Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Summer Moon<\/p>\n
Grandchildren.\u00a0 Those living links to the future who know us and whom we know.\u00a0 In my case Ruth and Gabe.\u00a0 Three years old and one year old.\u00a0 They are on their way here right now, probably someway in the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n
Grandma Ellis, Jennie, was a school teacher.\u00a0 I knew her a bit.\u00a0 I liked her.\u00a0 She understood young boys.\u00a0 I have three memories associated with a visit I made to her house in Oklahoma City when I was 9 or 10.\u00a0 In the first I took apart a clock Grandma no longer wanted.\u00a0 She realized I wanted to know how it worked.\u00a0 Later I tried to knock wasps out of the air with a bug bomb.\u00a0 In my mind it was a dogfight, fighter to fighter.\u00a0 If so, I got tagged and plummeted to earth with a huge swollen left hand.\u00a0 The last memory involved a sinkhole that appeared in the alley behind grandma’s house.\u00a0 It was big enough to hold a car.<\/p>\n
What this means to me, these memories as central to my experience of my grandmother, involves the humility to realize my grandchildren may not remember me for who I am or what I have done, but for what happened when they visit.\u00a0 Do I accept it and recognize the experience, validate it?\u00a0 My grandma Ellis did.<\/p>\n
I’ve written elsewhere about my namesake, grandpa Charlie Keaton.\u00a0 He rode the rail at the Derby every year and loved horses and harness racing, too. Again, I remember him making syrup from water and sugar.\u00a0 He also cooled his coffee in a saucer and drank from the saucer.\u00a0 He wore green underwear with a flap in the back.\u00a0 Those are my memories of grandpa.<\/p>\n
Grandma Keaton, Mable, was a different story.\u00a0 Either she suffered from bi-polar disorder like most of her children or she suffered some mental problem associated with child birth.\u00a0 I remember her as a shuffling, almost mute older person.\u00a0 Within in our family lore she famously fed a 13 year old growing boy half a weinie and two tablespoons of baked beans for lunch one summer during an extended visit.<\/p>\n
Thus, my grandparent memories are thin soup, memory wise, though as the oldest in our family at least I have some memories where my brother and sister have few if any.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Summer Moon Grandchildren.\u00a0 Those living links to the future who know us and whom we know.\u00a0 In my case Ruth and Gabe.\u00a0 Three years old and one year old.\u00a0 They are on their way here right now, probably someway in the Twin Cities. Grandma Ellis, Jennie, was a school teacher.\u00a0 I knew her … Continue reading Grandchildren on the way<\/span>