Roots......

I am on a mission...so to speak.  I am always on a mission.  That is a bit of how I live my life.  I never know where I am headed but when the idea strikes me I am on board 110%.

This all began when I found myself with three broken sewing machines in the middle of a huge project.  Not loving "idle time"  I began cleaning out closets and came upon a box of old family photos.  I knew I had them but really never sorted through them.  They belonged to my grandmother on my dad's side.  She was a collector, like me.  I have little from my mom's side.  She was not a collector.  The older I get the more I realize I am a product of my dad's genes.  I am proud of that...all the idiosyncrasies of the Goering side of the family.....packrat traits included.

 This leads me to my mission,  I am going to catalog all I found, in a scrapbook with all the info I can find for my kids.  I know little of my family roots.  We grew up in Texas, they are from Illinois.  We visited yearly and I loved it but I never sat down and asked anyone about our history.

 These photos are helping me piece some of it together.  

It matters to me.

Above is the place of my grandmothers birth...Iola, Kansas.  Really?

I had no idea.  I thought everyone was from Illinois.

So how did this beautiful 17 year old (my grandmother) get from Kansas to Chicago to study music in 1911?  This was 100 years ago.  The picture is from her appearance in the opera STRADELLA.

I do remember her beautiful voice and her love of music which she passed on to my dad....but not to me!!!

I am excited.  The more I search, the more I discover, and the more I understand.  The more I feel tied to my roots.  I want my kids to know all of this before I am gone.  I never questioned anything so now I do not know.  I won't be able to fit it all together but what I can verify I will catalog for my kids so that they do have a sense of family.