I stopped writing 6 weeks ago when my grandma died at age 93. I felt like I couldn't blog until I wrote something about her and I just didn't know what to say.
She was an amazing woman with personality that you really can't put into words. You had to meet Stella and experience her to understand what she was all about. And many, many people did meet her and kept coming back again and again to visit her.
She lived in a gorgeous white farmhouse in the tiny dairy farming hamlet of Bovina, New York where there are undoubtedly more cows than people. But Bovina is close enough to New York City that lots of city people escape to the rural tranquility of the Catskill Mountains on weekends. Dozens of those people stopped along the road to enjoy and photograph my grandma's dazzling garden - her pride and joy - and if there was one thing Stella could do, it was chat with anybody.
She had a library of stories to tell from her 9 fully-lived decades and she loved telling them as much as the listeners enjoyed hearing them. After all, how often do you encounter someone who can tell you first-hand about catching prairie dogs as a child during recess from a one-room schoolhouse on the South Dakota plains to earn bounty money for school supplies? Yeah. She lived in a time that now seems so distant that you'd be likely to hear about it only from a documentary on The History Channel. To come from the fast-paced world of college, computers, instant messaging, cell phones, etc. into her home where modernity kept its distance and time seemed to creep slowly left you shaking your head, but smiling too. Stella seemed to keep living life like "the good old days".
What I loved most about my grandma was how much joy she had for life and how she reveled in the littlest things: how the wind was blowing the grass in the field, the brilliant color of a poppy, a postcard from an old friend, a robin perched on a bush, a sweater with good pockets, and a visit no matter whether it was a long-time friend or a stranger stopping to admire her flowers. She loved life and I loved her and I will miss her terribly. I hope those who were lucky enough to know her will try to enjoy the world around them as much as she did.
For pictures, see my sister's blog.
Now, back to blogging.
She was an amazing woman with personality that you really can't put into words. You had to meet Stella and experience her to understand what she was all about. And many, many people did meet her and kept coming back again and again to visit her.
She lived in a gorgeous white farmhouse in the tiny dairy farming hamlet of Bovina, New York where there are undoubtedly more cows than people. But Bovina is close enough to New York City that lots of city people escape to the rural tranquility of the Catskill Mountains on weekends. Dozens of those people stopped along the road to enjoy and photograph my grandma's dazzling garden - her pride and joy - and if there was one thing Stella could do, it was chat with anybody.
She had a library of stories to tell from her 9 fully-lived decades and she loved telling them as much as the listeners enjoyed hearing them. After all, how often do you encounter someone who can tell you first-hand about catching prairie dogs as a child during recess from a one-room schoolhouse on the South Dakota plains to earn bounty money for school supplies? Yeah. She lived in a time that now seems so distant that you'd be likely to hear about it only from a documentary on The History Channel. To come from the fast-paced world of college, computers, instant messaging, cell phones, etc. into her home where modernity kept its distance and time seemed to creep slowly left you shaking your head, but smiling too. Stella seemed to keep living life like "the good old days".
What I loved most about my grandma was how much joy she had for life and how she reveled in the littlest things: how the wind was blowing the grass in the field, the brilliant color of a poppy, a postcard from an old friend, a robin perched on a bush, a sweater with good pockets, and a visit no matter whether it was a long-time friend or a stranger stopping to admire her flowers. She loved life and I loved her and I will miss her terribly. I hope those who were lucky enough to know her will try to enjoy the world around them as much as she did.
For pictures, see my sister's blog.
Now, back to blogging.
posted by Andrea at 1:30 AM
1 Comments:
What a terrific tribute to your grandma. Welcome back to blogging.
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