When I was still taking courses for my bachelor's degree, I expressed the desire to write about my grandmother's life. My professor recommended that I start interviewing her soon, but it was (like too many of my ideas) something that kept getting pushed back until later. I do not have many true regrets in my life, but that is certainly one of them.
I wanted to share just a few facts from her life (some which I did not know until today):
1. The first time she arrived in America (1922 when she was four), she and her family was turned back because they only had one visa for the family and her mother was too pregnant to make the trip. She remembered scolding her baby brother in his crib for making her leave America.
2. She survived one of the ten most deadly tornadoes in history. She didn't understand why the other girls "were screaming because is couldn't do any good".
3. She often suffered from pneumonia (even before starting to smoke at the age of 12). Her mother used "upside-down shot glasses and just-blown-out matches" on her chest to create vacuums to suck out the infection, a practice she referred to as "voodoo."
4. She worked at Al Capone's Coliseum, but left after rejecting "propositions".
5. She lived, for a time, with prostitutes.
6. She left her first husband when she was pregnant with my uncle Norman and had difficulties with childcare and housing that her mother (who tried to get her to have an abortion) would not help with.
7. She was hired for (and often quickly fired from) several jobs in which she had no experience, but claimed that she did.
8. She met my grandfather in a crowded bar that neither of them wanted to go to. It was love at first sight, and they married despite his family's disapproval.
9. Her lung problems continued throughout her life. In the 1950's a doctor suggested that one of them be removed, a procedure that she decided against. Thus she was surprised (and quite angry at God) when Paul, my grandfather, suddenly passed away in 1961, from which point she raised her four boys on her own.
10. On her last day, my uncle asked what he could do for her. She wanted to dance, so he lifted her so her feet were on his and they "danced" in her room while she hummed a tune.
She was an amazing, courageous, and strong-willed woman. I wish I had written her story.