Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Lunch with an Ancestor

Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month.
March 16 — If you could have lunch with any female family member (living or dead) or any famous female who would it be and why? Where would you go? What would you eat?

I know I'm a couple of days late with this one. It took a little thought.

I would go to lunch with my cousin, Lela Carson Johnson Burge. Lela was my dad's half first cousin. Lela's mother and my grandmother were half sisters. Growing up, Lela always told us we were "distantly" related. Hah! She was a special person in our lives and in mine particularly. Lela was also the storyteller in the family circle. We hung on her every word. She lived through the depression. She lived in Colorado and California as well as in Ohio. She lost her only son in a WWII flight training accident. She was a music teacher. She was a grand lady standing not quite 5 foot tall, if that.

I would love to have lunch with her - again - and talk about our family to learn even more. She had insisted that her grandmother had not divorced her first husband to marry a second time. (That is a whole different story). Yet, I did find the divorce record. I would want to know more about her grandmother and her second husband (and the first husband, too) I would love to tell her how much I have learned about our family - the good and the bad. She might be a bit appalled that I found the divorce record, though.

I always thought of her as a third grandma. An overnight at her place was always an experience. Lela lived to be almost 106 years of age. She had a lifetime of stories of her own to tell.

We would go on a picnic in a park with a river or water flowing neaerby. Sandwiches and lemonade with plenty of pickles on the side. Cookies for dessert.




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