Over thirty years ago, I sat down with my grandmother, Florence Mamie Miller Jervis, my dad’s mother, to record her story, her life growing up on a dairy farm with eight siblings, and then joining that farm with a neighboring farm when she married my grandfather. She had six children of her own, the second, her only daughter, dying of crib death at only ten hours old. I recorded tape after tape with my grandmother, chronicling her life, and after she died, over fifteen years ago, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to those tapes, until I started writing a novella-in-flash last year about my times growing up on the farm where I spent most of my summers and holidays. But my story was not enough. I knew I needed to weave in my grandmother’s story as well, so I brought out the tapes, and as I listened to them I was transported right back to her kitchen in the farmhouse where we had sat and recorded the tapes so many years ago. She was right there beside me again, as I know she has always been. And I know how pleased she is that her story will be out in the world now. Alien Buddha press will be publishing my novella-in-flash Unpasteurized the end of May. It is a work of fiction, but it is based on my experiences on the farm and the life of my grandmother and lessons she taught me along the way. I dedicate this work to her. And I hope you will come to love her as much as I do. I am blessed to be one of her many grandchildren, and one of the many she took in when they were at a crossroads.
