My Grandmother - Lillian Elvira Paris Auten and I had a very special bond! I was born on her 72nd birthday! Here we are celebrating my 1st birthday and her 73rd! She was a strong, independent woman and feared nothing! She was the matriarch of our family and held us all accountable....all 3 of her sons and daughter in laws and 10 of her grandchildren!!! She moved to Sunnyslope, AZ in 1943 while two of her three sons were serving in the military and her oldest son started a grocery store. She bought all her furniture and lived in a little gingerbread cottage with crystal door knobs, beveled glass in the windows and a swamp cooler.
She was a seamstress extraordinaire and people would come from miles around to have her make them custom clothes. Sometimes I would be there when her clients came and I would have to be quiet as a church mouse while she would measure and plan and create beautiful clothes for beautiful woman. If I was really good I got to play with the scraps from the left over fabric! She had a sewing machine but was never without a needle and thread, often pinned to her dress as she worked around the house. She only bought and used these special needles that were pure silver and had a real gold head. They were the finest and produced the best handwork, said she.
I spent most Saturday nights with her and we would go to church together on Sunday mornings. Later I worked at a bank near her and would stop in EVERY.SINGLE.DAY to check on her. I know she looked forward to that, living alone and not seeing well. She would always ask me to thread a few needles for her to use as she could not see the tiny hole to thread them....I would make her several and she would pin them to her dress.
I had so many recurring dreams about her and once was a study at college about the dreams I had and the interpretation....me and one other guy who had PTS. What a study we were! The 'professionals' said that my grandmother was my spiritual guide and that she had so much more to teach me and that is what my dreams were for and once I learned it all I would no longer have those dreams. I never want those dreams to go away and I still have them!
Once some jewelry she gave me came up missing! Kristen, Steve and I tore the house apart and could not find it! I was DEVASTATED! We had a lot of workers in the house and hated to think the worse but gone it was. We checked ebay, craigs list and every pawn shop in SD with no results. I prayed and prayed and prayed to bring it back to me but it seemed impossible to think it would
About a year later I went in my closet and looked up on my shelf (which had been torn apart looking for that jewelry and accessed by me every day since) and there was the jewelry right in my sight in a plastic box. I got down on my knees and cried and almost hyperventilated. I could not believe my eyes! I don't believe in a lot of things 'on the other side' but that was definitely something that could not be explained.
So in 2010 - about 5 years ago, we drove it from Flagstaff to San Diego, taking out the drawers and squeezing it in the back of my Lexus SUV. When it got here I scrubbed it down inside and out and put it in Adam's old bedroom to keep the boys clothes when they spend the night here.
When I walked over to the dresser and pulled out the drawer I found this:
It's hard to see but is a tarnished silver sewing needle with a gold head with thread that was almost falling apart - again with the tears! How it could have survived the move from Sunnyslope to Flagstaff in 1975 and from Flagstaff to San Diego in 2010 and 5 years of my boys using it is beyond comprehension!
I just had to put it in a special little frame.....
And I put it in my office by some of my favorite things, including the picture of Steve and I kissing under the Eiffel Tower in Paris! Paris....get it???
No comments:
Post a Comment