Something to Remember Me By Legacy Project

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Bike'gis bah Alts'iiisi, 58, Grants, NM:

When my mother realized she could no longer do her Navajo weaving, she gave me her old batten.

My mother was a Joining Waters woman born for Bitter Water. She married a Red Earth man. Her clans identified her and dictated how she behaved toward others.

Her grandparents went on the Long Walk to Ft. Sumner in 1864 when Kit Carson rounded up the Navajos. They spent four years in that prison operated by the United States government.

By 1863, Navajo women had perfected their weaving. While at Ft. Sumner, little weaving was done due to a lack of wool.

Upon their return to what is now the Navajo Nation in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, women resumed their weaving.

My mother was a weaver. She sheared and prepared her own wool for weaving. After the wool was prepared and the loom readied, out came her tools. My mother kept her handmade weaving tools in a blue jeans leg cut at the top and sewn at the bottom.

My father made the 33-inch long, 3/4-inch thick oak batten. It was never varnished but it is shiny and smooth from contact with the wool and my mother's hands. Its edges have become slightly corrugated from the warps.

As a child, I awakened many nights to hear the soft "thump, thump" of my mother's batten as she wove. I felt safe. Not only physically. My basic needs were met because each time a weaving was finished, my mother took it to the trading post to provide for her family of eleven children. From the dirt floor of our one room hogan, she wove rugs to send all of her children to school -- to high school, nursing school, and graduate school.

The batten hangs on my wall in commemoration.

Jeanne Tobias, 78, Sterling, OH:

Dear Great-Grandma,

I'm writing this letter to you on Mother's Day, 2003. I never knew you, so I thought it was time to get acquainted.

I'm your great-granddaughter, Jeanne, and I've always admired the picture of you in the pretty dress. It has such a lovely beaded design on the front, and the pin -- ah, yes, the PIN. You see I have the pin and have worn it many times. But it is time I passed it on to my daughter, Sherry, for I'm 78 now. How time flies!

Sherry will give it to her daughter, Barbara, and then it will go to your great-great-great-great-granddaughter, Emma Jeanne. I'm enclosing a picture of little Emma with the pin on. Isn't she sweet? She looks so proud to wear it. I hope she will cherish it as much as I have.

Did you ever think the pin would be passed down through seven generations? I wonder where you got it. Did my great-grandpa give it to you? Or perhaps your mother? Maybe a friend? You must have thought a great deal of it to wear it in the photo. I'm afraid the history of it will always remain a secret to me.

I love the name Cathrin. If I had another girl, I would have called her that. However, after my first girl, I was blessed with three boys. I have two granddaughters named Cathrin, so maybe that makes up for it.

I have to close now, but I wanted to tell you about the pin. We are taking good care of it. Rest well, great-grandma.

With love,
Your great-granddaughter,
Jeanne

FIREWORKS

"Look Mommy, fireworks!"

I looked toward Connor's excited voice and saw my three-year-old holding Gramma's glass paperweight. His eyes held the wonder and pure delight that I recall from my own youth as I gazed into the magical ball. FIREWORKS! Oh I remember! I held that amazing piece of glass, turning it over and over, trying to figure out... how? Was it magic? Now my youthful questions were being reflected in my son's eyes.

"Put that down," I said, coming back to reality.

Connor slowly handed me the paperweight just as "Gramma" came through the door.

"He's not hurting anything. Don't you remember someone else doing that?"

"Connor, you ask Gramma to show you the 'fireworks' next time, okay?" We paused, taking one last magical look.

Since then, precious Gramma has passed away. Mom babysat a lot for my kids; they loved her very much. At times, the things they would do would make me want to scream, "Mom have you lost your mind!" This line particularly comes to mind recalling one warm summer day. It had just rained. I arrived home to see Mom and the kids, dressed in their bathing suits, rolling in a huge mud puddle! I couldn't believe my eyes! I turned towards Mom.

"We thought it would be fun! Besides, they needed a bath anyways."

"MOM!"

More important than any other possession, Gramma gave us "fireworks." That precious paperweight full of its colorful explosions, captured forever in its crystal embrace, much like Gramma's love captured forever in our hearts.

If I have learned anything from my Mom, it's how to be a "great Gramma." When I have grandchildren, I want to blow soap bubbles in my livingroom, roll in mud puddles, and best of all... I'm going to give them "fireworks."

My most treasured keepsake wasn't "handed down" to me in the traditional way. It was "handed up" to me in the small hands of my son. He was ten years old and my only child.

One night he came into my bedroom. He had a one-dollar bill in his hand and the biggest smile on his face. Before I could say anything, he tore the dollar in half. He kept half. On the other half, he took a pen and wrote "I love you Mom," and handed it to me. I took the pen and wrote "I love you son" on his half. I gave it back to him.

