Saturday

Grandma Kallman leaves a gift from the past

It always irked me a bit that grandma saved everything and I mean EVERYTHING. We had to unwrap Christmas and birthday gifts slowly and carefully because she reused the paper. She washed off tinfoil and folded it for another time. Each and every card she received she carefully wrote the date and who gave it to her and put it away for safekeeping. I once saw her take 6 to 10 leftover peas (I swear to you I am not making this up) and put them in an old saved jelly glass and popped them in the frig. for later meals. I figured it was most likely a legacy of the Great Depression. She was also forever writing things down, making lists. Where all those cards ended up I haven't a clue but one list she meticulously typed out in duplicate with old time carbon paper over a half century ago would be a priceless gift. When my father died in 1989 I found among his papers and memorabilia this:




Grandma Lydia had made a list. A list of the names of her children and the circumstances of their birth. A list of her and my grandpa Richard's parents and siblings with the dates and places of their birth, deaths, married names and where they now resided at the time of her writing. She knew that although she remembered, someday she would be gone and she wanted her children, she wanted her grandchildren, she wanted US to know who we were and where we had come from.

Thank you Grandma Kallman.