“Granmama” 03.03.23

This week contained my Granmama’s birthday.

My grandmother was a special, exciting, wise, funny, compassionate, kind, and beautiful person. She loved deeply, and I never doubted her love for me. Granmama had a great impact on my life. She experienced life like no other person I have ever known. Her touch was gentle, and her eyes could see right into your soul. She was a spiritual woman, and she was inspiring. Her footprints are large, and her shoes are impossible to fill. Those feet have seen the world, and they mark her journey around the sun. The rings on her tree are many.

Granmama was bold; she loved to dance and celebrate publicly. She appeared never embarrassed to be herself and to shine her light on the path ahead. I envy that. I have never been able to express my feelings in such a vulnerable way; despite writing and telling my story from the confines of my house, behind a computer. She was truly remarkable, and I miss her dearly.

Before I was a storyteller, my dad was a storyteller. He inherited this gift from his mother, and passed it on to me. She told outlandish tales; some true, others fiction. The stories she told most were her versions of Native American folklore, which she interpreted from a book later passed down to her grandchildren.

“Women Who Run With The Wolves.”

Granmama taught me always to speak my mind, to adventure, to imagine, to create, and to remember. She will never be forgotten. I memorized her voice and the stories she told most frequently. When I open that book, she reads them to me, even now. My granmama bestowed upon me the precious gift of storytelling, and she lives on in my words and in my heart.

–SJB