Family Memories

1 Kalimat 163 B.E. - July 17, 2006

It’s interesting what people remember from their childhood and youth. I remember my Grandma Darbe, I don’t remember my Grandpa Darbe, I think he died before I was born. I remember several different visits to my Grandma Darbe’s house in Burbank, Oklahoma. I remember she had an old cast iron stove in her kitchen. She would put pieces of wood in and use the stove to bake bread. I couldn’t have been very old when this event happened, but the memory is still with me today. Every time I smell wood smoke, every time I smell bread baking, I can see my Grandma Darbe’s face and she is always smiling.

What brought on this bit of nostalgia was a picture. A picture taken around Christmas; we went to Burbank to see her. This was the last time I saw Grandma Darbe, we never went back to see her after that. I’m not sure why, but I am glad I got to see her around my birthday. My mother found the picture a few days ago, it’s not in an album, but it soon will be. In the meantime, I scanned it and I am going to e-mail a copy to my brothers and to my nephews.

I’m going to use this in a chapbook called Family Memories. I’ve written several poems about family and where I grew up. I’ll have to do two or three about visiting Grandma Darbe. My memories about visit to see her are like vacation snap shots scattered through a photo album. I encounter them at the most unexpected time. There is the memory of bread baking in a cast-iron stove, of attending a small one-room school on another visit, of going to a revival meeting or the church she attended, anyway the preacher frightened me and my father had to carry me out of the church until I stopped crying. All those will go into a poem or poems about visits to Grandma’s House.