I can still hear you

I literally found a treasure yesterday. Well, I didn’t find it, it was given to me but it is a treasure. It is a rather large 3-ring binder stuffed with both hand-written and typed (on a type-writer) pages filled with poems, stories, recollections, and notes of my great-grandmother’s.

Gramma passed away last summer and very shortly before she did she asked me to do something with her writing. I finally got my hands on it yesterday and am very hard at work already.

There are stories of her experiences in a one room schoolhouse in Wisconsin’s northwoods. There are short narratives written about relatives and ancestors; as much of their lives as she could gather and compile. There are lists of names of students who attended her school, the first people to settle the small (very , very, small) town she lived in her whole life, birthdays of all of her decedents, as well as the heights of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren at different times throughout their lives (these were recorded on the doorway which we entered her house through and then she wrote them all down.

There is even a composition book of her mother’s dated Dec 29, 1904. I have to do some more research to figure out which of these entries are original works and which she copied down (such as the Battle Hymn of the Republic), but it contains several poems and stories and I do know that she enjoyed writing as well.

Gramma was also an amazing storyteller; everything from fairy-tales to things she made up. I have been working on typing these from my memory as best as I can so that we have a record of them and can pass them on to our children. This project has been extremely difficult because as hard as I try, I cannot tell them exactly the same as she did and in this, something is lost. Included in the binder was a list of her stories and one of them written. It looks as though she had started the same project that I have. I was disappointed when I turned the page and realized it was only one of them but one is better than none and at least I have a list to work off of.

Probably my favorite thing that I found though, was what seems to be the workings of some poetry on the back of a football program from my dad and uncle’s senior year of high school. On the one side, was what seemed to be the first draft of a poem she wrote for my grandpa which I recognized. The other side though was obviously a very rough draft, with several cross-outs and write-overs and was clearly not finished. Please forgive me for doing this to you, Gramma; I truly understand the pain of having your work exposed before it is finished, but here it is:

So I’m giving you these tokens of the days
And when you look upon them you will know
That I’ll always love you and you’ll know this to be true…

Of course I don’t know that she wrote this for me but being that I just received this binder which I so truly treasure, it sure pertains.

I’m more excited about this collection of papers than I have been in a long, long time. It is so amazing to see her handwriting again and to hear her voice when I read her words. At the same time, it makes me miss her so much. I’ve also wanted to call her up several times to ask her about some of the things I am finding. I sure wish she would’ve shown me this stuff a while ago so we could’ve gone over it together! Oh well, maybe she wanted me to have to dig, to research, to make phone calls to relatives I’ve never met the way she always did when she needed a question answered. Maybe she wanted me to realize where I came from. Whatever her intentions, I know she wanted to be remembered. Of course those of us who were fortunate enough to have her as a regular component of our lives will never forget but I am incredibly thankful that she left us this treasure, this book of her to make it easier to remember her voice, her attitude, her outlook, and to help us in sharing her with those who came too late or haven’t come at all yet.