Margaret

My Grandma Margaret has been on my mind lately.  She passed away a couple of years ago.  This is one of my favorites and really one of the few pictures I've seen of her when she was young.  It was taken in 1943.  I'm not sure if her and my Grandpa Stewart were married yet.  I know they married before WWII was over so they may have been. 

I keep thinking of things I wish I could ask her, about her life and about how she felt about certain things.  As a child I was cautious around her as well as loved and admired her.  She could be stern, but equally generous and loving.  She had the cutest giggle in the world and it was no secret about how much she loved and missed her husband who left her a widow much too early. 

She met her future husband in California where her family had moved for work several years earlier.  She was a riveter during WWII.  The man she fell in love with was a young Texan who was not of her LDS faith.  They eloped to Las Vegas to be married because of the disapproval of her parents and maybe their relatively young age.  I wish I could ask her about that time.  It sounds awfully daring and romantic, but who knows what the realities were for her. 

When you are a child or a teen you don't think to ask your grandparents about their young lives.  About the challenges they faced as first time mothers, as young wives.  You just take for granted that they are your grandparents, solid and there like concrete.  It never occurs to you that they were once young.  That they may have faced similar situations growing up.  That they will always be in your life.  Maybe it's this gray weather today, but this is what I'm thinking about today.  Longing for the physicality of someone who is no longer here in that way.