The Importance of Family

"There is transcendant power in a strong intergeneration family. An effectively interdependent family of children, parents, grandparents aunts, uncles, and cousins can be a powerful force in helping people have a sense of who they are and where they come from and what they stand for." ~ Stephen Covey


The letter leaning against the photo is from my grandmother, a significant person in my life growing up. It was a letter of encouragement when I was a young man. The little girl in this 1956 photo is my cousin Lois, age four. My granparents helped build this telescope as part of the Sky & Telescope Society.

It is a sad thing when families get splintered. The strength I received from my grandmother is immeasurable. Perhaps I shared her temperament, for she likewise was an artist and poet, somewhat of a brooder, avid reader and lifelong learner. Perhaps it was just a grandmother's love.

The following is a poem which originally appeared in her chapbook of poems titled "Helping The Sun Grow".

Aftermath Of A Stroke
Here I lie, tight packed as in my Mother's womb
I laid with restlessness a full lifetime ago.
But still entirely I, altho I have no room
To move about and at my will to come and go.
But now -- I wander, freely in my mind
The long road thru the crowding mists of time,
And pause in my journeying now and then
To live the happy times again
Made bright indeed by sunset's glow!

~ Elizabeth Sandy

She often talked about another relative of our, a poet named John Hall, who had been editor of two West Virginia newspapers, and author of three books of poetry. The youngest of five boys, he ran away from home at age fifteen to serve the North in the Civil War. Down in Tennessee he took fever and after five months in recovery was left blind. Thus did he become, after accepting this difficult fate, the blind poet of Ritchie County. As it turns out, John Hall used to babysit my grandmother. He would take the children out onto the hillside and recite poetry to them. Grndma says the first ten years of her life he had babysat her and the other children. Thus did he birth in her a love of the creative use of language and image, of poetry and wonder.

In the same manner my own creative self was nourished by my Grandmother, Elizabeth Sandy.

Discover more of her poems here.
http://www.enewman.biz/p-poems.html