No sooner had I turned on the bedside lamp and checked the time yesterday morning than the power went out! Damn! And I had overslept, too. I'd be hard pressed to get through my long list of "todo's" even without all the amenities... like a...
Today, while looking "one last time" (or so I always think) for family papers that should be added to the Espy Archive at the Washington State Research Center in Tacoma, I ran across this poem in my grandmother's distinctive Victorian script:...
Oh how I wished my mother and my grandmother could have been with me this afternoon when I opened the door and saw the old light that Del had finished fixing today! Never do I remember it looking so lovely. I doubt that it ever did, even when it...
By early afternoon yesterday, the leaky pipe under the house had been repaired (actually, replaced) and all water-related systems were "go." Water ran freely from each and every faucet, the refrigerator's ice-maker was operating once more,...
Do you think if we grew old enough and had enough infirmities, we could finally empathize fully with those who have gone before us? I've been thinking about my grandmother's lifelong trouble with her eyes -- suddenly made so painfully apparent to...
When I accepted Cate's New Year's Resolution challenge -- to think of something to add rather than to subtract from my life, I thought about it long and hard. But aparently not long and hard enough. I chose to try to become more compassionate more...
By this date, October 17, 1902, my grandparents ("Granny and Papa") had been living in this house in Oysterville for three months. They had left behind the gas lights and trolley cars and other refinements of East Oakland, California, and had come...
My grandmother, Helen Richardson Espy, left the comforts and cultural amenities of East Oakland, California in 1902 to set up housekeeping in Oysterville -- "just for a short time," she assured her three-year-old daughter Medora and year-old son...
Last night's "usual" Friday gathering was festive, fragrant, and generally fantastic! Lively conversation, a good mix of "regulars" and "once-in-a-whilers" and food to die for -- as I had hoped, the perfect birthday celebration! Prompted by our...
Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you. Isn’t that the loveliest thought? Roland A. Browne, author of The Common Sense Guide to Flower Gardening said it. I’ve added it to my ‘list’ of things I wish I’d thought of first. ...
Growing up in the Bay Area as I did, “Golden Gate” was a familiar term. Even now, however, I associate the ‘Gate’ with the bridge linking San Francisco to Marin County. It’s hard for me to think of it as the strait that connects San Francisco Bay...
The Oysterville Church, December 2008 My Grandmother Espy hated snow. And who could blame her? Three of her seven children died before she, herself, was much beyond middle age, and all of them in winter: four-and-a-half-year-old Albert in...