My Family seemed to want to see this again - it is a speech I gave at my Grandma's 90th birthday party. So, here it is.
Sorting Pictures
Grandma told us to sort through a box of pictures she'd collected through the years.
"Take what you want, I've got all I need," she said.
That was all the invitation a group of us needed and we sat at the table and scooped pictures out, randomly picking through and sorting and learning more than we would realize about a woman we'd known all our lives.
The black and white photos were sorted through first, with great glee at the young faces and West Virginia landscapes.
A pair of pretty young girls stand in front of a large rock, in simple dresses and wide smiles. "Luella and Mary," the caption reads and we see Luella as a daughter and sister in the hills where she was raised.
"Look at those girls," someone exclaims. "Is that Virginia?"
It is, and an older Mary and Luella, dressed to the 9's and obviously looking for trouble in the way of men. I wondered if perhaps it was the other two girl's bad influence on Grandma, who seems so pure and innocent to me.
But no, there is the next picture. A fashionable young woman with her hat tilted to one side, a cocky smile on her face and a gleam in her eye. Any young man who wanted this heartbreaker's hand would have to work hard to get it. Could my Grandmother possibly have been a flirt? I can't believe it - yet the picture doesn't lie, and I wonder what man could catch this woman's heart.
And there he is, dashing in his suit with her beside him in velvet. They sit close to each other, so young with the bold expression of the newlywed daring the world to throw anything at them because together they could handle everything. Luella as wife and lover.
The next picture is a crowd of unfamiliar faces at a reunion.
"There's Grandma," someone announces and points.
I look hard and finally spy her. Short Luella has ducked in the back of the tall Grants and all I can see is the part of her wavy black hair, standing beside Elner. This young wife has become a supporter, in the back, but undeniably present.
The perspective changes then and Luella disappears as we see through her eyes, a young mother in love with her children. She witnesses her eldest son playing with his cousins under an old-fashioned hand pump and labels the picture "Lowell in the water trough," the "again" is implied. She sees my Uncle Bill's first wedding - marrying my father to his prim looking cousin Debbie in a rather illicit ceremony with lots of laughing children looking on. Sharon stands in her best dress, laughing at the snow on Easter day with a long ponytail trailing down her back and we see her through her mother's loving eyes. There are no pictures of the hundreds of thousands of tomatoes and beans and corn this young wife canned over the years to keep her children fed - you can see those in the plump cheeks of her children. There is no picture of how well she handled the hardships of the years - you can see it in the laughter in her children's eyes.
Suddenly, the children are teens and they are standing beside a special young woman or man; or in some cases several young women. And suddenly Luella has a new role - that of mother-in-law. And soon after, the coveted title of Grandmother.
Then come the group pictures. All seem to involve either Christmas trees or volleyball nets and an increasing group of young people.
"What is this?" someone asks. I look and remember, and it stops the laughter a moment.
"Those were the flowers people sent at Grandpa's funeral," I say. Someone pulls out a big picture of two cocky young men standing in front of a gas station. The sign reads "Rader and Grant" and we pause a moment to remember the man who died, realizing that Luella now has another label - that of widow.
But the pictures don't stop with death. They move on to more life as friends creep into the picture and people become more and more entwined. Luella with her brother, children and grandchildren in front of the Christmas tree. Luella standing with her son, his son, and his daughter - her first great-grandchild. All these pictures add up to a collage of life, like those picture collages Susan carefully joined together. Ninety years of pictures drifting from the West Virginia landscapes in black and white to the colorful Ohio Christmas trees everyone stood in front of. A daughter and sister maturing to a sparkling bride, deepening to a loving mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. A portrait of Luella Martin Grant, my grandmother, who turned ninety years old on Tuesday, May 15.
Friday, May 20, 2005
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