In The Beginning

How DOES one begin a blog. Perhaps with just a simple description of what I'm going to put here.

I remember looking at my Grandmother after she died. She was 103 years old, but her face, calm and peaceful after the pain and discomfort of her last weeks in hospital, seemed so much younger. She'd had an unusual life, a life full of little adventures and trials. As I grew up I heard about what had gone on before, sometimes from her and sometimes from her daughter, my dearly loved Aunt Ella, known forever in the family as Auntie Lala because a baby, me, couldn't pronounce "Ella".

I heard stories, family legends in fact, about my Grandfather, Edward Valentine 'Val' Moody, and about Ella's childhood in Santa Cruz, California, a childhood full of sun and water and pranks and adventures. They were all vivid in her mind, as clear as if they'd happened only yesterday.

But looking down at my Grandmother I suddenly found myself wishing I could have just another week, another day, with her so that I could ask her about all the stories, her stories and family stories, that were lost now forever. They were a rich heritage and I wished then, and have wished often since then, that I'd paid more attention when I first heard some of them; that I'd written them down.

I realized that now I'm the repository of family legends, the tale teller. Those stories, and some of my own, grand events or trivial, are my children's and my grandchildren's heritage, and if I don't record them somehow, they'll disappear with my passing and be gone forever, and that would be a waste and a tragedy.

So I'll begin recording some of them here and there. Some of them will be stories about the fore-bearers, the people who, in some often mysterious way, made me who I am, and made my children who they are too. We owe them a lot. Other stories will just be tales from my own history, some funny, some sad. They'll be mostly the truth, at least as much as I can remember. Others may have just a little artistic license applied; after all, I AM partly Irish by extraction.  I'll welcome any comments. And I'll be eager to hear some stories and legends from other families. They're important too, the kind of glue that binds not only a family but a whole community together, and heaven knows we need that glue now.

So here we go ........