My husband and I just got back from a trip to my home town of Nashville, TN. He'd never been there before and hadn't met the vast majority of my family, despite the fact that we've been married for 7 years now.
I am incredibly fortunate to be 40 years old and still have 3 living grandparents, but my grandfathers health is failing and I wanted my husband to meet him before it was too late to do so.
So, we took the long journey south, and he got to meet 2 of my 3 grandparents, we toured Nashville and best of all, he got to hear some of my families stories.
It's been a long time since I've told these stories to anyone, or have even thought about them. Some of them, I've heard so often over the course of my life, that they never seemed interesting to me. They were just stories about my grandparents & their lives. But as I get older, these stories grow more fragile and precious to me. My family has a strong oral history and my grandfather has kept detailed records of his parents families, so these stories are as familiar to me as my own name.
However, I would like to have some sort of written legacy to pass down to my daughter, as someday, she may find these interesting as well. My goal is to possibly put these into short story format and maybe into a book.
Eventhough this started out as a cooking blog, I'm cooking and baking less lately & I think this blog could be put to better use. Going forward I think I'm going to use this format to post stories as well as other projects I'm working on.
So, to start it off, I'm going to post a story about me and my grandfather.
When I was eight years old, my fathers, fathers mother, my great-grandmother Helen, told me a story about her son, my grandfather. She told me that when he was eight years old, just like me, she knew beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he was going to be a pilot when he grew up. She said that he had been so determined to fly, that he had climbed up on the roof of the garage, and like Icarus, threw himself at the sun, despite all logic, risking life and limb, to for a brief moment, be free of the bonds of gravity and be one with the air and the stars and all things heavenly.
He fell, of course, and broke his arm, but had learned from this and went on to go to military school, and when World War II broke out, he joined the US Marine Corps and sure enough, became a pilot. He became a bomber and flew Corsairs in both WWII as well as the Korean War. He became a flight instructor and taught how to fly in combat. After the wars, he was hired by American Airlines as a captain and remained so for many years.
My great-grandmother was extremely proud of her sons accomplishments, and told me this story to illustrate how with hard work and determination, I, too, could accomplish anything I desired.
This story stayed with me my entire life. I always admired my grandfather for knowing what he wanted to be so young in life & going after it with ferocity. I have never known what I wanted to do, and my life and been a long list of figuring out what I DON'T want to do, after it was already too late. I idolized him for this and for years every time I heard the Pink Floyd song "Learning to Fly" a tear was brought to my eye with thoughts of my grandfather and his passion.
Many years later, my grandmother passed away three weeks before my wedding day, and I flew to Nashville for her funeral. The funerals in my family are always full of mixed emotions. Sorrow for the loss, but joy at reuniting with family members I haven't seen in years.
After my grandmothers funeral, myself, my father, my cousin, aunt, grandfather and his brother were sitting around the living room telling stories to each other, and re-telling old ones and talking about my grandmother.
At this point, I brought up the story my great-grandmother had told me about how my grandfather wanted to fly and how I had always admired him for it.
My grandfather looked at me, cocked his head and said "What the
hell are you talking about?". Confused, I related the story I had been told. My grandfather covered his eyes & shook his head. His brother laughed hysterically and said "Tell her what you
really did, Harry!"
My grandfather told me, he hadn't been trying to fly at all. He said that he was in a fight with a boy from the neighborhood and he knew that every day, the boy walked through the alley between his garage and the neighbors to get home. He said he climbed up on the garage roof and lay on his belly and waited for "that little bastard" to walk by all day long, and as soon as he did, he leaped off the roof, on to the boy, broke his arm in the fall but still beat the hell out of him and sent him home crying.
I just stared at my grandfather, blinking and my uncle was laughing so hard I thought he was going to have a heart attack. I said "So, your poor mother went to the grave thinking you were a good boy and you never told her the truth?" He said "Hell no! She would've beaten me for fighting!"
It just goes to show, the truth is always the best story.
