Give something away every day of your life.

     This was one thing my grandmother truly believed in. She always had plenty but never stopped giving things away. Even in her final days in the continuous care center she would win notebooks and trinkets at bingo and when she saw us she would say - I picked this up for you take it. I can not begin to describe the number of meals, the truckloads of clothes , the produce, the quilts and blankets, the dishes, towells. and occational money she would give to me and the other grandkids. But the giving did not end withhher family she was always looking for people in need and seing that they were taken care of.

    Granny grew up during the depression, her father was a Railroad man and a local leader but he was also a philanderer and alchoholic. Her early life was not always easy. She had solice on her grandparents farm, and with her aunt who lived next door to her mother. There are some holes in her early life that are a bit of a mystery but she spoke often about her first jobs as a young teen in a sandwich shop, then other jobs as a butcher, a community organizer withthe community action association, and as an LPN. She worked with my grandfather for years pulling a living out of their farm and raising 4 kids - and helping raise a number of the neighborhood kids. 

     She said her favorite things in the world were hearing a new baby cry, counting money, and giving something away every day. She left us a couple of years ago but I see reflections of her every time I talk to my father, my Uncles and Aunts , or my cousins who like me were lucky enoughto have been raised  partially by her.