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Guardian Angel Prayer

Today, a sweet gentleman, from St. John Bosco, came to Mom’s room as he does on a regular basis to pray over Mom and also for her sitter.

He opened his prayer book and began reading the prayer and Mom made the sign of the cross. He went on to pray a second and third prayer from his little book.  His third prayer was for her Guardian Angel.  What happened next was so precious.

Guardian Angel

It went like this…He read, “Angel of God, my guardian dear, To whom His love commits me here;” STOP. At this point, Mom leans forward in the chair and gives three kisses into the air. Now she is a smart woman. I snickered because her guardian angel has been working overtime the past couple of weeks.

UPDATE:  Yesterday as I was going through 40 plus journals, calendars, and notepads I have stacked on my table for review, I picked up a small, red, thin notebook.  I opened the cover and found this.  So very, very special indeed.  To have this prayer, the same prayer the gentleman prayed,  that was obviously part of Mom’s daily routine and in her own handwriting.  What a treasure.

Guardian Angel, Prayer,

Mom’s Guardian Angel Prayer

Thankful for dedicated people who visit and pray with the sick and elderly. God bless you, sweet man.  Extremely grateful for a mother who also liked to write down thoughts and ideas.

With a smile and a happy heart,

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God bless America

Russell Keene

R.I.P. Russell Keene, our hometown hero.

As our country pauses today to remember and reflect on the events of 9/11, I am still so saddened and yet so proud of a young man from our area, that after helping several people to safety, lost his life that day.  He left behind his wife and a very young daughter, his parents and two sisters.  Russ was part of one of the first families I and my three sisters babysat.  You are never quite prepared, at least I wasn’t, for a national event like 9/11 to strike a chord so close to home, but it did.  When I saw photos of Russ I was taken aback by how much older he was and the years it had been since we had last seen one another.  Such a handsome young man, and a young man who was now called a hero by the entire country.

My family took a much-anticipated trip to New York City five years ago and at the top of my list was to pay tribute to Russ at the 9/11 Memorial.  When I found his name, it suddenly became real to me.  I wept and I kept on weeping.  The fountain just encouraged the tears.  It was so moving.

My girls could not wrap their heads around my emotional outburst.  I told them to imagine the little boy they babysit and how special he is to them.  Then imagine, years later, that little boy grows up to be called a hero on one of the most fateful days our country has ever experienced.  I then explained that was Russ, to me.  They suddenly got it.

You are gone but never forgotten, Russ Keene.  God bless America and all those men, women, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters who lost their lives that day.

This was just a beautiful representation of the tears shed on America soil for so many, many people whose lives ended abruptly on one day.

A striking contrast to the sky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Who Do You Think You Are?

In 1998, in the midst of raising four children, I began spending the wee hours of the morning working on genealogy for my father’s side of the family.  There was a mystery person in my tree that I was eager to find more information on and so coupled with my computer and a few old Bibles,  I began building my family tree.

My father passed away when I was 17; He was 50.    I never knew either of his parents or grandparents.  I don’t remember hearing him tell stories about his childhood other than they called him “Red” for his hair color.  I also knew he had a little sister, Betty, that died when she was two as a result of cat scratch fever.

The person I was most interested in researching was my father’s biological grandfather, “Grandpa Mac.”  I had been to the parish  many years ago where he resided during his childhood to visit the courthouse and obtain as many documents as possible on the family.  Every time I ran across my grandfather’s name, I hit a brick wall.  It was so frustrating.  All I knew was he and my great-grandmother were only married three years, he had my grandmother who was two years old, and he died from an illness at 37 years of age.  That’s all I could find.  I have the drugstore bill,  so I know it was a lengthy illness and I saw a court document that showed my great-grandmother was left with nothing after his death.

With the release of the show, “Who Do You Think You Are?” several years ago, my interest in genealogy was reignited and I decided after being away from my research, it was time to begin again.  With the convenience of my laptop and my Keurig, I settled in to climb that family tree once again.

In one night – granted it took four more hours, I was able to go back five generations!  I was beyond excited.  I found births, deaths,  towns,  marriages, and occupations and oh, I was on a roll.  You know, the kind of “roll” where you don’t cook or clean for days on end?  Yes, that was where I was and it was my cocoon.  My new-found treasure was a website called, www.findagrave.com (morbid I know) and most often it shows photos of headstones.  That was invaluable.  I also searched quite extensively on www.ancestry.com but honestly, in the beginning, the grave marker site was more resourceful.

So in regards to Grandpa Mac, I found that, yes, he did die at 37 and my great-grandmother was 15 years younger than he.  So, there she was at 22, a widow with a two-year-old.  I needed to sit and ponder that.  Yes, I cried – just a little.  I also discovered Grandpa Mac’s family was large with seven children, but it appeared that they might have been a puny bunch.  One passed away at 2, another at 8, my great-grandfather at 37 and his brother at 41.  To make matters worse, his mother, Miss J, was left to raise these children after a divorce from her husband.  Who needs soap operas when you can delve into your family history.

So after getting to bed late that first night, I couldn’t wait to return to my tree and see what else would be discovered.  I had just begun to look at census records and found them to be a perfect picture of history.

 

The photo I discovered of my paternal great-grandfather, Grandpa Mac.

