Back in the Ring

We left Saturday for rest and play. While I had hoped to make my visit a stealthy one where I could really focus on the project, Sherry wisely called in the troops for a fun day of visiting with family. The aforementioned cousin Chris, and my own Cousin Houston both came up with their wonderful families to hang out and enjoy a meal together.

Sunday, Grandma and I were eager to get back to the grind. I was excited to have our first round of interviews. After discussing her travels, we got onto the topic of faith. At one point, I was literally taken aback and had to stop the interview. We have the same opinion of faith, where it belongs in one's life, and how our opinions of Christianity were shaped. We even both had stories of how adventures in the ocean have placed things into perspective for us. This is a woman with whom I've only had week-long visits once every year or so throughout my upbringing. This is the first time that I've ever talked to her about religion, and yet the similarities are striking. I'd say this picture that I took from my great-great grandmother's autograph book sums it up pretty well.

On Connections

I'm sitting alone in my grandmother's study while she naps in between interviews. Looking through her photo albums, the reality of her longevity, as well as her direct connection with those before her, is pressing down heavily upon me.

Photographs of unsmiling, stoic men and women in unfamiliar dress have now been brought to life - not as Katherine [insert three middle names] Crawford but as Aunt Kate, who would laugh and joke and serve as a strong pillar for my young grandmother from time to time. Individuals who had served in the Civil War are characters in Grandma's life stories, and she is one in mine. The continuity is impressive to say the least.

I find myself thinking a lot about these connections - how important they are, how I am tied to the project, and how other people are as well. My father's cousin, Chris Pronger, is the grandson of said Auntie Kate. He heard about the project and brought over a whole bin of goodies from his family history, and this shed a lot of light on my great-great grandmother, Alice Bradley Crawford (pictured above with husband Commodore Perry Crawford). Even lay-people around the town have been interested in hearing about the project. It is neat to see how it just draws people in.

However, along the theme of connections, I think one of the more interesting ones that I have come to observe has been that of my Aunt Sherry. She has been a saint in the background of most of the interviews, helping to set the record straight when Grandma's memory escapes her. As wonderful as anyone will agree the project is, no one's life is perfect and no one's history can be told in a vacuum. Plainly speaking, the trials and tribulations that Go Go went through to find her own happiness in life may have sometimes, understandably and unfortunately, come at the disregard for that of others.

Without going into details but adding the disclaimer that it's not the events themselves that were found to be unsettling, I want to express how the act of putting one's life's events into words can make new connections and bring a different understanding to those others that have also lived through them.

What does this mean? Well I don't think that it is only Aunt Sherry that would be affected like this, but anyone really that had been close to Grandma at any point throughout her life. This re-living of history through someone else's perspective, particularly through the trying times, possibly re-opens doors that had been peacefully shut a long time ago. It is truly mentally and emotionally taxing for all involved.

The ultimate thought is that perhaps it's good that it is a grandchild that sought out to conquer this project. That perhaps an extra degree of separation is needed to capture grandma as she chooses to be captured. And then I ponder if I have any bias of my own, and if it might even be helpful to turn all of the recordings over to a friend and have them draft something instead. Of course I won't, and as I have written over and over now, that even though it's a book about her, that the project is, by design, intensely personal. Even if I thought that I could objectively scribe my grandmother's life, I think it's these connections that make the project so special in the first place. I can only hope that the final product is fitting of the great woman.

Day 2

It captures Grandma just as well to describe this process as it does to describe what awful people we are in the name of fun. We dove into interviews just after I arrived in Prescott, and Sherry and I were both worried about whether Go Go's voice could hold up over the week. That very next morning, at an early early hour, we learned just what toll the interviews had taken on my sweet grandmother.

She called my aunt and sounded like death. She explained that she overdid it, that her guts were all torn up, and that she was calling from the hospital. She called an ambulance because she didn't want to wake my aunt. Could she put a nurse on the phone? No, she doesn't really know where one is, or where she is... they had kept moving her for tests. As my aunt's heart sinks lower, and her stomach ties itself into knots of its own, Grandma cackles out a satisfied "April Fools!"

The woman is evil.

Which is why I don't feel one ounce of remorse for asking Grams to pose while I took this pretty picture with Sherry's help...


Over two loooong series of interviews, we covered "the neighborhood," schooling, professional days, and (the absolute sassiest) love and marriage. I am having so much fun making such personal connections. For instance, my father is the most capable man in the world, and can do just about any project he sets forth to accomplish. And so could his father. And so could his grandfather. And so could his his grandmother.

I talk a lot about a Western mentality, and frankly a lot about women of the West. It's difficult to describe, but perhaps it's best done by sharing: my great-grandmother went behind her husband's back to borrow money and bought a five-acre parcel of land where she decided they would build their own house. They did so with their own hands, but it was only at the behest (read: kick in the ass) of Granny the Great. Subtle, no?

It's tempting to go on and describe so much of her interesting life here and now, but I will not. Like I said in my first post, this blog is really about my own connection to my grandmother's story. After we finished our two-hour segment on romance, I was compelled to ask the question that isn't the most eloquent, and isn't the most delicate.

"Grandma, you must understand, on my mother's side of the family, all of the women are married still. I cannot think of one of them, dead of alive that is divorced. On my father's side of the family, all of the women are divorced. I cannot think of one of them that is married still." The question that eventually makes its way through all the preface, is on which side of the family's coin will I fall? What is it that keep's my maternal's side fast to their fidelity, and what is it -circumstance, society, temperament- that leaves Grandma, all of my aunts, great aunts, and even a cousin in the single state they are?

Her answer did not come easy, and it is just as difficult to summarize, but in short, it's a combination of all three. Some marriages are quite unhappy, and not one of our women can be blamed for a bad fit. Some is because in the Eastern Rust Belt, society is much more intertwined and less forgiving. And equally important (and just as terrifying for me) is that the Western Woman (if there is such a thing)(oh there totally is) is confident, self-empowered, and has less of a tolerance for an uncomfortable situation. Well, there's your answer - take it or leave it.
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After a full day of interviews, my darling grandmother went home, and Sherry and I set off for Whiskey Row to blow off some steam. As we were getting ready to leave, we both marveled at the day, but also about our sneaky sneaky Go Go. Justice must be served.

I called over to Grandmother as she was likely getting ready for bed, and told her that all of our recordings were accidentally erased. As she was fretting, I told her not to fear, that I had already sent Sherry off to town so that we could get this done, and assured her that despite her protests, I could brew a strong pot of coffee so that she could stay up and re-interview.

Sherry and I had a great time yelling "April Fools!" into the phone. I was told Grandma's goat was so gotten that the woman couldn't get to sleep. Serves her right.