My Grandma

My grandma died in late January of 2007 but had she lived, she would have been 106 years old today, February 23. She had three children that collectively gave her 14 grandchildren. Those grandchildren gave her 32 great grandchildren and at the time of her passing, she had somewhere near 14 great great grandchildren.

I grew up in San Jose, California (near San Francisco) and my grandmother lived in Corpus Christi, on the Texas gulf coast. When I was growing up, I only saw her once a year. She would get on a Greyhound bus in Texas and take the three day ride to San Jose. She would stay with us for at least two weeks each summer, sometimes longer. For a long time, we were the only grandchildren she had in California so we got to keep her to ourselves. Later, my uncle moved there too so we had to share Grandma with those cousins. She always brought an extra suitcase that was filled will surprises for us kids and when she went back home, it would be filled with souvenirs and trinkets that she got in California during her visit. That was actually one of the things we loved about Grandma coming to visit us…when she was visiting, we would take her everywhere, even places where we didn’t get to go when we didn’t have her for company. We would go to Fisherman’s Wharf, to Playland At the Beach (which is no longer there but was an amusement park right across the beach in San Francisco), across the Golden Gate Bridge, and to all the tourist spots along the way. We would also go south to Santa Cruz to the Boardwalk on the beach there and to Half Moon Bay and Monterey. We took her to visit some of the California missions, too.

Then when it was time for her to go home to Texas, we would pile in the car (there were 10 of us including my parents and my grandmother) and drive her to the Greyhound station where we would all stand and wave and cry as her bus drove off and the long wait until the next summer began.

In between visits, we got birthday cards from her and I remember that she always sent a a $2 bill. Two dollars, although not a fortune, bought a lot more in the 50’s and 60’s than it does today and honestly, just because it was from Grandma, it meant a lot to us.

I miss her. I did drive from San Jose to Corpus Christi with the three kids once time. I wanted them to meet her and her to meet them so we made the long drive, taking it a little slower because it was just me driving and I stopped often to let the kids run around and stretch so it took us four and a half days. It was important to me. They got to meet their great grandmother and they saw the house where their grandmother grew up in and where I had visited as a child.

Happy birthday, Grandma.