Connecting the dots
My father grew up at his maternal grandparents’ house. I heard two stories of how this came to be. My paternal grandfather lost his mother at a tender age of six. He was raised by his brother eighteen years older than him and his wife. My great grandmother who I was named after passed away soon after her oldest son got married. Sadly she was not in the group photo taken at the wedding and we don’t know what she looked like. The new bride raised her brother-in-law along with her own children.
My grandfather grew up at his older brother’s place primarily and moved from one brother’s house to another during his schooling as his three older brothers shared the responsibility of raising him. His sister-in-law arranged his marriage with her niece, daughter of a wealthy doctor. My grandfather was struggling to establish his law practice as his family kept growing steadily adding one more mouth to feed once every couple years. These were the days before birth control and other family planning options. As my grandmother put it, she kept giving birth to her nine children at regular intervals within a span of 12 years starting with my father and ending with my uncle. She lost one middle child. I still remember her telling me about how she lost control over her pelvic floor after giving birth to nine children. Once she had me press down on her belly to show me how air leaked out of her orifices. After a demo like that one needs a lot of courage and determination to have children.
My father was her firstborn. He was sent to live with his maternal grandparents when he was ten or eleven years of age. One story says, he was sent there to be educated in good schools. A second story says, my grandmother had her hands full with seven or eight younger children ranging from eleven to a newborn and she turned to her parents for help. As a result, my father was shipped off to his maternal grandparents’ place. I know very little about his life growing up in his maternal grandparents' household. He had a brooding look when he talked about his childhood and school years. I don’t know if he came back home for summer breaks and other holidays. I don't know if he missed growing up with his siblings. He didn’t talk about it much. He did say he didn’t spend much time with his siblings during his childhood.
Once he completed his schooling he went away to college and then started his career right out of college. He talked about wanting to come to the USA to continue his education and get a Masters degree, but his parents didn’t have the money to support him. He said he was cared for well by his maternal grandparents. His older uncles were nice to him and younger ones who were about his age picked on him. He grew up feeling like he didn't have a place he could call home. This played into his insisting that he wouldn’t put his kids in boarding schools even if it meant we moved from school to school once every two years. He made sure his children grew up at home with a sense of belonging. This home wasn't a physical brick and mortar home because we moved a lot. It was a solid home with a strong foundation my parents built in our minds.
He made sure we had resources for learning and fun. He brought the latest toys he could afford to buy and some he couldn’t, stretching his limited financial resources. I grew up with books. building toys, and board games. He encouraged and cultivated hobbies such as traveling, collecting train tickets, bus tickets, and stamps. He indulged in buying View-Master reels, special-format stereoscopes and thin cardboard disks containing seven Stereoscopic 3-D pairs of small transparent color photographs on film. You insert the disk into the stereoscopes and rotate the handle to see all the pictures. He couldn’t find them locally and he would ask his friends who lived in big cities to send us the latest reels.
Photography was his passion. He took pictures of our family and his brothers’ and sisters’ families when we all got together during special occasions and summer holidays. He had the photographs developed and several copies printed to give it to all of his siblings. It was a long and expensive process to get photos in hand back then as opposed to clicking send on mass text message. He left three large albums full of pictures that recorded all our lives over a period of several years. He brought me his precious albums when he came to visit me so I could scan them and preserve them. Amma gave them to me after he passed away. These are the jewels I cherish and preserve for my children and grandchildren.
A favorite pastime of mine during summer afternoons was watching the entire collection of our View-Master reels and flipping through our photo albums. View-Master reels transported me to far away places. There is one view-master reel in our collection titled, “Denver and the Mountain parks”. It contains breathtaking images of the Rocky Mountain region and people having fun with snowball fights.There are still pictures of people with snowballs in hand getting ready to throw at an unsuspecting friend or a family member. These images captivated me. Denver became a place and name that brought a smile to my face with a peaceful and serene feeling. It became a familiar place in my mind. When the time came to decide on which colleges to apply to in the USA, I promptly applied to colleges in the Denver area.
Life brought me to an amazingly beautiful place I admired from afar. The images from this place brought me so much joy and peace as a child and a young adult. I grew up very close to warm water beaches. I still remember and dream about walking along the wet sandy beaches while my feet sink into the soft sand. I traveled across the oceans to a place with fifty eight peaks that exceed 14,000 feet in elevation. I now hike the mountains and dip my toes in icy cold waters in alpine lakes.
As I connect the dots, I wonder about my previous lives and maybe the reason it was a familiar place is because I have connections across my past lives. Perhaps, I was drawn to this place because I was destined to spend my life here hiking the mountains to sit by alpine lakes pondering the meaning of life. I had the pleasure of watching my parents walk on frozen alpine lakes and gaze at the mighty snow capped peaks in awe. I couldn't have imagined a more magical place to put down roots with my one and only to raise my family.