b&w stories: grandma (part one)

i always thought my grandmother (on the right) looked so elegant in this photo though the young woman i saw there never quite gelled in my child's mind with the grandmother i knew.  the solitary woman who crocheted afghans and pieced crazy quilts ceaselessly, sewed me clothes and made me canned cinnamon rolls when i stayed over occasionally, baked peanut butter cookies on holidays, kept orange slices and jelly nougat in her candy dishes, and brought curried fruit and banana salad to family functions.

while going through some of her things last year i found these notes she had written.  i guess she intended to write her life story and only got three pages in.  these three small pages, however, are packed with the life she lived before children and they match that young woman in the photo perfectly . . .