THE Original Mom Without A Blog

One year ago today, my grandma left this world for the next. She walked almost 92 years on this planet and she was one exceptional lady. She was a classic example of the greatest generation. The eldest of ten children to Polish immigrant parents living on the South Side of Chicago surviving the Great Depression not graduating from high school or college but learning all of life's most important lessons the only way you learn them...by living.

My grandmother was a storyteller. And a great one. Not the sit around the campfire kind of storyteller, just a lover of life and the stories of her life. Her storytelling existed in the details where even the smallest of incidents was worthy of being told.

No reason to ramble on about how much I miss her or how in the stillness of the night while rocking my youngest, I can feel her up there somewhere. But on the one-year anniversary of her death, I find it fitting to bring to you her words.

You see my grandma was, as I like to think, the OMOWB - the Original Mom Without A Blog. She was never quite able to grasp the whole computer/internet/email phenomenon but a typewriter? Oh yeah, she was all over it. In 1992, my grandma started typing her autobiography. A stack of loose leaf paper sat beside her typewriter and a plain 3-ring binder waited to snap in another finished page from her storied life. What follows is her introduction crowned by a beautiful title. A message so simple and clear, it shoots through my brain when I get off track. Which is often.

A guest blogger if you will....my grandma Anne.

"Where Duty Leads Follow"

"We all come from the past, children should know, what it was that went into their making."

"I want to leave a legacy for my children, grand-children, great-grand-children, great-great-grand children."

"All this and more happened during my lifetime, such as I was born during World War One, influenza epidemic, flight of Col. Charles Lindburg, Crash of 1929, Great Depression, social security benefits, Medicare, prohibition, Al Capone, radio, television, Catholic president, assassinations, wars World War Two, Vietnam, Korean, and others much conflict in the world, astronauts, moon walk, computers, heart transplants also various organs, penicillin, polio vaccine, cars planes, Polish pope, Arizona Diamondbacks World Series 2001."

"I lived through these changes, raised my family, my values and beliefs are very important to me. I survived them all thru the tough times in my life."

"How can I not preserve my life story? It is like saying I never existed. As of April 20th, 1992, I, Anne Helene Stefaniak Paluch, started to write my auto-biography."

"It was to be an autobiography, it turned out to be a diary as I began to remember and look through all my saved momentos, places, special occasions, sad instances, family, friends, and all the people that touched my life were and are very important to me. Thru them dreams were realized, challenges accomplished. I could not stop, not to remember, not to record it."

"My motto was and is" "Where duty leads follow."