Mary Jane and Papa
I simply can’t do a better job of talking about Miss Mary Jane than I did several years ago in this post. This is my father’s father and stepmother, and this photo was taken the year my brother was born. Now my father being youngest, and marrying “late” (he was already out of his twenties–ancient!), it had been a while since there were grandBABIES on his side of the family. As Jane-Jane was a spinster until she became my widowed grandfather’s second wife, she got to enjoy with Papa the fun part of small children, i.e., you get to spoil then return them. They didn’t spoil us with things; they spoiled us with affection. Jane-Jane was just crazy about my brother, and I can remember times when all she wanted in the world was to kiss his cheek, but he was such a freaking boy and would run away from her. She kept right on adoring him, though.
I’ve heard that in old photographs, everyone looks so solemn because they had to be motionless for what seemed like forever for the photographer to get a good shot. And honestly, these two could not look more misleadingly grim. I’m not saying they were people who usually wore big smiles. Life was serious business when you endured world wars, cold wars, stock market crashes, rural poverty, the Depression, and a late arrival to indoor plumbing. But I remember Jane-Jane and Papa as good and loving people. They were the only grandparents I got to know, and I still have a few stories to tell about them, just not nearly as many as I wish I could have.
If you have living grandparents, you are so fortunate. Cherish them and let them know you love them. Most of all, give them a chance to tell you their stories. We should all endure as more than names on stones.
And if you have children and grandchildren, we don’t always appreciate or take the time to hear those stories. Write them down. Make videos or tapes. Someday your children and grandchildren may be wiser and will want to hear them.
I love how your writing shares special times of your life while it also evokes bits of my own history in my mind. I should take your advice and write some things down. Most of my stories to grandchildren come in the form of drive-by comments: “that spoon belonged to your great-grandmother and she always used it for bread”, etc.
Becky, You inspire me and motivate me.
Thank you, Helen. And DO IT–your stories and memories are priceless.
My grandparents on either side would never talk much about their childhood and family history. It’s only since I started researching the family tree that I discovered anything about their parents and childhoods.
So very often those memories were hard and painful, I think. Earlier I was reading more about the life of Robert Frost, and mention was made of how many personal tragedies he endured–deaths and mental illnesses of loved ones, poverty, business failures… It made me realize that nostalgia and memoirs, or activities like scrapbooking and genealogy, for people not of royal or noble descent, are fairly modern activities.