Family Stories

It's kind of hard for me to think of any family stories - for some reason my family wasn't big on passing down tales from previous generations. I certainly don't have a wealth of stories like that of the author of Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins. However, I do remember my mother telling me every so often about her mother, Jean. My grandmother died of breast cancer when my mom was only 27, before I was born. Though I never knew my grandmother, the aged, black and white photographs that my mother kept served as the template for who I thought of as my grandmother Jean. Whenever I think of her, this one image comes to mind: a striking woman - not necessarily "gorgeous", but certainly attractive in her own right - with a "stylish" 60's hair-do, horn-rimmed glasses, and most noticeably, eyes that contained wisdom and knowledge of which I never had the opportunity to appreciate. 

My mother always made a point when raising me to expose me to many different cultures and ways of thinking. I've learned that that was a trait she got from her mother, and she told me many times. My grandmother was a nutritionist who headed the cafeteria at the elementary school where my mother and aunt went (as a working woman in the earlier 20th century, I always admired my grandmother's independence; breaking the norm of the typical housewife). This cafeteria connection afforded my mom many delicious, unpaid-for treats in the lunch line - the cafeteria workers were eager to make their boss's daughters happy. 

My grandfather Murray was in the navy, and while he was on a tour in Japan, Jean and a friend had traveled to various destinations across the world, including a stop in Japan to meet up with my grandfather. In addition to many collectibles and artifacts (a knitted wool sweater from Portugal and a sake cup set come to mind), Jean also procured a fondness for foreign foods. At home, Jean would make exotic dishes for the family, like General Tso's chicken or curried lamb, far from the bland meals of meat and potatoes that normally graced the dining room tables of South Carolina suburbia. Often at dinner parties, her guests would eye the colorful, exotic smelling dishes with scrutiny and hesitance before their under-stimulated taste buds were shocked back to life.

It was stories like this one that my mother told me that formed the grandmother I think of today. I never knew her, and only know her face from old photographs, but I do know that she was an independent woman who not only had the gusto to work her way up to the head of a business, but also travel around the world with a girlfriend, and surprise her neighbors with "risque" dinners from abroad - all accomplishments that women rarely claimed at the time. Her modernity and independence influenced my mother, and has certainly influenced me.