Recovered original email from Peter Zeimet. Body preserved verbatim.
Original subject: sorry to get on a tangent………I think that trait was inherited
From: <renobassoon@pyramid.net>
Date: April 12, 2007
I was up for like 40 hours because I worked graveyard and then had to be back the next afternoon.
The one point I was trying to do that I DID NOT MENTION............DUH !!!!!!!! is that you are writing quite a piece on your grandmother, WWII nurses, etc. but your grandmother was a complex person. If you do not know as much about HER as you can, how can her life and the effects of the war/nursing, etc. ever be documented and/or dramatized? I know getting sidetracked is easy, but there were so many factors in AraBelle's life. She had numerous phases as anyone does, but there were those permanent underlying factors that permeated her mind throughout her life. Her children, husbands, etc. were all an extension of part of her, but kept individual and not blended into one "family". I think that is why we are all so different and unable to bond. She treated and reacted to all of us on an individual basis and not on a level playing field. The unique characteristics I will try to list below, but they are a quick synopsis and not a major thought process, so please treat them as such. It would require a lot of work for me to explain and I want to keep it as simple as possible.
1. the ugliness of her childhood combined with fear and isolation. ( People now would have agencies and awareness of those problems, but there was nowhere to go then.) She dealt with it the only way she could and continued in that venue forever.........and finally was happiest being on her own.
2. the distance between her and the Zeimet family and the curious reason as to why it continued and her continual desire to have it cease.
3. the bizarre relationship between Lani and AraBelle dealing with the pressure for her to succeed and perhaps stage mother envy.
4. the ability to delete or erase things like children, a sister, husbands, etc. from the spoken word but not from her heart and current life and of course letting them continue to plague and destroy her and of course being within a thousand miles of Cyril Fuller. (I COULD NOT HAVE DONE THAT AND STAYED SANE)
5. allowing those hurts to be passed onto another generation by not bringing them into the open and dealing with them and actually intensify in their destructive force and somewhere along the line it defined the lives of everyone around her.
Perhaps this sounds odd, but TO ME it is like writing about something and leaving the most important things out.....or a mechanic trying to fix the transmission in a car by opening the trunk.......there may be lots of things in the trunk, but the transmission is not located there. I do understand your mission. It is a valid and worthy one. But, I felt you needed to know who grandma Zeimet was. OH - SHE WAS A WONDERFUL PERSON.......... the very best in the world to me............and so were most of the other characters in her life. You know that she was always my best friend, so bashing her is impossible for me. It is and was not intended to sound that way. But, after your mother left and Jo was getting older with little close bonding there; your grandmother was very alone. She likely was going through something similar with you as I had been gone for a couple years at that point. Perhaps you visiting in the summer replaced my absence with her. Alaska was a long ways away. So, we may as well have been marooned on a desert island together and I did get to know her. I know she discussed things in a different manner with me than with others. Well, she was very unique in the fact everyone she knew had their own style of communication with her. I am sure you noticed the difference in her manner where you and Mindy were concerned. (THAT IS PROBABLY THE BEST REFERENCE I HAVE TO DEMONSTRATE MY POINT). I do not think she liked you and disliked Mindy............it was just the way she did things. It was the same with the three of us.......and your grandfather Peter Zeimet. We all had a totally independent relationship with her and not like that of a family. Then their were the old maids, her father, mother, and the butcher, baker and candlestick maker..............all of them had different views and were all treated in a unique fashion. For 20 years she never went into a store in Edgemont unless it was an emergency like a prescription or no cat food and the roads were closed in a blizzard. Edgemont had full service stores in the 50's and 60's. She refused to do that and then one day...........she started talking to everyone like they were long lost best friends. What was that all about? But she knew so many people in town because of the dancing and the ballet. The dance school originally started with her helping polio victims and sort of progressed into a ballroom thing and then ballet and tap. But, she WOULD NOT shop in that town. She even got gas somewhere else unless she had no choice.
She had a different way with everyone. That in itself is special and she WAS a very special person. She was kinder than most people and could be an ice cube forever to others. She would pick up hitchikers and have a great time talking to them. She was not even scared if they got weird.....a few she kicked out of the car physically as they were whackos. It did not freak her out, either. ??????????????? She was NOT afraid of some things, but panicked about many normal problems.
So, if your are serious about writing about your grandmother (as I believe you are) I feel it is important to know the many facets of her. Perhaps it seemed like a torrential storm of information. Well, that is what she was. Your mother, jo, myself, etc. all inherited some of that and we are all totally different. Perhaps that is why we were not the close family and I think that is because we were all a one on one situation. We all had a certain part of AraBelle....the part she shared with us. I do feel that because she and I "were left alone in the room together" when everyone else sort of went their way that I did see more facets of her life. I also got to view the side she had with Lani and with Jo....and understand how they came to be the unique people they became and none of us were in the same style.
With this in mind, hopefully you can understand how and why the family eventually became. We were all different and she had different lives all rolled up into one grandma package driving an old green falcon. Then, she just deleted the parts that no longer fit into the picture. YES, DELETED THEM. That is why we have so many unanswered questions and why the cohesion of a family was not there.
I will refrain from getting on another tangent, but if you really want to write about her life, you will have to study what it was before preparing it for view by others - PZ
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