#52 Ancestors Week 18
Close Up
When I was little and we would visit grandma and grandpa I would sleep on the floor in their room. At about 430 grandpa would get up and trip on me as he made his way to the closet to get dressed to go to work. He would shush me and wave his hands towards the bed, his way of signaling me to climb up next to grandma.
As I got older and younger grandkids came about I was moved to the sofa in the living room. I would have rather taken the floor to be honest with you. Being the only human down stairs scared me. Mama always said I had an over active imagination but seriously if someone tried to break in I would be first contact.
What was worse was grandma’s grandfather clock, clicking and chiming all night. And the faces. all the faces of family members all over the walls. Grandma Betty did gallery walls before they were “in style”.
As the clock would tick tick tick I would look at the pictures. One wall held my Mother and all four of her sibling’s graduation pictures. And for some reason my mother’s picture was ginormous. Must have been a special they were running when she graduated but I was never willing to do something I should not because she was there in all her pearled glory staring at me.
As a lay on the sofa with my head resting on the arm I felt as if eyes were peering through my head. In one of her rearranging moments grandma moved three military pictures down from the guest room and put them in a cluster on the wall to the right above the sofa. I knew two of them were grandma’s brothers but I could not remember the third one.
As I studied the face the blue eyes staring at me looked so much like Grandma Betty’s. When I asked grandma the next morning who he was she whispered, Uncle Clarence. I was curious about this man and the entire visit found myself looking for him. I found him in a couple other family photos but not much could be told.
Clarence, Clarence Hinkley sounded like a name I had heard before. As I doodled his name while I should have been listening to the preacher it occurred to me that I had not heard the name but read it. His name was on one of the stones that grandma and I had cleaned a few years before.
While I never knew him I found I was attached to him. This was the first time I put a face to a name on a stone before. Up to this point I had never been to a funeral and was only vaguely aware about death. I often wondered about him and his experience. Now that I am older that attachment has not waivered. I am working on finding out more about him and his existence before WWI and the events that led up to his passing. As no one talked much in my family it will take a lot of digging to get a close up of Clarence Hinkley.
You can read Part II of Clarence Hinkley at.
https://wordpress.com/post/rootedsimplyblog.wordpress.com/796
Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him…Colossians 2:7