Some remembrances to share with you, from Beverly

Hi -

I told Lawrence and Tommy that I would send them some of my remembrances of Por Por to help them prepare their portions of the memorial, and I just thought I'd share with you what I've jotted down so far:

I always thought that Por Por was a real pioneer spirit in many ways. She would have done well on a wagon train to the west. Adversity never stopped her from pushing ahead, whether there was war or money problems or anything else. Of course, by the time I was born, most of those hard times were over, but she always exuded that strong spirit.

To me, it was inspiring that, even before "women's lib," she disregarded all the rules about what women can and can't do. Not to prove anything, but because she tended to do either what she liked to do or what she needed to do - everything from making sure her family was successful, taking office jobs to support her family, making clothes and soap for them, winning at poker or bridge (or any other game or sport for that matter - she could win at games of chance sheerly through that strong competitive spirit), staying up late nights to watch the basketball game on TV, ruling the tennis court (that is, she sometimes made up her own rules), taking care of the restaurant accounts with GAAP finesse and an iron hand, traveling all over the world (including climbing over 300 stairs to see a mountaintop temple in China - at age 77), reading Harlequin romances by the crate, building her own bookcases (she had to build those bookcases because she ran out of shelves for all the Harlequin novels), working on an advanced degree in business (from what I've heard, anyway) while raising a young family, playing golf in all kinds of weather, growing fantastic flowers in her garden (back in the early 70's she was composting her trash - not so much because it was a green thing to do, but because her plants really liked it), and wearing her signature comfy-wear: stretchy chef's pants with oxford shirt (tails hanging out, of course), fedora hat and terminator sunglasses.

Also, from one New England girl to another, she taught me to love all kinds of seafood, fresh corn on the cob and Connecticut tomatoes, corned beef and cabbage, and roast beef (in addition to all the Chinese specialties that she cooked so well). Food was very important to her - she had a real appreciation for good food and her good cooking is something that I often aspire to recreate.

Education was important to her. She challenged me to do well in school, not as an old granny who did not have the benefit of an education, but as someone who had excelled in that already.

In a nutshell, Por Por was someone that a grandkid really needed to keep up with.

She was the family matriarch. She loved to spending time with her family; her family was the center of her life, as she was of ours.

One more observation:

Por Por was also an early multi-tasker - in the evenings she'd do her bookkeeping (Lawrence, remember that that elaborate calculator with the hundreds of buttons?), on a folding card table in front of the TV so that she could watch old westerns while she worked. Sometimes I'd watch the westerns with her while I did my homework. (I'm pretty sure that she was also doing other things at the same, because she seemed to use that old white Lux kitchen timer a lot.)

Anyway, I'm not sure if this is good or bad, or just a family tradition that I'm passing along, but I probably shouldn't let Julian do homework in front of the TV as much as I do.

B