The second day I was determined to find more information on Grandpa Mac.  I want to know what he died from, what his occupation was, was he perhaps married prior to his marriage to my great-grandmother and so on.  I realized shortly after I began working, that to have access to the meat of the documents,  I was going to have to bite the bullet and pay for a membership with ancestry.com.  I only paid for a month, and it was worth every penny.  Within five minutes, a picture – a portrait – of Grandpa Mac popped onto my screen and I screamed with joy!  “Well, hello there Grandpa. It’s so nice to meet you finally.” I stared at this precious man for eternity.  Grandpa Mac now has a face to go with the name and a handsome face at that. I looked at his eyes to see if I saw a resemblance to any of his offspring, then his nose, his bone structure, and his mouth.  Oh, I love this!11

 

As I continued to scour the census records, I came across the 1930 census.  Now let me back up a little here.  My dad was raised as an only child after the death of his baby sister.  In my mind, I pictured him in a quiet home with his mother, the strict school teacher and his father, the laborer in the sawmill.  He probably played with neighbors but basically had a quiet childhood.  We often laughed at what must have been culture shock when he married my mother who had seven siblings and they were quite the fun bunch!  Daddy went on to have six children of his own.

To my surprise, the census listed my father as sixteen months old and living with a host of family members:  his mother, his father, his grandmother and grandfather (his grandmother had remarried), his uncle (who was only

My sweet dad as a young boy.

11 years old and was always like a brother to him) and his great-grandmother!  Wow.  That changes my perspective completely.  I can’t imagine the love bestowed on my father and the rich culture he grew up in.  I have not been able to pin down how long they lived in this situation, but it brought an enormous smile to my face to know he had indeed lived in a large family setting and tell me, what’s not to love about my dad as a precious little boy?

 

Have you researched your family tree?  I encourage you to dive in and see what hidden gems you might find.

With a smile and a happy heart,

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Granny’s House

Sundays, as a child, meant church, formal lunches, and then at 4 p.m. or thereabouts, a trip across town to visit my Granny.  Now if you are my age and remember back in the 60’s, then you know 4 o’clock meant the Lawrence Welk show was on TV.  Granny would greet us at her door, in one of her signature dresses,  with the sound of  “and a one and a two” playing in the background.  I understand why my Granny was a Lawrence Welk fan.  She loved to dance and was very smooth on her feet.  She was quite musical, too.  Although I was never lucky enough to hear her, I learned she played the harmonica quite well.  The show captured everything she loved about music.

On those lazy afternoons, Granny would always prepare a treat for us.  Anything and I mean anything,  Granny cooked or baked was delicious.  What amazed me more than the mouth-watering dishes she made was the fact that Granny could not read and therefore used no recipes.  In my eyes, all her meals were sheer genius.

Granny reserved two doors on opposite ends of her buffet for toys for her grandchildren.  Most of the family still lived in the area and would visit quite often.  My sister and I would sit in front of the buffet with the doors open wide, playing with the blue-cast iron motorcycle and a squeezable pink pig while listening to Lawrence Welk on the television and Momma and Granny conversing in their French dialogue behind us.

As we got older and bored with the buffet toys, we would sneak off to Granny’s bedroom, sit on her tufted chair in front of her dresser, and brush our hair with her matching hairbrush set, just like the stars did on the big screen.

Off the back porch, was the old washing machine.  The ringer type.  We would watch Granny operate that antiquated machine with ease and precision.  Her children offered to buy her a new washer and dryer, but she was content with what she had grown accustomed to.  After washing, she would carry her basket to the clothesline strung across the backyard.

Further back in the yard were where my favorite memories took place.  A huge fig tree was off center in her yard and was the focal point of every summer.  A hot, summer day, coupled with a lightweight, long-sleeved shirt, long pants and we headed out to Granny’s to pick figs.  Mom would “rally the troops” and bring a full station wagon of eager beavers over to her Mom’s so we could begin our annual journey of gathering figs so Mom could make her fig preserves.  Jars, and jars and more jars.  They were a family favorite.  Fig-picking was a tradition.

Pool Shed

This shed reminds me of my Grandma’s shed.  

At the very back of the lot, behind the fig tree was an old shed and a chicken coop next to it.  I never cared for the chicken coop, but, oh what was inside that shed…I thoroughly enjoyed.  My uncle that lived with Granny loved to shoot pool.  So much so that he had purchased and placed a pool table in the shed.  The older the grandkids were, they left those buffet toys behind and graduated to the “shed” where they were allowed to join in the pool games.  Oh, the stories, the jokes, and the memories!

Next to Granny’s house, just a few steps away, was a Tastee Freeze ice cream shop.  Not frequently, but often enough to feel privileged, we were treated to some ice cream.  However, sometime before Granny died, that establishment had been torn down and replaced with a popular Mexican fast food chain.  Granny’s house was later rented and ultimately sold.

A long while later, I drove near there, and I saw a bulldozer knocking down the walls of the drive-thru.  I was told the food chain was remodeling.   Last night, as I was taking my Mom to eat dinner like we did every Saturday evening after Mass, I was describing what she was going to see on the left.  As we passed by slowly, in the dark, my Mom said, “Elle, I think Granny’s house is gone too.”  Oh, my heart sank!  I whipped that car around as fast as I could, struggled to find her street since the landmarks were no longer there and when we drove up, my headlights told a story I was not prepared to see.  It indeed had been demolished with only a two-foot pile of rubble left standing.  We both burst into tears.  Not able to utter a word.  Memories came flooding back to my mind, and I just wept.

I was so thankful for Granny’s house and the memories I hold dear.  The love of my grandma, the music, the food, the hard work, the entertainment, the memories of childhood Sunday afternoons.  I so want my future grandchildren to hold fond memories of me and my home long after I have passed too.

So, to the little gray house on Garrett Drive, I say farewell.  After all, it was not the building or the foundation, but the woman who lived inside your walls that made it home and forever a part of my memories.

My Granny in the solid green dress at my wedding shower, circa 1981.

With a smile and a happy heart,

 

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