Family Folk Tales - Part I

As I'm sure is true with many, January and February tend to be tough on older folk of our family.  We tend to have more deaths between late December through February than any other time of the year.

This year is no different.

First we lost our "Mama Ray" on New Year's Eve.  She was a month short of 95.  I do not have a picture of Mama Ray on this computer (which just tells me how bad I need to organize my files) but I have one of her daughter, Martha,  and grandson, George, sitting at my mom's kitchen table.  It's actually a fitting tribute to Mama Ray because this is where we would find her - sitting at the kitchen table with folks gathered around her.  She use usually beating them at Gin Rummy.  Mama Ray was, in fact, my mother's childhood best friend's (Martha's) mama and no relation to us at all...except she adopted everyone she met.

Mama and Poppa Ray lived next door to my mama's mama and like my mama, any time we went to visit, I eventually ended up at Mama Ray's house.  My mom always said, "if the Ray's car left their driveway without her in it, she pouted until it came back".   

My memories of Mama Ray:

- the softest grass in the world - and where I finally learned to do a cartwheel with her cheering me on

- laying in the floor of her living room playing dominoes with her grandkids, while the adults played cards at the kitchen table

- sitting at the kitchen table studying the dish and spoon collection from all her travels to places like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, while she cooked something incredible for Poppa Ray's dinner

- pulling up in my Grandmother's driveway and seeing Grandmother in a lawn chair on her side of the fence and Mama Ray in a lawn chair on the her side of the fence, where they had been sitting and talking for hours

- old hands putting together a jigsaw puzzle faster than I could figure out what was going on

- the slap of cards on the table, a cry of Gin Rummy and the rumble of laughter

Her legacy is a herd of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren who exude warmth, intelligence and a joy for life and family.

Case in point - her grandson George, a Seattle police officer, who loves his Mama Ray, his mama, my mama, the mama of his kids and is not afraid to act goofy for any of the above or me for that matter.  See?

Mama Ray had a way of making everyone feel comfortable and valuable.  She was smart and funny and she raised smart and funny folk who raised more smart and funny folk (like that police officer with the monkey on his head).  She instilled a sense of family and she passed that ability down to her daughter and to her daughter's best friend...my mama.  I'm hoping there's some Mama Ray in me and my brother so we can keep passing the Mama Ray-ness on down our family tree too.

We all need a little Mama Ray.