My Grandma’s Birthday
Honoring our ancestors near and far on the Spring Equinox
Today March 19, is the Spring Equinox this year - happening precisely at 11:06pm EDT - Happy Spring, everyone! 🌸
Today is also the birthday of my Grandma, Beverly Ann Williams. She was born 1920 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and marrying a Smith man, she became a Smith herself in 1946. Beverly had a life full of experience equipped with hardship, grief, hard work, and I’m definitely sure, a lot of exciting and wonderful moments, too. I wish I could ask her about all of it, listen to her stories and take in every single word, far more precious than any gold on earth. She died in 2002 when I was 15 and she was 82.
Today on this first day of Spring, as we begin to leave behind the cold of winter and make way for new experiences, it feels a perfect moment to pause and reflect on the deep roots of where we came from.
Grandma
Sometimes I feel sad that in typical and natural fashion, I didn’t have the wherewithal to ask her about the memories of her own life when I was young teenager, though I feel fortunate for the memories of her that I do have, mostly those from when my brother and I were children. Visiting my grandparents’ house in South Jersey was always a favorite treat, for Thanksgiving or any family gathering. My brother and I loved that house, and I can remember the details of every room and all that would happen within them - the sounds of footsteps on the stairs, the hourly call of the cuckoo clock, the winding of the grandfather clock at night. My grandma’s voice calling out to my grandpa and him answering back to her from his favorite chair. I remember peering from around the corner to watch my grandma cooking in the kitchen, and her joyful welcome when she caught me looking at her. Sneaking water ice from the basement cooler, Sheba the boxer dog sleeping in her bed, the decoration of Norman Rockwell plates and American classics like the Morton Salt girl and Campbell’s Soup kids. My grandma’s cow collection in the kitchen, and counting them upon arrival to let her know an update on the growing number. Her glasses, her hair, her mumu house dresses. The front yard with the cow shaped mailbox. The backyard where I would disappear for hours, searching for insects and turtles in the grass. Trips to Toys ‘R’ Us in the Cordoba with both grandparents, Sheba in the back between my brother and me, who sat without discussion on the same sides as in our own family car. Visits to Mr. Dippy for an ice cream cone, or to Heritage’s for a convenience run and a piece of candy. Thinking of these memories brings tears to my eyes and I sometimes wish for just one moment I could go back again, aching as always for my childhood and those fleeting souls who made it so special.
Beverly
I feel deeply fortunate for the simple fact that I am made in part from her. She is a figure I draw power and courage from, a person I try to access when I need a little more fire, a little more boldness. Hearing stories of her life and personality, understanding who she was, I feel honored to carry her within me, to be able to channel her energy when I need to do something that feels extra challenging, or that requires a little more self confidence than I’m sometimes able to muster on my own. A little audacity, a bit of chutzpah - qualities she had in spades.
I have always admired my Grandma, though I have felt her presence with me in the last few months more than ever in my life. It’s gotten stronger over the last weeks, and as her birthday arrives today, I’ve been thinking a lot about what this means, what I need to access and embody more from her, what she’s trying to teach me. It’s interesting because I haven’t necessarily felt her presence as in the role of my grandmother (nor as a mother, wife, or sister), but as an individual of her own accord. I also feel her presence more than ever as a whole person, not just as a confident and independent one, but as a person with sensitivity and tenderness, a person with grace and faith, a loving and compassionate soul with her own unique and multi-layered story. A person whose life is full of both transparency and mystery, with her own strengths, and also her own struggles - pain that only she would know about. I see her as a woman to look towards for answers even if I disagree with them at times, a person to thank and forgive, a person to love and laugh with, with favorite movies and places to visit. A person with her own memories, and who would listen to mine if I could tell them to her. An individual being, someone to strive to be more like, to keep her membership alive in this modern world. I’ve felt her power in these recent days not necessarily as ‘Grandma,’ but as ‘Beverly,’ and I feel blessed and honored that I am related to her.
Whenever my mom or I post or share about my Grandma, two things happen which both move and continuously surprise me. The first is the flood of comments about how much I look like her - an honor to read and also is funny because when I was little, my Dad sometimes referred to me as ‘Little Bev’ because of that resemblance. What also happens is people from all around the country send photos of themselves with my Grandma, telling about their own connection with her - how she was like a mother to them when their own parents were estranged, had disowned them, or simply didn’t understand them. People have come up to me in unexpected places to share their personal stories of her, and seeing their faces light up when they remember her, I can feel how much their bond genuinely meant to them, and how knowing her might have changed the course of their lives for the better.
So today on my Grandma’s birthday, how will I honor her? I could listen to the music she loved, watch the movies she liked, try to cook something she made to perfection, read the books that moved her, learn about the places she traveled to or wished that she could have. I could sing the songs she liked singing, plant the flowers she liked best, drink her favorite drink, and order her favorite dinner. This morning I’m in London with my mom, and this afternoon we’ll take the train to Paris. So I will imagine that she is with here with us, not necessarily as three generations of Smith women, but as three friends traveling together, individuals with our own values and passions, some which intersect and others uniquely our own. Things we can teach each other, whether intentionally or inadvertently by example, and other things which need no explaining, innately felt within us as kin. Maybe we’re all equal in age on this trip, having conversations without the detail of numbers separating us at all. For some reason I see us on a little boat with a picnic basket, my grandma with a silk kerchief covering her hair, someone saying something funny, and all of us laughing together.
