Savingdogs-Saving the chickens

[savingdogs]

Bandit is MUCH to smart to fall for jumping into the car to go bye-bye. Unless she is already exhausted of course. When people say they want a real smart dog, I tell them to be careful what they wish for. While we all credit our dogs with intelligence, when they start to equal or excel you in smarts you are really in trouble since they can run a lot faster than you (or at least me!).

I woke up all feeling weird this morning, off balance in my fun fun way. I had my days of the week mixed up, ever do that? I was thinking it was Saturday and why on earth was hubby gone so early without telling me where he was going? duh

My mom sent me a.....memoir.....of her life that I read night before last and it has really stuck to my ribs. Got me thinking about my childhood in California as well as hearing about her life down there. I've been stuck in a weird nostalgic mood I can't dispel, missing people who are long dead that I haven't thought about in a long time. My mom should write a book of her life, I never knew it was so interesting. But reading it was strange because I knew the whole story, but didn't ever see the whole picture before. She grew up during the depression and all the men left to go to war during her late teens. Her dad was a dead beat (which I never realized before) and her mother was a hard worker but my mom actually was supporting herself from a very young age. I never knew all this stuff! She put pictures with the story and put all her remembrances in chronological order.
If anyone has elderly parents out there who have not been encouraged to do this, I highly recommend it. She recorded all the family relationships, gave character descriptions of all the relatives as well as telling her own story. She grew up in the era of Hollywood and the neighborhood....she actually went to school with a girl named Norma Jean Baker (two different high schools, and she KNEW her) and went to dance school where Shirley Temple went. She stopped the story right when she gets to the part when she married my dad and I want it to continue.....kind of like you want a good novel to continue.

But mom went from utter poverty to relative ease and luxury, she never, ever stopped being frugal (to a fault!) and though we have all teased her over the years, she is the one who is not suffering in current times, because she never lived luxuriously. I suppose I get my self sufficient bug somewhat from her, but in her story, she tells the tale of my grandparents, who raised their own meat, lived without any modern conveniences and even, unfortunately, brewed their own liquor during prohibition.

I told her it is the most interesting biography I've ever read, and it is interesting, I'm really surprising in getting her to write more of it down. She included things such as what kids did in the 1930s to have fun, and how different all these things make your life. She moved from her dads to her moms when she was a teenager and actually had to WALK from West LA to Van Nuys (about a 1/2 hour drive in a car) in order to ask her if she could move in. Can you imagine how our spoiled teenagers, so used to texting every five minutes, had to walk that far in order to ask their mom a question like that?

It makes me realize where her mental fortitude all these years has come from, and also answered a lot of other "why" questions I had about her behaviors, such as why she was willing to let grandma come live with her when she was old and crotchety.

I had a close relationship with my grandma, I think I've mentioned her before, and this memoir of hers brought grandma back. It describes her spunk, her funniness.....there is even a scene where she was actually living in a chicken coop converted into a bedroom, and her mom's husband threw them out, throwing the pots and pans at Grandma as she sat on the front lawn, and grandma was actually laughing. It was so much fun to have this mental picture of my spunky grandma, picturing her young and skinny and strong, instead of my final images of a vague shrunken shell of who she used to be and the spunkiness turned a little nasty toward the end. But I have not been able to think about much else since then.

Somehow, it makes me realize all the thoughts I've been dwelling upon over the last year are really unimportant. If I told the story of my life, such as my mom did, I realize that the hardships of the past year have been more of a personal battle with happiness than the true adversities and difficulties my own mother and grandmother faced, that pales in comparasin.

I've always kind of "felt grandma's voice" since she has been gone, felt her influence in my life and know she approves of me having chickens and living closer to the land and plants. If only she were here, I'd not be posting weed pictures on the internet, she had them all memorized. She was also the animal-lover who I obviously take after. The animal thing skipped a generation and my own mom keeps no pets (funny, isn't it, when I have a total of 40 animals I'm currently caring for. But when I read the stories of Couer D' Alene where they were from, how Grandpa (the dead beat) raised rabbits for food and trained his ducks and chickens to follow him around.....it is strange, I feel more a part of my family instead of the failed part of some work crew I didn't work out on.

It is almost like Grandma gave me a hug through my mom, I will cherish this book.

 

[abifae]

That's really cool! I could never write a memoir. LOL. I don't know if anything I remember was real. Of course, no one really does. We trust memories as facts, when there's no proof for anyone. I'm just very actively aware of this, and my memories do not match those with whom I was "raised". I mean, at all. Different people, different country LOL!!

If I ever write my "memories", I'm doing it as a fictional graphic novel or something. Memories of another reality.

