08.19.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:01 am by Administrator
I love to shop. I can’t help it. Plus, with all the sample sales and warehouse sales always going on around Southern California, who can resist? I come by it honestly. I’m from a long line of women known for their fashion flair (with the exception of my sister who acts like malls are her kryptonite). I can trace the love of fashion from my mother all the way back to my paternal great-grandmother, Mollie Jordan. She was styling back in the early 1900’s. My great-grandfather apparently spoiled her. When she died in 1924, she left behind trunks full of beautiful dresses, skirts, and blouses. She was surely a trendsetter in her day.
Even my grandmother, at the ripe age of 96, is still very into her appearance. She loves to wear fancy dresses with wide-brimmed, perfectly matching hats to church. She even recently wrote me to inform me of the importance of paying for her weekly hair and nail appointments saying, “I think it is a good cause, otherwise (I) would not always be clean and tidy.” It’s a lesson for us all. I just hope her penchant for longevity rubs off on me too.
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08.12.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:02 am by Administrator
I loved my Granddaddy. He lived to see all of us, the four kids in my family, graduate from college. That was his dream. It is the only thing I remember his saying over and over again.
“I just want to live to see you get your piece of paper.”
‘Piece of paper’ to him meant a college degree. That is why I shouldn’t have been so sad when he died. I was, but I shouldn’t have been. I really didn’t have a right to be. He had lived to see all he wanted to see. My sister, Kristi, his youngest grandchild, graduated from Wellesley College on a Friday. All my family was together in Massachusetts. The day after graduation, while my sister, my mom, and I shopped, my dad spent time bonding with his father back at the hotel. It was a day my father treasured even more when exactly one week later, my grandfather passed away. He had never been sick. At the age of 93, he had always been in excellent health, but two days after he and my grandmother arrived back in Newnan, Georgia after our trip, he suffered a massive stroke. My father flew to Georgia immediately. I was living in the Bay Area at the time. Even after hearing that my grandfather was in the hospital, I didn’t think he would die. I really didn’t. Despite his age, I just wasn’t prepared for it.
My father gave the eulogy. Friends of the family drove down from Nashville, my hometown. The funeral was held at a big church in downtown Newnan. It was the end of an era. My grandfather, the only son of the first black doctor in Coweta County, the only grandson of the first black doctor in Houston, was gone. With such a rich legacy behind him, my grandfather never bragged, never boasted. He was my father’s hero. I guess mine too. It was amazing to me how my quiet, genteel, loving grandfather could be so kind all the time. He had endured so much pain in his life yet he was so full of joy. My grandfather always had a smile and a chuckle waiting for me. All I had to do was look at him.
I loved my grandfather. I miss him, but I am so happy for him. I believe he’s in heaven now, reunited with his father. He was only 12 years old when his father died. Oh, how happy my granddaddy must be.
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08.04.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:10 am by Administrator
It is so interesting to me how much my dad and his grandfather, my great-grandfather, have in common. To start with the obvious, they are both doctors. They even went to the same medical school, but that is just the beginning. They both lived in the same house, decades apart. My great-grandfather, John Henry Jordan, built it. My dad, Harold, was born in it, delivered on the second-floor by a young black doctor my great-grandfather had recruited and trained years earlier. My dad and his brother, Emerson, grew up running around the house, playing with their grandfather’s old medical instruments as though they were toys. He used them to save lives. Both my great-grandfather and my dad grew up close to their families and felt a sense of responsibility toward them. My dad still does. My great-grandfather even moved his father, stepmother, and younger siblings from neighboring Troup County to Coweta County, building them houses and buying up property for them to farm. Thanks to him, my dad had plenty of younger cousins and other family members around growing up. I think John Henry Jordan would be pleased with my dad and happy he followed in his footsteps. My dad doesn’t think so. He’s a modest man, after all, but in my heart of hearts, I know his grandfather would be proud. I am.
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