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What i remember...
So many trips to Yosemite. Lovely evenings in the cabin. Walks on many paths. The Ansel Adams gallery. (What an introduction!) Learning about the history present in and around Yosemite. Your orange chicken. Games around the table. Always wanting to be on your Trivial Pursuit team (or Tom's, but i needed one of you two on my team to win).
Our trips to Disneyland. Car trips here and there and around and about.
Gingerbread girls, with my name on them.
Stringing Christmas lights to your house the winter your mother died, because you didn't want to come back to a dark house at a time like that.
My mom teaching us to make refrigerator potato rolls (our holiday bread). And Christmas cookies. And ravioli assembly lines. Indian Fry bread with honey with you at Festival. Ginger ale.
Writing my paper on a female hero (heroine, if you will) for an AAUW writing contest in Junior High. About you. Meaning it.
You taking me out in your '57 Chevy. I don't remember where we went, those trips about Livermore, but it was in your car, and it was always a treat. Years later, taking you out for a spin, with you driving, in my mom's new blue Miata. (Top down, you wearing my greek fisherman's cap and a scarf.)
Music with you. The Livermore-Amador symphony as a child, and a few years ago, the San Francisco Symphony for a Sunday afternoon performance.
You teaching me that women can and will do most anything a man can do, even if there are cultural and social barriers. Teaching me about the AAUW. Teaching me about history. Showing me that there are causes worth fighting for - fighting hard. Leading me by example.
Hearing about how you not only were a ranking officer on a Navy ship in WWII, not only the only woman on the ship, but Ronald Reagan's leading lady in the on-board skit performed when he was flown out to amuse the troops.
Your care for critters and animals; your encouragement in all things i cared about, especially critters and biology and science.
Your astounding stash of bags. 8)
The first time i told someone outside our families that you were my grandma. I must have been 8 or 9. It was the first year we took you to choose and cut a Christmas tree for your house when we went to get ours; the owner looked at us (me holding your tree in one of my hands, and your hand in the other) and asked who the tree was for. I answered, "For my grandma's." I remember you smiling at me, and thinking that something special had just happened, but not really understanding quite what, or how much it meant to you.
You and Tom coming to visit me and take me to dinner in Santa Cruz, when i was in college.
Your generosity and acceptance of every crazy boyfriend i ever brought home to meet you. Including Russell.
How much it hurt over the last few years when your cancer therapy kept you from being able to eat (but not able to see us, go out with us, or visit and love us). How much joy it brought when you were able to eat again in these last few years, with the gusto and joy i remember.
Not being able to imagine how old you were. Or losing you. The picture of you and Tom in Yosemite is the icon of you in my mind.
Your (& Tom, individually) wishes for me on my wedding day: that i be blessed with as many amazing years with Russell as you shared with Tom. And your wedding gift of our wedding night at the Claremont hotel - because that's where you and Tom had your wedding reception and stayed on your wedding night.
Last Saturday, March 2nd, when you came out of your fog, looked at me, smiled, and said 'Oh, hi, meriko' - exactly as i remember you saying it every time you saw me for the last 23 years.
Holding your hand this last week. Kissing you goodbye each night as i left.
Holding Tom's hand today. Saying goodbye as the Honor Guard saluted you.
And that's not even the half of it. Go with peace, Lorraine. I love you.
Posted by meriko at March 13, 2002 08:09 PM