August 12, 2004

This year marks the centennial of my maternal grandmother's birth.

Allison Dorsey Hale Fadeley was born October 13, 1904 and died July 14, 1996. She was my mother's mother, the relative with whom I was closest. We shared a love of books, of education and English comedy, of coffee, and sour dough toast with red current jelly. I still miss her terribly.

The last few years she was alive, her sight was very poor due to macular degeneration. I would come to her house about once a week and help her with her bills and writing checks for charity (she was quite a philanthropist). We would talk about religion and politics and biographies and the day-to-day annoyances that came with growing older.

After her vision failed, Nana’s hunger for books had to be satisfied by books on tape and by me reading to her. She had me read the entire Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson. She also had me tape myself reading it so she could listen to it while I was gone. So I have something like 30 tapes of me reading books to my grandmother. The tapes also captured her coughing, the long-dead dog’s tags clinking together while he scratched himself, and us laughing at the story and making random comments to one another. It’s a strange thing.

I also have her last driver’s license and her tax returns from the 1930’s, and pictures of her in front of a little plane she flew in sometime around 1920. I have cards and letters from the many close friends she had all over the country, and tapes from an oral history she and I worked on.

I’m transcribing the tapes. I hope to put them on paper and print it out for my mother and brothers and sister in time for the 100 year anniversary of her birth. Maybe later a fuller biography will come, but for now, setting down what she had to say about her life is enough.