because she still calls him daddy

I have started a new endeavor. I had this idea a few years ago, and Brent finally pushed me into actually getting started this year. So last week I packed up Blythe and headed over to Grandma Pat's house. Brent's grandma Pat was born in 1926, remembers EVERYTHING, and is so fun to sit and share a cup of coffee with and listen to her life stories. 

I thought it would be cool if I could somehow collect her stories and memories and history and then weave it into some sort of narrative/book. If nothing else, I just don't want her unique childhood to not be remembered. Last week I recorded a tape and a half of our conversations, have since typed up four pages of notes, and am looking forward to the next visit. I already have some amazing stories: like the time she and two other girls packed their bags and were going to run away to Europe, only to be found on the edge of town by a man named Snake Huff riding bareback on a white horse, or when her freshman class was herded into study hall to listen to the radio about some place called Pearl Harbor, or how during the great depression a family traveled to their town to put on some shows and her mother enlisted one of the girls to teach Pat and her sister how to tap dance. I am looking forward to writing these stories and can only hope that my feeble attempts will somehow capture this amazing woman's life. 

She still refers to her father, who passed away when she was nine years old, as "Daddy." And long after our coffee is gone and the tapes are filled up, she will still have more stories to tell. I think that is a beautiful thing. So I want to DO something. It may not amount to much, or I may spend years trying to capture her life perfectly. Only time will tell. But I'm doing something about it right now. I don't know if Blythe with remember her Great Nini Pat, but I can be certain she will know all about her.