Family Artifacts

The nice thing about my mom visiting me is that she always bring interesting presents. This year, it was tangerines and avocados from her garden, a necklace from Tahiti, and something from my grandmother's belongings.

My grandmother passed away when I was 20 (about) and my mom now lives in her old house. Every so often, my mom has to downsize my grandma's stuff, so sometimes she brings them for me. (I've already laid claim to the steamer trunks filled with her letters, which I plan on adopting when I'm ready to organize them and do something with them.) This year, she brought a scrapbook that my grandmother assembled when she was in nursing school, around 1931.

As I've mentioned before, my grandmother was an amateur poet. This scrapbook contains some poems, notes from her studies, and articles she found intriguing. One of those articles in entitled "Is Kissing Wrong?" and another is a polemic against a woman president.

It's really interesting to see what my grandmother thought about when she was in her early twenties. It's also amazing that her handwriting hadn't changed. As soon as I opened it, I saw the same handwriting that graced letters and cards throughout my childhood, but written in a surer, stronger hand. I didn't know my grandmother as well as I would have liked, but artifacts like these help me feel a little more connected to her.