped" on my racehorse across her yard.

As I got older she was my defense against all that was bad in our lives - my parents' divorce, my mother's rages, her drinking and the parties that she threw for my sister's older friends as she gathered information to feed to the police department. My brother and I were constantly sent to Grandma's house during this time, but I didn't know everything that was going on then, and Grandma's was my favorite place to be anyway.

She only ever cursed once, at least in front of us. My brother and I were picking at each other and bickering. She must have been so tired. She finally uttered, "Oh, hell!", which stopped us both in our tracks and shut us up.

My favorite story about her is one that to this day I can't quite fathom. Thinking of her disobeying even to this day is almost unbelievable. I guess a lot of people feel that way about their grandmothers. But when she was a young girl, about ten, her parents had strictly forbade she and her siblings (she had nine!) from climbing on the roof of the shed. Not only did she climb up on it, but she also slid down its wood shingles. In the process she managed to get a four inch long splinter in her bottom, which she was scared to tell anyone about. After a couple of weeks it was infected and she had to tell her mother what she had done. After they got the splinter out and she healed she got a spanking.

Every night I was at her house she would come in and stroke my hair and sing "You Are My Sunshine". I was the only one she sang it to...

I miss her and I hope I make her proud.

Trips Down Memory Lane

A few weeks ago Shawn and I made a trip to San Luis Obispo. Last April after Shawn's mother sold her house in Los Osos Shawn and his brother, Damian, helped her load all of her belongings into U-Hauls to take to her new home in Astoria, Oregon. What didn't fit went into a storage unit. The trip we made was possibly our only chance to get the items that she was giving Shawn until his current contract is finished. Along the way we also got to stop in Paso Robles at the home of some great people who have taken on the task of running a small family owned vineyard and are producing some fantastic wines while using some of the profits to help the Wounded EOD Warrior Foundation.

Shawn's father was such an amazing craftsman in so many ways. Not only was he a commercial fisherman, he was a potter and a woodworker as well. He had handcrafted a dining table out of redwood planks and carved out the base as well, and also built some wonderfully sturdy bookshelves. There were also some of his pottery pieces that will be displayed in our home with great pride. These are part of Shawn's memories of his father and he wanted very badly to clean up the bookshelves and put them to use in our office, so last weekend we turned our office into a disaster zone and moved everything out in order to rearrange it and get the bookshelves in.

Now I am working to get everything sorted out and put into its new place. To jump back to another story, when we moved my father to Nevada last January I tried to bring some of his belongings that would be familiar to him - a few of his wall hangings and some photos, and an old scrapbook and photo album. I had looked through the scrapbook, but somehow never looked at all of the memorabilia that he had tucked away into the photo album. As I dusted off his old photo album a handful of pictures and things fell out. One was a folded piece of paper. When I opened it I saw that it was a sign in sheet for visitors to Brookley Field in Mobile, Alabama, where Daddy was the regional vice president in charge of sales for Lear Siegler in the 70's. What made this sign in sheet so special is that it had the signature of then-governor of Alabama, George Wallace. As soon as I saw it I was transported back to the day when the whole family got dressed up to go to work with Daddy, and we watched from an executive office as my father walked out and greeted our governor and shook his hand. I was very young and only had a vague idea of what "governor" meant, but I knew this was an important person and that it was an honor for my Daddy to get to shake his hand.

Formations

I believe that everyone can make a choice in what they become, and that you make a lot of the choices based on what you learn from your parents. An example of this: Both of my parents smoked like chimneys, and I can remember sitting in the backseat of the car almost choking on the cigarette smoke that swirled around us like fog. When I was about 7 or 8 curiosity prodded me to pick up one of my dad's unfiltered Camel's that he had left in an ashtray and "give it a puff". COUGH! GAG! YUCK! I can still remember the taste of the unfiltered smoke and the way it made my throat feel to this day - and I have never picked up another cigarette again.

I feel that I take more after my father, who hardly ever spanked us, but could make us feel worse with his quietly spoken words than any belt ever could - but I was definitely more scared of my mother, who was the belt-wielder. Don't get me wrong - I firmly believe there is a difference between spanking a child and beating one, and my kids felt my hand across their bottoms more than once. Everyone I grew up with got spankings - and not one of us shot up our school, cut ourselves or committed a violent crime.

My mother wanted me to "marry rich". I couldn't have cared less. In my teenage years she even did her best to push me towards a boy in school who was a year or two older than me, whose dad had a very successful business - and who was obviously only after one thing that I am thankful I never gave to him. I am pretty sure that she would have encouraged me to give in to him if she had known if it might have secured that spot for me that she wanted, even though it probably would have meant being married to a man who would not have been faithful. To her it wouldn't have mattered. Once again, it was due largely to her ideas of what was important that I made the choices I did - I am not needy of expensive things, and the only flashy things I have any real desire to own are usually red, noisy and go very very fast. I was a puzzle to her, as her life was, and is, to me.

Why Did I Start This?

In the years since I married my husband, Shawn, he has led us to so many places we never would have gone and on adventures that we never would have imagined. Our time spent in those places and the adventures we had have given us reason to laugh and to cry, to appreciate what we have compared to others and to expand our imaginations outside of the limited existence we would have lived if he had never come into our lives.

As we have shared some of those stories with our friends they have encouraged me to write about them so that others could share in them with us. I have written some things in journals and will draw from those to help fill out some of what I write here.

Not all of them will be humorous or entertaining. I will try to start at the beginning and you will see that not everything in my life has been pleasant. Some people who already know some of my story have wondered how I can still laugh at some of the less fortunate things that happen to me - but there are two big lessons in life that everyone should remember. The biggest is that you always ALWAYS have to be able to laugh at yourself. I do a lot of that! The second is this: Usually, no matter how bad things may seem for most of us, there are people out there who are a lot worse off then we are and would love to trade with us anytime.

This blog will probably jump around different periods of my life, and for that I apologize. I hope that some of my stories will make you laugh, and that others will help you see what is around all of us and appreciate everything that you have, or seek something that you have wanted to do for yourself, but were afraid to do.

Thanks for reading,
KLM