Family Traits

Now that we're less than two weeks away from our second ultrasound, I'm really beginning to think about our baby and imagine life with him or her.

Obviously our main prayer is for a healthy baby. The health of this baby has been our number one concern since January 4, but the feeling grows stronger each day that its tiny presence becomes a little bigger. I fully recognize that carrying this life in my body is a wonderful gift, and I feel blessed and honored that Jonathan, the baby and I are on this journey together.

People have asked if I have a gut feeling about our baby's gender. I do, but I don't have a strong preference either way. It would be fun to give my parents their second grandson or their first granddaughter. It would be thrilling to add another Hardin boy to the family or welcome the first Hardin daughter of the next generation. I would love to watch our son with his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, or know that our daughter is the next in a line of strong-willed women. 

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know how happy I am that we will learn our baby's gender on Jonathan's grandmother's birthday (April 9) and that our baby's due date is three days before my grandmother's birthday (September 10). I have spent the last two years documenting our family's history and stories, and now I'm ready to see which family traits and characteristics appear in our baby. Blue eyes and fair skin seem like the two most obvious ones, but maybe we'll have a rebel baby with brown eyes like both of its grandmothers.

Until then, I've put together a family album that goes back to our great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. God willing, our child will grow up knowing exactly where he or she came from and who he or she looks like. What a wonderful thought and what an exciting journey.

Thanks for sharing our joy.

Jonathan and his grandmother Sadie.

Me and my grandparents Bill and Lucy.

Jonathan and his mother Denise.

Me and my grandma Joan and my mother Julie.

My dad Fred.

Jonathan's mother Denise.

My mother Julie and grandmother Joan.

Jonathan's father Greg and his grandfather Gerald. 

My grandmother Joan.

Jonathan's grandmother Sadie.

Jonathan's great-grandparents Dayton and Elzie with his grandfather Gerald.

My grandmother Lucy.

My great-grandmother Jennie Moore (back left), her brother Andy (back right), her mother Martha, stepfather Jacob and half-siblings Jake and Mayme Van Bibber. 

Jonathan's great-grandfather Dayton.

My great-grandmother Elsie (right) and her sister Myrtle.

Jonathan's great-grandfather Clovis Yates (back, second from left) and his great-great grandparents William and Julia.

My great-grandfather Raoul with his sister Marie and parents Ernesto and Adele.

Jonathan's great-grandmother Eliza Michael (top right) and her siblings. 

My great-grandmother Tina (front, bottom center) with her siblings and parents. 

Isn't it funny....

Isn't it funny that the older we get, the more we realize we are just like our parents and grandparents?

I first physically saw myself in my grandma Joan a week before she died. Most of my life I had known I shared many of her mannerisms (one of the many reasons we got along so well), but that week, I noticed we had the same hands. 

Like so many things that week, that realization changed me.

Now I look down at my hands all the time, and I see her hands. Sometimes I see her in my eyes and smile as well.

Our niece Eliza spent the weekend with us a few weeks ago. While she was here, she stopped in our hallway and stared at a picture of Joan that was taken when she was around 12 years old. 

She wanted to know if the photograph was of me. I told that it was my grandma. She said, "She looks like you."

Yes, I suppose she does.

Rounded shoulders and short shorts. Yep, I'm her granddaughter.

This is how I remember her in her kitchen. 

Trimming the roses just like I do today. 

We don't own a camper yet, but one day we will.

There are those rounded shoulders again. 

Joan

I knew her as Grandma, but she was Joan for 50 years before I burst into the world and changed her name forever. During the two decades we shared each other's lives, I never saw her as Joan. Only in the 11 years since her death have I really gotten to know her as a woman. When she died, I was nineteen and barely a woman myself. Since then, I've inherited so many of her photo albums, books, letters, treasures and memories. Through them, I've learned more about the real Joan Fay Stroup Portillo-Shaffer... 

She loved to laugh...

She was so pretty.

She loved picking my mom up from the airport. 

LAX around 1980. Photo by my grandfather, Sid.

To this day, I can't go to the airport without thinking of her. 

Pure joy.

So happy.

She loved nature and short-shorts.

Exploring.

She loved animals.

All creatures great and small.

I love this.

Her greatest love, Sid. 

True love.

He died when they were only 50 years old, almost exactly one year after I was born. She said I was the one bright spot in her very dark world. 

Even at 11 months old, I loved her so much.

Our family lived on opposite sides of the world, and later, on opposite sides of the country. When we were together, we made every moment count. 

Together until the bitter end.

We always waited together until the plane left the terminal. The last time she waited with us was August 2001, one month 9/11. Two years later, I took myself to the airport because my mom couldn't leave her. She died one day later, less than one month before her 70th birthday.

She was always there. I still can't go to the airport without thinking of her.

Thank goodness for memories.

After a long trip from London.

Our last airport photo taken in August 2001.

Family Stories: Joan Fay Stroup

There are few people who have had more influence on my life than my grandmother Joan. She and I shared a middle name as well as a special bond from the day I was born. I arrived during an especially dark period in her life. Her husband and true love was dying of cancer at only 50 years old. When he passed away weeks before my first birthday, the gaping hole he left behind could not be filled, but she found joy in spending time with her only daughter and first granddaughter. I'm not sure if our bond was born from that devastating loss or if it came from something else. Ironically, she shared a similar connection with her grandmother Laura, and it is Laura's name that comes before Fay to make up my middle name. I like to think those names and the relationships that were attached to them served as a starting point for the role they would play in my life. Perhaps they are part of the reason I'm here today, focusing on a business that carries her name and sharing these images from her childhood. I'm in the progress of getting these printed and framed to hang on the family wall in our new house. I have so many pictures that I think we may have more than one family wall, but that's okay because I prefer family photographs to most other artwork anyway. They are so special to me.

Baby Joan in 1934

Joan with her beloved dog, Sandy.

Joan (on the right) with a friend.

Those curls...

Posing with her tennis racket.

With her brother Bob.

With Bob and her older sister Betty.

Baby Joan with Betty and Bob.

With Bob and her mother Elsie.

An adorable Joan (second from right) with her childhood friends.