I admit that more than once I have been frustrated during the work on the fictional biography of my paternal great-grandmother Leta. The more
I write about her, her childhood, her parents, her siblings, her marriages, her
relationship with my grandmother and great-uncle, and her many sexual
relationships, the more I want to ask her and others in our family questions.
Some of these questions are: Did your sister Mabel have both the same parents as you? If she did,
when was she actually born? Why did your father leave, return and leave again?
And what happened to him after he left the second time? Where did your brother
Fred go when he left? When did your father, Fred and Mabel leave? How old were
your sister and brother when they did this? How often did you stay in touch
with Fred? How did your older brother Samuel, the first-born, die at age one or
so? How did you meet each of your husbands? Why did you marry each one? Did you
ever feel anxious or guilty about sleeping with so many different men? Who knew
about your sexual activities and sexual relationships? (By “relationships,” I
mean those that lasted more than a couple of nights.) Did you ever break up a
marriage? Who was Curtis? Were you married to him? Did he actually die in a car
accident or was that someone else? Did you pretend to be married to some men
just to save face? Did you just meet men in bars or did you meet men in other
places? Aside from my grandmother and Uncle Dale, did you ever get pregnant
again? Did you always go to church? How religious were you? Did you miscarry or
have an abortion? When and why did you leave my grandmother and her brother
with Ralph? Did Ralph really beat you? Did any of your husbands beat you? Do
you have any regrets? If so, what are they?
Naturally, question after question arises as I work on the
book. I have some dates of things to serve as the basis for parts of the story,
but I need to embellish. I know, for instance, that she watched Billy Graham
revivals on television in her later years and that she was a churchgoer in
various periods of her life, but until she became Roman Catholic during her
years living at the senior home, I did not know what denomination. (I think she
converted from being Lutheran, primarily so she could participate fully in the
services there; the senior home was Roman Catholic-based.)
I wish I could have a long talk with my grandmother about her
mother and their relationship. How much
did she remember of her parents’ marriage, divorce and her mother’s subsequent
marriages? What happened that landed her and her brother at their father’s
house? Why did her father move back in with his parents, and even after he
married Eunice, stay with them? What do you remember about Eunice? I know
practically nothing about her, except when and where she was born, that she was
married prior to marrying my great-grandfather, that they married in 1929, and
that she died in 1934. How did you meet
my grandfather? How long did you date before you were married? What happened to
you so that you were told you could have no other children after my father? How
much did it hurt you to give birth to Uncle Larry and Aunt Linda, respectively,
12 and 14 years after the birth of my father?
With the death of June Scott, daughter of Leta’s brother
Aaron, I no longer have any primary storytellers, those who have lived during
my great-grandmother’s younger days. While my father and his cousin Connie were
both children and even adults during several of her marriages, neither can
recall very much, just a few experiences here and there.
Yes, my great-grandmother is fascinating. Anyone who is
married at least seven times (I have pulled that many marriage certificates via
genealogy searches and from two county courthouses) and divorced at least four
times is fascinating. That she is a beloved grandmother, who when I was a
child, shared her hard candy, let me play with her little parakeets, gave me
the Snoopy and the Red Baron game that I loved so much, and chatted with me, my
sister and my friends for hours and hours in her last years.
What made her tick? That’s what I’m figuring out through the
facts, through the history, through the memory. That’s what I have to work
with, and I am.
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