He told me to put my half in my purse and he would put his in his wallet. He said when we looked at them we would think of each other no matter where we were. "It's our secret," he said.

Time passed and my little boy became a teenager. Although I looked at my half of the dollar often, I never mentioned it to him. I often wondered if he lost it along the way or it ever got pushed aside by more important things like library cards, driver's license, or even pictures of friends.

God called my son home at the innocent age of seventeen and a part of me went with him that day. Almost two years passed before I could bring myself to go through his things. I was sorting through them and found his wallet. I opened it and, to my surprise, there was the dollar half. It meant the world to me knowing he had kept it with him.

Today, both pieces of the dollar are framed and sitting on my dresser. I will treasure them always.

When you lose someone you love, you want to find a way to always remember them. I guess this is why people hold on to things that belonged to the person they lost. A keepsake doesn't have to be anything expensive. It just needs to be something that brings back good memories.

I lost my grandfather seven years ago. Last summer, my grandmother sold their house and went through many of my grandfather's things. My grandmother gave my mother and her brothers and sisters some of my grandfather's special possessions. Many of these keepsakes are things my grandfather used in his job as a locomotive engineer. My mother now has two books that Grandpa used when he was working. They are Enginemen's Operating Manual from 1951 and The Consolidated Book of Codes from 1967. These are now her keepsakes. Someday they will be passed on to me.

When I was small, I loved trains. Having a grandfather who had been an engineer was pretty neat. Until I saw these books, I didn't know how long my grandfather had worked for the railroad. He started as a fireman in 1951 and became an engineer a few years later. He had to study these two books before taking his test. After working thirty-eight years, Grandpa retired in 1989, when I was born.

My grandfather and I spent time talking about trains and repairing the engines and cars from his old model train set. Just before he died, we took a trip on a train that was being pulled by an old steam engine. During the trip, Grandpa knew everything about the train.

Many of the things he knew probably came from the books that are now keepsakes. When I look at these books... I am reminded of my grandfather... the engineer.

Three years ago, my 76-year-old mother, Jewel Karpel, a field paleontologist, asked, "What would you like for your 50th birthday?"

Without hesitation, I said, "Take me on a dinosaur dig."

"Start packing," she replied. "We leave for Montana next month."

Three weeks later, I was staring up at the highest mountain I'd ever seen. Mom handed me two stones and said, "Lick both." One stuck to my tongue. "That's a dinosaur bone," she said. "The other is a common rock."

We climbed the mountain and I licked everything in sight. When we reached the top, Mom said with a grin, "Oh, I forgot to tell you. Watch out for coprolite (fossilized dino dung)." The joke was on me. No fossils found; but a mouthful of dirt, and who knows what else I swallowed?

We celebrated my birthday at 7,000 feet with trail mix, washing it and the dirt down with sparkling cider.

Next, we joined a team of paleontologists digging up "Leonardo the Mummy". This spectacular find, now in the Guinness Book of World Records, is the most complete dinosaur ever found. It is also unique because of the stomach contents and skin impressions all over the skeleton. What a birthday!

At home, I received another surprise. Mom had commissioned a famous paleo-artist to construct a life-size model of the arm and claws we uncovered. She included this note: "Enjoy this unusual keepsake. Then pass it on to your children. P.S.: Have shovel, will travel."

To most people, this discolored collection of old bones on my mantelpiece looks like discarded refuse. But to me, it is priceless. It reminds me of the most precious time I ever spent with my Mom... just the two of us, on a mountain in Montana, sharing the beauty of nature... and our special relationship.

There is a rough handmade grandfather clock that sits in our living room. Its dark wood was once hand polished, but it hasn't worked since it came into our home, and some might say that it isn't very elegant. Yet, it stands directly across from the entrance door and whenever a visitor comes, it is the first thing they see. It is then that I tell them, as I have told all our visitors for over thirty years, that Dorothy Howden gave this clock to my wife and me.

Dorothy didn't have any children. She never married and her one brother had died long ago. She was a schoolteacher, and her students were her children to her. Those children, however, never thought of her as the mother she wanted to be. When she retired, she was always afraid that because she was the last of her line, she would be forgotten.

Age gave her body a frailty that meant she would have to finish her life in a nursing home. It meant breaking up housekeeping, and leaving behind the possessions she had accumulated that spoke of her memories. Everything would be sold -- sold to strangers who didn't know their history, even the grandfather clock that Dorothy's brother had made by hand in his basement workshop.

I was Dorothy's pastor, part of her church family. I helped her pack her belongings and when her time of death arrived, sat with her singing the hymns she loved. Just before she left her home, she had asked if I would take the clock to remind me of her, so that she wouldn't be forgotten.

So to all our visitors I say, "This clock was given to us by Dorothy Howden. She was a teacher, and had lots of children."

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