I was talking to a friend one day having one of those
conversations that started with, “Did you try that recipe for pizza?” and ended
with, “That would make a great story.”
I was recalling a day with my great grandfather. In his
nineties when I was five or six, he had Alzheimer’s but to me he was just as
normal as anyone else. He sat on
the swing in his front yard one spring day in his dirty grey bowler hat, jacket
zipped up to the collar. His
beautiful whistle echoed across the yard.
That morning I was drawn to my great grandparent’s house next
door and I asked Doda to teach me how to whistle.
A glimmer of recognition came to his face. In broken English, he said, “Nunda,
make your mouth like this and blow.”
I did but only a weird howl came out. I was born with a birth defect that
stole any chance of whistling away but still, Doda tried.
As suddenly as the swing moved backward, his memory slipped
away.
That was the
story I recounted to my friend followed by a tale of Doda’s migration to
the United States as man in his late twenties. Bringing along a fifteen year
old bride, arranged in marriage by her parents, Doda and Babbie used all their
money to purchase one way ships passage to America.
More than sixty years later, children, grand children and
great grandchildren that included me, Doda lived a full life and seemed content
to sit on that swing under the big elm tree in the front yard of his one
bedroom house that sat on the lot next to ours and, in his lucid moments, he
told stories to me.
And I paid attention because, even when I was young, something
inside said those stories were important.
I knew I had to remember the excitement in Doda’s voice as he spoke of
his first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. I knew how lucky I was to be born into a family where my
great grandparents were alive to tell me stories that seemed so foreign and
unimaginable. My great
grandparents were like living storybooks, as old as their tales and as wise as
their words portrayed.
The day during the conversation with my friend, she added the
story of her family. Ancestors she
didn’t know migrated to the new land. From which country, she had no clue, but she knew of the baby
they found on the edge of a river. His parents killed by people they supposed were Indians, the
baby left to die in his massacred mother’s arms. By the prodding of what I can only guess was Gods lead, the
infant survived and, when he was old enough, he married their daughter and took
the family name.
Covered wagons, harsh winters, disease, struggle, love,
commitment and the will to make a better life was the goal of the immigrants
and I combined all that I was lucky enough to hear as a child to write my
historical romance Travis Pass Series.
I presented my friend with the first chapter of Travis Pass
and she read every page right then.
With tears in her eyes she said, “This is amazing. You should try and get it
published.”
So I did. For her,
and Doda--and my own children who grew up with their own trove of stories told
by my grandmothers, their great grandmothers, who lived into their nineties. Many
times my children sat listening to bohemian accents flavoring each sentence,
wrinkled hands gracing the air as if movement could open a curtain to the
past.
And maybe someday, my great grandchildren will ask about my
life which, as the past makes way for the future, may seem so strange to them
that something will draw them to take notice. Perhaps they’ll be inspired as I was.
Visit my website and read the essay I wrote about Doda’s
whistle and learn about the rest of my work. http://annettesnyder.atspace.com
or my unique blog which includes
writing talent and promoters -Fifty Authors from Fifty States http://annettesnyder.blogspot.com
