Letters to your Great Grandmother

 Letters to Mom,                                                               March 13,2021

Dear Mom, This is your weekly memory letter from your daughter, Kathy, the one that looked liked Dad. 

 Barbara is your firstborn.  I called her Bobbie when I was young.  I remember Saturday nights you would put "Bobbie pins" in our hair to make it wavy for church the following morning. I used to think that was the reason I called her Bobbie.  Much later you rolled our hair with clips and I remember calling them "Kathy pins" and thinking I was just as glamorous as my sister.  When I was 14, baby sister Beverly arrived, and again I had another sister who always took center stage.

The three of us are entirely different. Bobbie is beautiful and smart.  She made straight A's in all of her classes and was a member of the National Honor Society.  She was a debutant and was presented to society at the debutante ball.  My beautiful brainy sister could be quite scatterbrained at times like the day she drove the car to High School with her girlfriends and that afternoon rode home on the bus because she forgot she drove that day.  Needless to say, her girlfriends were not amused waiting by the car for an hour before she remembered and got a ride from a teenage boy back to the high school to pick up her friends.

I was not the smart one unless it was something I really liked.  You and Dad gave me a lecture, "I don't care what grade you make as long as it is the best of your ability, but don't you dare bring home less than a C".  So I made up my mind that if you were happy with a "C" that was my goal.  I will admit to also being the lazy one and came very close to failing many subjects, but through frantic prayer, and tutoring from Bobbie I could somehow manage a C minus.  You and dad were always disappointed but I always thought and chuckled to myself, "If you only knew how close to failing I actually came you would be congratulating me right now!"  

 I was  "everybody's buddy" but definitely didn't stand out in the crowd.  I played a tenor saxophone in Junior High and was in band and orchestra and still can't really read music to this day.  I got a pity date to Prom 3 days before the event and you were upset that I didn't give you enough time to make my dress.  I was just thrilled to be invited and go out with my friends. All my high school friends were in the Honor Society, I was just thrilled to graduate.

Baby sister Beverly was a big surprise to all of us.  We got to name her as long as you and Dad agreed to the name.  Bobbie and I pitched out our favorite girl names only to have someone else in the family say, "I knew a girl with that name and I hated her."  Bobbie wanted to name her Joy but Dad vetoed the name.  He said, "Girls named Joy were usually sweet or terribly misnamed and he didn't want to take his chances on the name."  We finally settled on the name Beverly because the only Beverly we knew we all liked.  Barbara's middle name is Leigh, so she wanted Beverly's middle name to be Lynn so they would have the same initials.  So here I am stuck in the middle with Barbara Leigh and Beverly Lynn.  It's tough to be a Janet Kathleen.

Baby sister Bev is an island all her own.  She is very different from Bobbie and me and basically grew up as an only child.  She has a very strong personality and either loves you or hates you with very little sway in-between.  She is your best friend Mom, and a strong advocate for you.  She has a temper like your father (our grandfather Carden) and feels things very deeply.  She called you daily when you lived in Virginia Beach and would call me if she couldn't reach you insisting that I drive 4 hours to your house and comb the streets to find you.  She never married and would come home for several weeks in October on vacation from United Airlines

to cook, clean, do yard work, clean out the attic, linen closet, and your clothes closet.  She has a good heart but would frustrate you as she moved things to where she thought they should be and not where you usually stored them.

So, Mom, that's us, (Brains and Beauty) (Fun and Fabulous) and (Fire and Ice) your 3 very different daughters that adore you, pray for you daily, and would love to see you and hug you.  Hope you enjoyed the stories and will write more next week.  

Your Daughter Kathy

This picture is of Lyra Jane your great-granddaughter.  She just completed 100 days of kindergarten with a little old lady photo.  It made me laugh and I thought you would get a chuckle from it.