The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

my paternal great-grandmother
and namesake,
Hannah Irene Dennis

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

In January I wrote about: apron, bar, basketball, bed, bicycle, birthday, boat, broom, button, cake, car.

In February: chair, chlorine, church, concert, cookbook, couch, dancing, desk, dessert, dining room table, diploma.

March: divorce, door, dream, emergency room, envelope, eyebrows, first apartment, first job, food, game, garden.

April: I took a break to focus on ARTSPEAK: Happy!

Here are the prompts for May: gloves, great-grandparent, guidebook, gun, gym class, hair, hands, hat, high heels, honeymoon, hood.

GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

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I didn't meet any of my great-grandparents in person. But I was named after one of them – my paternal great-grandmother Hannah Irene Dennis-- and I have blogged about my name and shared a "Namesake" poem here. The most impactful thing I know about my namesake is that "she never said a bad word about anyone." Those are some big words to live up to, and I have never felt I quite get there... though I am much more chill and nonjudgmental than I once was. It's something to aspire to, isn't it? 

I have always felt great love for this woman, and I do love her name. Once someone asked me if I wasn't named Irene, what name would I choose? I immediately said "Hannah." The other thing I know about my namesake is that my father dubbed her "Bigmama." I love that, too. She had a big heart. She was incredibly loving. And she, along with my other paternal great-grandparents, was a salty pioneer of the pinewoods and swampy rivers of north Florida. That's a pretty amazing legacy, if you ask me.

The only other one I know anything about is my maternal great-grandmother Ralston -- Cora Belle Bargar. She lived with my mom and her family when my mom was a teenager, so she had a big impact on my mom's life. She was, apparently, a feisty, little woman – not even 5 ft. tall. She was also an expert seamstress, and my mom learned a lot of craft-y skills from her -- including the classic-to-me "As you sew so shall you rip." From what I can recall, she was able to give my mom love in ways that her mother couldn't... and isn't that often the way it is with grandmothers?