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Showing posts with label grandpa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grandpa. Show all posts

Monday, February 7, 2011

A long time ago . . .


A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. They drove away and left it lonely and empty in the clearing among the big trees, and they never saw that little house again.


from
Little House on the Prairie
by
Laura Ingalls Wilder
07 February 1867 - 10 February 1957


Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Until I see you again




I read a note my grandma wrote back in nineteen twenty-three.
Grandpa kept it in his coat, and he showed it once to me. He said,
"Boy, you might not understand, but a long, long time ago,
Grandma's daddy didn't like me none, but I loved your Grandma so."


We had this crazy plan to meet and run away together.
Get married in the first town we came to, and live forever.
But nailed to the tree where we were supposed to meet, instead
Of her, I found this letter, and this is what it said:


If you get there before I do, don't give up on me.
I'll meet you when my chores are through;
I don't know how long I'll be.
But I'm not gonna let you down, darling wait and see.
And between now and then, till I see you again,
I'll be loving you. Love, me.


I read those words just hours before my Grandma passed away,
In the doorway of a church where me and Grandpa stopped to pray.
I know I'd never seen him cry in all my fifteen years;
But as he said these words to her, his eyes filled up with tears.


If you get there before I do, don't give up on me.
I'll meet you when my chores are through;
I don't know how long I'll be.
But I'm not gonna let you down, darling wait and see.
And between now and then, till I see you again,
I'll be loving you. Love, me.
Between now and then, till I see you again,
I'll be loving you. Love, me.


Performed by Collin Raye


Written
by
Skip Ewing & Max T. Barnes



Tuesday, April 14, 2009

We are formed by our family histories



How easy it is to forget from where family has come and how far. How easy to forget, as I sit at my computer, my grandfather's battered lunch pail, and my grandmother leaning over an aluminum tub with a washboard and Grandpa's soapy shirt. Such knowledge brings humility. It demands gratitude. We are formed, in part, by our family histories. . . . from Family history is more than names by Tina Griego, Denver Post Columnist