Run, Lola, Run!!

When you look back up into your family tree........do you see names or do you really see people that you bled down from? I guess I see both! But first of all I see people.......people from my past that bled into my blood lines things that have made me loving, quirky, strange, unique, blessed, and cursed!

When I go back to the farthest branch at the top of that tree I find my great-grandmother, Rosa! In previous stories shes "town gramma"! My oldest love!!  She instilled in me and passed along so many traits.......my quick wit for one......for an old lady she was very quick!! She was short in the patience department........OMG that one she put right into my veins!! I still battle that one on a daily basis.  She was the start of my culinary ventures!!  I do believe that despite the fact that I was forced to learn to cook at the age of eight, enitre meals for a family of six that quickly grew to a family of eleven, I still today love "my kitchen"!!  My early years I spent so much of everyday in the kitchen with town gramma cooking!  Being full blooded portuguese, I think it was in her veins as well!!  I remember as early as two years old the smells that rose from that kitchen and each food item attached to them.  Yeast!! I love the smell of yeast from all the breads she baked regularly.  And don't you know, its the one thing I do not do well.....I think its the "patience thing"!

My gramma made the best homemade sausages!! My goodness you could smell them all over the neighborhood cooking!! She made portaguee sausage (linguica) and my favorite, blood sausage!! Over the years I have looked for blood sausage in specialty shops and have found none that even come close to the looks of my grammas.  She put small chunks of pork and fat in it and tons of green onions and sometimes when sharp knives were involved she would chase me outside to play!  The ground floor of her big house was on the level ground in front but in the back the ground was on a hill so if I went to the kitchen windows I could sit on the window sill which was only like six inches off of the ground......so I would go there to sit and watch her when the sharp knives came out! I could sit on that sill for hours and watch her make sausage!  She gave tons of it away to family and friends so when this was happening it made me happy because I knew we would have company later in the day!! Yes, at two and three years of age I already loved being the center of attraction!! I think then my gramma thought I would become a star!!! lmao  Earlier this year I got the bug to make sausage from scratch too........sometimes I think I do weird things to go back to that great time in my life!! Well that was short lived!! Hell thats a lot of work!!!

Back to "yeast"!! My gramma would make at Eastertime portuguese sweet bread and she would braid the dough into a ring and put a raw egg in the middle and after baking you would end up with a sweet roll and a hard boiled egg for breakfast on Easter Sunday!!  She made tons of these every year and we would take a huge box with us to church on Easter morning and I don't really know what happened to them at church but we never came home with any!!  Ah the smells, as I sit here on the deck typing I swear I can smell it like it was coming out of my own kitchen!!

Cooking is just one element of her that I have instilled inside my gene pool.......I think organization is another!!  My gramma was very organized!  I don't think I'm as great at this as whe was but I am close!!  And I think I am the "planner" because of her also!! Boy can I plan!!!  And worry! Dan will tell me when I have worked thru a dilema in my world......"what you gonna worry about now?"......lol  He thinks its funny, I think its like my lifes blood to worry! I can find something always to worry about or to plan!! I found out two weeks ago that my grandaughter and her husband are coming to visit next weekend and OH MY GOODNESS .......it was on!! What am I making for dinner?  What am I making for breakfast? What do they like to drink..........snacks, deserts...........!!!  And I am the queen of "Lists"!!  When I die I am sure they will find lists still hanging around from my wedding!! I recently cleaned out a drawer and its been almost three years and there one sat!! That kind of started this story today.....thinking about finding that list!!

PRIDE!! My gramma was a proud women and she instilled in me to be proud!! Proud that I am Portuguese, proude that I am Hawaiian and mostl of all proud that I am a woman!!  I was telling Dan, my gramma had hair down past her waist and the first thing she did every morning was to comb her long hair and put it up in a bun and she had two combs that went on either side of her head!!  Every night that I can remember she put my hair in "rag curls"! I hated it but she had strips of cloth that she wound my long hair around and in the morning after she did her hair she would undo the strips of cloth from mine and take a huge comb and run the water in the bathroom sink and slide the comb under the water and comb my long curls with it into long shirley temple curls that went to the middle of my back! Oh lest I forget the one right in the middle of my head that got combed into one big curl straight back along the middle of my head!! lmao........... Yep everyday!!  The only makeup my gramma wore was a little red rouge on each cheek!  One day I tried to put it on my cheek and it looked funny so in my effort to fix it I completely covered my face with it!! It hurt like hell to have it scrubbed off while she cursed me in portaguee the whole time!! But there is a gene that got passed along to my Renee'!!! She would never go out without her hair and makeup done!! Genes........funny stuff!!  I'm pretty sure that when Renee' got to heaven the first person she looked up was Mary Kay!! Its the only stuff she ever used because I used it since I was twenty-four years old!! And funny one day I was putting in a Mary Kay order and thought to myself......OMG Nay has the main hook up now!!! lol And by the way, Nay also got that "pride" gene too.........Oh my goodness that girl was proud!! Its just one of her many traits I loved!! We are both thankful Gramma that you passed them to us!! And as I look at the picture below I noticed another thing about my gramma........she was well into her eighties when that picture was taken I'm sure but notice her posture!! She always stood tall for a short person.........lol Thats what reminded me of how proud she was always!! When I was little and she would catch me slouching she would make me stand against a door facing with my shoulders touching the wood........imagine that for a minute!!!   Its a good thing I had no butt then too!!! But I always felt like my stomach was sticking straight up in the air!!

Speaking of "gene pool"........lol  When I first moved here from the valley and had to find a new Dr, I picked one and showed up for my appointment.  Sitting in the exam room nervous about meeting a new doctor, a knock on the door and he opened it looking at me with a very strange look on his face!  He said "Lola?" and I said "yes" and he walked in and asked, "you are 61?"  I shook my head and his comment was......"well you got lucky in the gene pool!!"  I was stunned at first, later flattered, but now that I think about it........I don't look like what I think sixty five should look like!! But after meeting my biological father.........I can see that it was in the gene pool!! He is eighty-five and definitely does not look it! So yeah, I did get lucky in the gene pool in more ways than one!! Below is the only photo I have of my gramma and she is holding me!!  I know that she looks down from heaven and knows everything she ever taught me has come to fruition!  I don't believe I have ever forgotten one thing she ever taught me and for most of them I have clung onto through the hardest and the best times of my life!! I hope she has seen from afar that all her hard work was not in vain........lol well, once in awhile I slipped throughout my life and now that I know my biological father, I can see those genes have surfaced also!!  He was and still is a little coniver!! Yep that would be me at times in my life also!!  I attribute it to that old saying.........You do what you gotta do!!!