I remember all the older people in the family. As a child and even as a young adult, I did not realize that with in that older person was the kernel of the child skill looking out from the aging facade. Now that I qualify as being an old person I finally know that with in every elderly person is the child and the young person that they once were. Just because we get older on the outside it does not mean that we become old on the inside.
Life has a way of sculpting who we are and what we become. Our experiences mold us and either make us stronger, and wiser, or hardens us and sometimes makes us bitter depending on the person. Life can be beautiful but, it is never easy.
I wish that I had realized this when I was younger and the older generation was still around. I caught glimpses of this especially from my Grandmother Porter and my Mother. My grandmother Porter, my Nana, was impish and loved to laugh. She enjoyed life to the fullest.
There was the time that my mother and her cousin Liz had been out on a date and came in late sneaking up the stairs to bed shushing each other so as not to wake any one. They happened to turn around and there was my grandmother sneaking behind them shushing too. She also played the same trick on my friend Ellen and myself after we had come in late one evening. Then there was the time that she went crabbing at our cousin John Spence's home and she had taken off her stockings and rolled her dress up and tucked it into her under pants in order to crab. There she was with mud on her legs, having a wonderful time catching crabs. My little brother was so taken back that he exclaimed, "look at my Nana!" We all laughed.
Nana had an infectious laugh. When she laughed everyone laughed with her. I remember laughing so hard that I almost fell off the chair where I was sitting. My grandfather Porter, my Dan, on the other hand was more proper. His father Moses Porter, was a Methodist minster. One Sunday in church we were singing the Hymn "Go tell it on the Mountain" when all of a sudden we realized that Dan was singing something different. He sang "go tell Aunt Lucy, go tell Aunt Lucy the old grey goose is dead...The one she's been saving, the one she's been saving to make a feather bed." Another incident that embarrassed Dan was at a Bank Board meeting when he reached in his pocket for his handkerchief and pulled out two silk stockings. He was evidently at a loss for words. All he could say as all eyes were on the stockings was, "my daughter's." Mother had been wading at the beach and taken her stockings off and stuffed them into his front pocket. They were then forgotten until he pulled the handkerchief out of his pocket. He had a reoccurring nightmare that he was in downtown Norfolk without any clothes on try to find someplace to hide. As a proper banker who dressed in three piece suits this surely was a nightmare.
My dad told me tails of lighting a fire cracker and having go off in his hand causing him to jump over a fence. I am sure with two brothers there stories to be told that I never heard. Grandfather Lewis, Dan Low, went to Penn. State, where he was a member of the glee club. They went out west to some of the towns there that still had wooden side walks. I discovered this from old photos that he had saved. My grandmother Lewis and her sister Nell would go to shows and look at what they were wearing and then copy the clothes making patterns themselves and sewing the clothes. My aunt Nell told me that they had a pet goose that would follow her around and pull her pig tails. I wish that I had known to ask questions about their past.
The child and the youth that they were was still there. I wish that I had gotten to know that part of each of them better
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