For Them

This is what I am thinking about this morning--this one is different, this one is for them.  This is why I write,  it has finally dawned on me.  I get it now--I think.  I want them to know me, to understand who I am and what made me the way I am.  I want them to get me.  I want them to know all the things that I didn't get to know--about them.  About my grandparents, and really about my parents too.  Because even though my parents are still living, they don't really talk much about their childhoods.  They have shared some things--funny things, hard things too.  But, not the nitty gritty everyday details of their life and what makes them who they are.  However, I am different.  I want mine to know.  Everything.  I want them to feel my love for them, to know my heart, to catch my vision.  To see my world, my life through my eyes.  So, I am writing for my children and my grandchildren.  I am writing about all the things that I wish I had known about mine.

I did not know my grandmother's favorite color, or how she felt about school, or what her interests or hobbies were.  I did not know anything about her first boyfriend or if she ever went to school dances, or if she even liked to dance.  I never thought to ask.  She was after all my grandmother.  She was old when I was born--or so I thought.  I am sad about that now.  I wish that I had known her better.  Did she like music, was she a reader, what were her interests?  I need to know these things!

I am not going to make that mistake.  Mine will know all about me.  It might come out in bits and pieces, slow and fractured but it will come out.  I will continue to write until there isn't a story left in me.  They will know me.  I will make sure of it.  They will know that my relationship with my God is the most important relationship in my life. They will know what I like to do, they will know about my childhood, my boyfriends--and yes there was more than just grandpa.  And they will know that I have an insatiable hunger for knowledge and that I love to read.  They will know that I love to cook and travel and that I love animals and that I used to ride horses...I want them to really know who I am.  Their grandmother, who loves them more than mere words could ever express.

It is also important that my children come to know and understand me.  Over time they'll discover why I say and do certain things.  They will find out all about my fears, my hopes for them and my dreams for myself.  They'll read all about it in this blog.  Some way somehow they'll know me.  Their mom.

I will have this all printed out one day just for them.  As they read the pages of my life they will come to an understanding of who I am.  I was a daughter and a sister, a friend and a wife and a mother and then one awesome day I became their grandma.  How sweet is that?