A Grandma's love never ends


Life is so exciting these days. There are no iguanas or parks full of statues, but there is great adventure in my living room right now. The adventure found in a few boxes of pictures and papers.
I traveled to 3 countries to see my living relatives. Now I'm spending some quality time with ones that are long gone for the next world.
My Grandma Szpradowski loved me. Of this I am sure. She called me Precious. Long before any over used Lord of the Ring references. I lived mostly with my Grandma for 6 years in a old Victorian kind of house a block from a huge park in Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. She watched over me and she loved me. It's an honor to say: I made her smile. She makes me smile still, 25 years after she left this earthly experience.
I have the privilege right now of reading her journal when she was in her later years and took a trip to Poland. I'm not sure, it may have been her first and last trip. I still have to finish reading the journal. I'm taking my time, it's a bit tricky. I'm totally engrossed in what she did, who she spent time with, where she went, and all the Catholic things that were so important to her. I'm at the really juicy part of the journal where she takes a trip to go visit where my Grandfather was from. I was in Poland for a month, but it was so hard to get from where we were to this tiny little village where my Grandfather was born. We tried to plan it out, but it was too complicated with train, and bus and cab and all that. We even had some new friends try to go with us who were bilingual, but the more we looked, the more we realized it would take almost all day just to get there.
So when I found the journal I was pretty excited. This is my Grandfather who never spoke about where he was from, never spoke of family. Not to me. My Mom - his daughter - says he only spoke of one niece that she knew of. I went to Poland for a month to trace my family tree and came up pretty empty handed. Then I found the dozens of pictures from my Grandmother's trip and saw the name of the town where my Grandfather was born. I found a picture that was taken at a cemetery in front of a grave with a name on it. It has my Grandfather's last name, but spelled differently. It was a HUGE aha!! moment. Now I can look some more.
All these tiny clues adding up. What she wrote on the back of the photo I'm not sure - it's in Polish. I have to make a to do list of my to do lists with all of this research. I finally found a book to put all the research in, and I'm going to do better at documenting what I do - it's vital to the details I am trying to figure out.
But this trip journal is too exciting to me. Who was Grandma? She wasn't very rich, or very famous. One of the most special things about her was the love we shared. The love she shared with her family. She is a wealth of love and information to me! I wish she was here now to talk to. She is very soothing to the soul, I'm telling you. One of her biggest legacies to me is the tiniest trip journal that was preserved for over 30 years, waiting for me to discover it. It may not be amazing to anyone else, but it's completely amazing to me. Too amazing. I have things I need to do, but I can't put down this journal. It's so small. It's the size of a small note pad. I'm just thankful she wrote it in English. But it's also in miniature cursive writing. I don't know how she did it, really. I couldn't write that small. And maybe because Polish was her first language, but she wrote backwards in the journal. She started on the last page on May 19th and ended on the first page on June 29th. It's hard to make my brain follow where one page ends and one sentence continues. Thank goodness Ron just bought a 9 inch iPad! I can take a picture of the small book and then see it much better on the big screen. It's still giving me a bit of a crick in the neck though. It makes me take a break from my reading.
It's interesting to think about it. She wrote that itsy bitsy journal 32 years ago in 1984. Who else has read it but me? She wrote it for herself, I'm guessing. I wonder if she knew how great a treasure it would become to me now? Probably not. Life works in mysterious ways. I feel like she wrote the journal just for me!
If you haven't written out a few pages of your favorite parts of your life history - you should start now. Start today. Start on January first. Start on a scrap of paper. Buy a book and write one sentence a day. Just start. It's your story. Tell it.
                                 Grandma, I love you!!!!!



Sorting through boxes of pictures from my Grandma's house that have been in storage.


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