Whenever I look at my family tree, reading the names of each person I feel such a beautiful and strange feeling knowing that I am related to them, so thankful to them for living so we all could live, too. I wish I could know more about them all - something beyond a set of names and dates, and an occasional photograph to show the lines of their face and the clothes they chose on a particular day. It makes me feel a little sad, and I know they deserve more than to be forgotten with time. I feel so honored to have shared the days I did with my Grandma, with all of my grandparents, with the family I’ve met and grown close with along the way. It’s really such a special thing to meet someone who helped secure a future that allowed us to exist, that kept us alive, and it becomes something of the highest and most wild alchemy when we truly admire who they are. Sometimes we don’t get the chance to tell these people how much they mean to us. Maybe we knew them when we were children but didn’t have a chance to grow closer in adulthood, or maybe we feel a powerful connection with them but they died long before we were born. There are so many reasons why we might not have had the chance to tell them, but time is what we want it to be - elastic and full of magic, so let’s always remember that we can always tell them now.
In the comments, please share about your own grandma, your own grandparents, or any person from your family or ancestry who you would like to honor today. This can also be a friend, a godparent, someone you look up to, anyone at all. It can be someone you knew, met, or never got a chance to share a moment with. Share their name, where they were from, anything about them, any story, any memories. You can even make it up if you don’t know for sure. :) Maybe imagine you are spending the day with them like I am today with my Grandma, and imagine what you would be doing, what you would be talking about, what you would be sharing together. I look forward so much to meeting these individuals through you, helping to keep their membership alive through sharing together today.
Happy Birthday to my Grandma. Happy Birthday to Beverly.
**If you are in NYC, please visit the Elizabeth Street Garden this evening for the Spring Equinox Celebration happening 5:30 - 7pm. This is an annual event which is very dear to my heart. It’s bittersweet to be so faraway and missing the gathering, though I know it will be deeply special as it always is, its’ magic felt from here across the ocean. So please stop by if you can! Say hello to the garden, say hello to Joseph, and welcome in the magic of Spring.
<3 Happy Spring Equinox to all!!!** 🌸🌱🌿🌼
Please also share in the comments any thoughts you have about the Spring Equinox and how you will celebrate this shift, maybe in honor of your ancestry and those who were here before us. You can also share what you are letting go of and/or what you are looking forward to for the season ahead. We will do more sharing around this in the Chat too, so please join us there as well!! Thank you, everyone!!
2024 Seasonal Shift Calendar
Spring Equinox - Tuesday, March 19 at 11:06pm EDT
Summer Solstice - Thursday, June 20 at 4:50pm EDT
Autumnal Equinox - Sunday, September 22 at 8:43am EDT
Beautiful!
Here’s a little tribute to my amazing Nana:
My grandmother Emily was always a pioneer especially for the empowerment of women. She studied economics at Brynn Marr. Was the first copy girl at any New York City newspaper. Which is where she met my grandfather Glenn Neville who was the editor-in-chief of the New York Daily Mirror. She Wrote the 1963 Newberry award winning book “ It’s Like This, Cat” while raising 5 kids. Became a single mom when my grandfather died of a stroke. My mother was only 16 years old attending the school performing arts in New York City. A short two years later I would come along, my mother was 18 unwed and it was my grandmother who stepped up to care for both of us which I am forever grateful!
This pioneering woman also decided that writing novels wasn’t enough so at the age of 50 she went to law school and passed the New York bar and became a practising lawyer mostly representing under represented prisoners who could not afford representation and also established the first league of democratic women voters and battered women’s rights for rural women in upstate New York.
Nana …story
One day her roommate came downstairs this would’ve been in 1983 I believe or so. And my grandmother Emily had written in her beautiful handwriting probably on a yellow lined paper which she always wrote on.
“I am driving to California in a car that doesn’t have reverse. But I’m going forward!”
My grandmother drove that car without any reverse gear from upstate New York to San Francisco and Los Angeles! She left the car on the west coast. She came through Colorado and visited on her way and I seem to have some vague memories of trying to find just the right parking places when she was visiting as she did indeed drive a car that had no reverse gear across the entire country by her self. Growing up my grandmother lived in a small town in upstate New York in the heart of the Adirondack mountains called KEENE Valley. She always had a dog sitting in the front seat beside her and she was always generous with her space and her ability to accommodate the vicissitudes of life. She said at the end of her life that she lived for three things to walk, read and write. She walked every day rain or shine snow or sleet. She walked around the small town or through the forest and up and down mountains when she was younger. She said she lived to walk into the world around her, and then secondly she lived to read, which she did voraciously there was not a single evening I did not see my grandmother sitting most likely with a cocktail reading a book until the night enveloped us. Finally she said she lived to write. We are so fortunate to have her stories these words from the past observations and beautifully constructed sentences. A literary lens into the mind and heart of Nana.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Cheney_Neville
Today is my mom's birthday too.
She was a gentle soul and I adored her. XO