It really REALLY bothers my mom. She is always trying to force memories down my throat and I've finally trained her to not bring up anything not current. It doesn't help that the "memories" she remembers change every time she tells me so she isn't even being consistent in her lies. And she's very aggressive about it. My sister falls in line and "remembers" what she is told.

Wouldn't it be funny if all of us just appeared ten years ago and all those memories were built in?

 

[savingdogs]

Well my kids seem to be barely able to remember things that happened before age nine, except very big events of course.

We had taken my daughter to Disneyland every single year until she was about five years old when we lived in LA, and then we had a five year gap.
She utterly did not remember Disneyland, all those visits! DISNEYLAND!

And I've noted the same with my other two. My middle son remembers only his very last day living in Los Angeles when he was four years old.

I myself can remember lots of weird trivia, but NO WAY the extent of what my mom remembers. She remembers the names and personalities and even the outfits worn by her teachers, and I can remember some of them but not even all their names and certainly not what many of them WORE. My mom feels she remembers being born even. Considering all the other stuff she remembers I don't doubt it, peoples brains/minds work differently.

I must have inherited my dads brain because I have foggy memories of things that happened when I was three-10 and then it gets better, but I can no way remember names/faces like Hubby.

I've even gotten foggy on the names of co workers I once knew....maybe I'm getting old but I can remember most of their first names but not all the last names.

Memories are a weird thing, Abi, don't feel abinormal, we are all strange in what we remember.

 

[glenolam]

What a wonderful gift - the memoir!

I, too, could never write one. I have only a few memories and some of them I'd never want to bring up either because they're made up for whatever reason, or they're real and not something I'd like to recall. I have some good ones, and those I try to recall more often.

I wonder if little g will remember growing up. When he was born Big G and I decided we wouldn't take him to the "big" places like Disney for fear he'd forget. If he's anything like me, he sure will. I went to Europe twice at the ages of 12 and 13 for a month each year and only remember bits and peices.

Abi, I'm with you. Every member of the family has their version of the truth. No sense in arguing who's right or how it actually was - it's in the past now and we just move forward.

 

[abifae]

Abi, I'm with you. Every member of the family has their version of the truth. No sense in arguing who's right or how it actually was - it's in the past now and we just move forward.

Exactly!!

Memories are a weird thing, Abi, don't feel abinormal, we are all strange in what we remember.

Yeh. It's pretty interesting.

 

[savingdogs]

My husband can remember the strangest minute details from years ago, but can't remember to take the mail to be dropped off or to remember other things that I have no problem with.

 

[Denim Deb]

SD, I really wish my Grandmom H had written some memories. And, I wish my Mom did too. My Grandmother was one of the first, if not the first white woman that some tribes in SA ever saw when she and my Grandfather were missionaries. I'd love to know what it was like for her, what it was like for my Mom, her brothers and sister living there. I'm not sure how old my Mom was when they left SA, and came to the States. And, I don't know why they went to the States instead of back to Canada. I don't know how much my Mom remembers. Maybe I need to ask her. I can't ask my Grandmother. She died many years ago.

 

[savingdogs]

Ask her!

I'm so glad my sister did. I know she bought her a book for putting this stuff in, but my mom needed more space to write the story, and created her own book.

But the book was kind of like a scrap book with suggestions of things that would be interesting leading questions.

 

[Denim Deb]

I plan to. I'm thinking I need to take a tape recorder (if I can find mine) and just let her talk about it. I'd also like to do the same w/my MIL. She had a really interesting life when she was younger, too. I don't recall my Mom ever telling me stories about when she was a kid. I know I've told stories to my kids about when I was growing up, but my life wasn't anywhere near as interesting as my Mom's.

 

[Wannabefree]

That is so very cool. Just before my grandma passed I visited her once, which unfortunately I rarely did. The conversation somehow turned to her as a young girl. I learned more about my grandma in those couple hours, than I had ever known in my entire life. The glint of mischeviousness in her eye as she told me of being the only one of "the girls" who wasn't afraid to hop on a bus to go out of state to visit relatives when they were ill, kind of like a family ambassador to the other relatives, and all of the people she met on the bus. She was so funny! She told me of how my grandaddy tried to pick her up by driving up and down her street when he knew she was walking home from work, and he'd actually drive circles around her trying to get her to let him take her home. She told me she'd tell him to "go bump a stump" whatever that means...still cracks me up. My grandma was tiny, 90 pounds of pure fearlessness. I met my grandma that day, and several years later, just as hurricane Katrina was hitting shore in New Orleans, I was the last to say goodbye in her hospital room on the second floor....
Definately is good to know from where you came, and the essence of your predecessors. My grandma represents my strength and fearlessness to me now. She is who I got my sense of adventure from. My momma has always told me I was never afraid of anything, and I am not usually, thanks to my grandma