Heritage Journal - Maternal Grandma, Eve Stanton

My Grandma, Eve Stanton, was (as so many of us are) wild & complicated, accomplished & haunted.

So, I knew that when I first sat down to work on her Heritage Journal spread, limiting myself to two pages would be a challenge. Truly, how do you boil 80 years into two pages when it’s supposed to represent the only Grandparent you really knew as a child and spent so much time with?

Nevertheless, here’s my attempt, in words and photos, to convey to you a glimpse of her while further integrate memories of her into my being:

I didn’t know the Eve who sat beneath the snowball bush where her baby brother was buried…

Or the Eve who won The Witter Bynner Poetry Prize at age 15 (which brought her from Indiana to Santa Fe shortly thereafter & then back again decades later as a widow).

I didn’t know the Eve who recorded & brought jazz into homes through the Session Label…

Or the Eve who wrote books about pregnancy & motherhood.

I didn’t know Marion, Los Angeles, Logan Square, or Lexington Avenue Eve…

And I didn’t know Churchgoing Eve or Eve the Alcoholic.

I knew the Eve who adored the mountains of northern NM as much as she loved her pugs.

I knew the Eve who insisted on fair play & grew cosmo flowers in her tiny front yard every year.

I knew the Eve who valued education & attended AA meetings where everything smelled like coffee & cigarettes & the donuts were ridiculously delicious.

I knew the Eve who was obsessed with black & white & who always had to look *just so*.

I knew the Eve who loved books and art and who taught me to play Chinese Checkers.

I knew the Eve that let me play on her typewriter and then left that typewriter to me when she passed.

I knew the Eve who left pebbles of information in letters, notebooks, & her drafted memoir that, once moved, have uncovered vast galaxies of sometimes uncomfortable but always important facts about our family history.

I knew the Eve who knew that beauty & devastation are all around us & that presence and healing are imperative.

And so I carry her forward with/in me on my own wild and winding + healing path, honoring her complicated life & fierce spirit, today & everyday.

And as I’ve added all the words and photos into this post and prepare to press publish, I’ve had another idea that can be added to Eve’s spread.

I know I’ve said it before, but these pages I’m creating in this Heritage Journal of mine are looking more and more like they may never be truly complete.

I’m OK with that.

Stay tuned.

Onward,

Melis