Old photographs

July/August 1922 - Grandma Wanda and Great Grandpa Walter in San Dimas Canyon

In cleaning out the garage, a long and arduous process, my father has been coming across things. He recently found a photo album that at first glance we thought was put together by his paternal grandmother, but I got ahold of this little artifact and found out that it was put together by my great aunt - my paternal grandmother's sister Crystal, who died at the young age of 33. The pages are black, like construction paper, and the words are written in white chalk or crayon. The photos are all of people she knew. She was a graduate of UCLA. Her family lived in Pomona, California (there are pictures of both houses they lived in along with addresses!) She went to bible study school one year. There was a horse named Dot that either the family had or neighbors had. She seemed to have quite a few friends. She looks a lot like my dad's sister - that was how I was able to identify her in pictures. She spent a lot of time in the outdoors. My grandma Wanda had two sisters, Nea and Crystal. Both of these girls died at the age of 33 - from causes I cannot remember right now - and when my Grandmother, the youngest, turned 33, her parents of course were worried that they would lose her too.


But they didn't. She lived on, was married, had two children and lived to be in her nineties and died in 1999. She was raised in Southern California and also went to UCLA. This is a picture of her as a young girl:
After I saw this the other day, my first thought was, "I wonder if this girl would have understood my sense of humor." I don't know why that popped up. I guess I got my sense of humor from my father, who says he got his sense of humor from his grandfather, the man in the picture at the top of this post, Wanda's father. I didn't know my grandma well, since I was a child most of her living years. Later on in life, she had dementia, and became childlike again. But what a wonderful memory this must have been for her. A day by the river with her family. What a great find this was! (thanks Dad!)

West coast family, An auntie's wisdom, the Handmade process

great grandma's hand-stitched quilt

We hail from the west coast - my whole family, both sides, live all up and down the west. My sister lives in a village in rural - make that "the bush"- Alaska, I have cousins in Seattle, an aunt and more cousins in Boise, my folks here in Sactown, and more cousins and an aunt in various places in southern California. I had one aunt in Texas. She lived south of Houston, on a little island - right up to about last September. My husband, son and I were in Boston as we watched the news of Hurricane Ike in all of it's doppler radar colors creep slowly up over Houston. My aunt had fleed north to weather the storm and escape its eye, but her little house was flooded beyond repair, and subsequently razed, along with many of its - her things.

I often think about how my aunt's devastation was my mother's and my luck. In January, she came to our town to live. Strangely enough she had been considering moving here - as we are her only family - and well before she had considered moving here I had had a dream that she lived here and was quite comfortably celebrating Christmas with us. Presto-chango, my aunt - whom I really did not know aside from the occasional card, crafted gift and infrequent visit - now lives here. It is great having her here. My mom is enjoying their time together too. My mom (who is also great with her hands, although uses different mediums - like beadwork = gorgeous necklaces) only recently, surely due to my aunt's influence, has picked up a crochet hook and knitting needles and gone to work on a ball of yarn. Friday evenings have become a semi-regular dinner date for all of us, where we get to show off our latest project. My aunt is a master craftsperson - although I'm not sure she would describe herself that way. She's done just about every thing a person can do with handcrafts and it is awesome to be able to learn from her.

In her house was many a project, books, and the things that make up a life. Much of it, save for the items higher up, was lost in the hurricane. I think about the handmade items that she can never again take out - the time spent on them, the resources lost. She works on new things now every day, and every time I see her I learn something new about her and tips or advice about whatever project I happen to be working on. What a gift for me - I only hope she enjoys sharing her knowledge and the wisdom that comes from all that she's done as much as I enjoy receiving it.

One of her latest projects is working on a quilt top. She's doing it by hand. Hand sewing. Not machine. "Why would you want to do it by hand when you can do it by machine?" I asked. "It's part of the process," she said. Of course. The sound you hear is my future master's degree bonking me in the head. That's sort of hard to explain. The whole idea of doing any work with your hands is to slow the process down, right? The truth is, we can buy just about anything we want. Just purchase it. But to make it yourself - to twist the silver with pliers, cut out the shape you have drawn, or pull the needle and thread through the fabric - the process of making something out of nothing, that is why we do it. The end product is great, yes, but the idea of the end product - the vision in your head of what it will look like before it is complete - that is what moves our hands. The repetition of the process, the more fluid way the hands move each time something is done, the way that the hands move as the motions go from being awkward and new to becoming fluid and familiar. All of this is the process. It has been done since forever and the speed with which we can produce things and buy them now makes it easy to forget how long it once took to create an item. A shirt, a chair, or a quilt were once so cared for that they went through numerous incarnations. Let us not forget our humble beginnings - we are rediscovering some humility as our dire economy toils on.

Anyway, here's a great big shout out to my aunt, and a real long explanation for the new button on my sidebar. Buy handmade - you'll know who made it - maybe not personally but at least by name, and it might not be perfect but it will have heart, something Walmart doesn't have.