History in the Making

Last Thursday, I raced home after my Anatomy exam and through some haphazard tee-shirts and jeans into a suitcase, jumped back into my car, and started down Highway 58. I was on my way to North Carolina to meet my mom at my paternal grandmother's house. In addition to keeping me busy during my first weekend of Patrick's deployment, and taking care of Nana after an operation to unclog one of her femoral arteries, we were also helping her clean out her attic, closets, and trunks in preparation for her move to an Independent Living facility here in Norfolk.

The drive down was incredibly gorgeous. Fall leaves in brilliant colors, fields full of cotton (and later bales of hay, then horses and cattle, depending on the region!), signs advertising orchards and apple picking, bright piles of pumpkins and scarecrows welcoming visitors to the farms lining the highway. I realized I hadn't driven to my grandmother's house in years and I'd forgotten what a beautiful drive it was, and how lucky we are to live in such a pretty nation!

Even better than the drive to North Carolina were the stories I learned about my grandparents during the three days I was there. Looking at old pictures, reading old letters, hearing Nana talk about how Gramps proposed, how she taught cooking classes and wrote articles for the ladies section of her local newspapers, how she adapted to Navy life in the 40s and 50s...and then talking to my mom at night, long after Nana had gone to bed. Talking to my mom about things only mothers and daughters talk about, sleeping in the same room as her, running errands with her for my grandmother. Then coming home late in the afternoon and telling stories over a bottle of wine about my dad as a little boy, looking at Nana's yellowed notebook where she planned her wedding over 60 years ago and comparing her dreams and ideas to my mother's 30 years ago and mine less than 2 years ago.

Walking from room to room at Nana's house, and wondering in her backyard, pulling memory after memory out of the attic, and feeling that pang of sadness when we piled so many memories by the curb for the garbage truck. Filling my trunk with the things we could keep, things Nana has passed down to me. Pictures of relatives I've never known, that will someday be passed down to my own children, when it will be my responsibility to tell them the stories of our family history. Not only was this trip a happy reminder of some of my happiest childhood memories, but a lesson in not forgetting those gone before me and paving the way for those who will come after. It was a reminder that every day is a chance to make a new memory, a new story, a new picture, that my children and grandchildren will one day sort through as they tell stories about me over a bottle of wine...