Amy Estella Irwin and sister Minnie, Newdale, Manitoba, Canada. (The other lady may be Mrs. Cook.)Creative Gene is hosting another Carnival of Genealogy, the 100th! Her theme this time is: There's One in Every Family!
My Na - my maternal grandmother - Amy Estella (Irwin) Scott - was the one family person who 'stood out' for me when I was young. Of course, I didn't know many of our relatives and my parents were usually 'just my parents'. I took them much for granted, I'm sure.
But my grandma Scott didn't seem like other grandmas. Not that she didn't bake cookies. She did! Not that she didn't have a tidy house or wasn't a churchgoing woman. She was all that. But she was also a very active woman all her days, liked word games and (clean) jokes, and happily flirted with the veterans at Shaughnessy Hospital's Red Cross Lodge in Vancouver where she was a volunteer for many years.
And in the years I remember her best she was already in her 70s. Then she was the one who took my brother and I out walking - scrambling down steep paths and climbing right back up them again. She never hesitated to get on a bus and ride off somewhere she'd never been, just to see what was there. So she's always been a role model for me.
Not necessarily for the baking and cleaning, but for her continued enjoyment of life and her interest in things new. Now I know she'd had some bad years, but it doesn't seem that they'd dimmed her interest in people and places around her. I think some of that at least did rub off on me.
Although we didn't always see eye to eye, she loved me, I know, and in later years, she was absolutely crazy about my son. So this Carnival of Genealogy is for her. (And I bet she'd be blogging if she were here today! She'd have loved the memes and carnivals.)
Amy Irwin, sister Minnie, and mother in law, Mary Janet (Wood) Scott in Newdale, Manitoba.
