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My First Best Friend · In The Driver's Seat

• Lisa: Do you have a place from your childhood that you can still see very vividly in your mind? Mine is a house on the corner of Elm and 10th Street in Lincoln, Illinois. And that street, the 10th Street, actually came to a T at the front of the house, and then it would jag around the corner of the lot and continue on. So if you were driving west. down 10th Street, I believe it was West, if I have my directions correct. ⁓ that part of 10th Street was brick. And it was really just very ⁓ had this grand feeling of driving down the street with the brick and these big tall o ⁓ older trees ⁓ in the homes on that street were big and really nice and older. But you could so you could see The house on the corner of Elm in Tenth as the whole time you're driving down that portion of Tenth Street. That ⁓ house holds some of my favorite memories. And it is the place ⁓ my very best friend lived. And I absolutely loved spending weekends there. My grandma French was born in 1900, exactly, 1900. So by the time I was born, she was in her early 70s. So she had seen so many things, so many inventions, so many changes in our country throughout that time. Her first husband had passed away, and she married then my grandpa, which he was born in 1906. They had only one child, which was obviously my father. My grandpa was a retired farmer then once he retired they moved into inside the city limits at some point. In the neighborhood where they lived, there were lots of ⁓ other older couples, were also ⁓ just women, they were widowed. ⁓ So grandpa would take care of their yards, mow their grass, take care of their gardens, their flowers, whatever. But he had his own little flower, like he planted lots of flowers around their house. I absolutely loved that. But my grandma of would always joke around about those ladies being my grandpa's girlfriends. And would just kind like have a little smirk on our face when she talk about it. 'Cause those ladies would send him home with cookies, zucchini bread, or whatever. Their friendship was just very playful. They had a very ⁓ kind of ornery ⁓ orneriness to their banter. One my favorite things they had in the front of the house off the living room there was a parlor room and in there she had ⁓ a player piano. They had it set up somehow. I don't know if they bought it this way or my grandpa had it converted, ⁓ but it the kind where you ⁓ had to pump ⁓ it to it go. It had a system of some sort in there. It literally sounded like a vacuum cleaner when you turn it on. ⁓ and then it would have a switch for a tempo that you could change the tempo or make it go forward really fast or rewind it. And then there was these long scrolls, these boxes with scrolls in it that had all these little holes in it that would put go over, ⁓ if you think like almost like a harmonica kind of, I guess. I don't know how to explain it, but it had like a a there was a metal plate ⁓ in the upright part of the piano that the paper would scroll would go over, and then that would correlate into whatever keys were being played on. And it was just the coolest thing. I was so fascinated by it. So she would, we'd sit in there and she would play different songs. Obviously, most of them were very old songs. ⁓ and also in that room, she had a collection of dolls. At one point, I think she had close to 200 dolls when she passed away. But ⁓ she ⁓ go to like my aunts would come and pick her up. And they would go to yard sales and she would that was her favorite thing. She was she would ⁓ go looking for dolls and she would find it didn't matter if they were in good shape or not. If they were bad shape, she'd clean them up. She'd get try figure out a way to get different clothes for them. I don't think she made them herself, but ⁓ she did. I don't remember exactly what how but she anyway, she would fix it up and then put it on display in this in her parlor room. And they were all over. They were all over the furniture there were ⁓ sofa in there they never used ⁓ into shelves and s side tables, wherever. One of the dolls ⁓ was a prayer doll and her hands were together in ⁓ in a prayer and she was in a kneeling position ⁓ and you ⁓ you push button on her ⁓ on her belly and she would say the prayer, now I lay me down to sleep. ⁓ And that's how learned that prayer was from that doll. And every night I would say that prayer. And to this day, I'm in my 50s. To this day, I still say that prayer every night when I go to sleep. I said that prayer every night to my children, while they were growing up. Or while they were little, I suppose I really didn't do it when they were older. But anyway, I did ⁓ that was just something that obviously has stuck with me my whole entire life. My grandma also was something was really interesting was she would list she had scanners. They lived couple about three blocks or so from a hospital and and she'd hear sirens, she would turn on the scanner and she would listen to whatever was going on. ⁓ I just thought that was really funny. I don't know why. And then at Christmas they had my absolute favorite Christmas tree of all times. And I am bound and determined at some point I will own one in my lifetime. ⁓ they had the vintage, well now it's considered vintage, it wasn't vintage then, but the aluminum Christmas trees, where the whole tree was like the the middle pole and all the branches were metal. And then it looked like tinsel. Instead of ⁓ like what an artificial tree will look like, the the pine needles, it was all like little tinsel, ⁓ or garland, I guess, more like not tinsel, but was silver, ⁓ then ⁓ it ⁓ a moving ⁓ color wheel that would in it had four different color panels. So it would be like red, blue, green, and orange. And the spotlight would go on the tree and then it would just slowly turn. And so the color of the tree. So there's no actual light on the tree, but the color of the tree would turn change as the the color wheel went around. And I would just sit in that room in the parlor and just watch the tree and watch the colors change on the tree for felt like forever. So my grandma was always this very calm, ⁓ grounded. energy to her. She she never tried to put on a show. I don't remember ever getting upset about anything. She like I said, she almost had a kind of a little bit of orneriness to her, which played well with really well with my grandpa. But ⁓ You know, everyone has that rock in the family and she was definitely the rock of of her family So when ⁓ my brother and I started racing quarter midgets, which my ⁓ my dad was from ⁓ that was my dad's hometown, Lincoln, Illinois. And there was ⁓ or is a quarter midget track there. It was a few miles outside of town. And when my brother and I started racing there, we obviously were going to Lincoln every weekend during race season, which was basically like April through s to September ish. So we spent a lot of time there, you know, get there and then on a Friday night and go the race a Saturday go home on Sunday. ⁓ were times where we just, you know, kind of just sat around and we would ⁓ we'd order pizza ⁓ Guzzardo's. I still crave that pizza, ⁓ my dad would like he would want to pay for it, but my grandma ⁓ lot of times didn't want him to. And so she would slip me a twenty dollar bill ⁓ pay the pizza guy when it came. Like, don't you let your dad pay for this. And then we would often play dominoes. And my grandma loved when we she would want us to be partners, me and her. And ⁓ So just things like that. Like I just felt like we were kind of like a team. And I would spend a lot of time sitting on the couch next to her chair. And we would just talk ⁓ know, for hours a time, it seemed. The house was two stories. The upper ⁓ the second level, ⁓ it was kind of like little if with type. apartment, a small apartment. So he had ⁓ a tenant up there. But then every so often my grandpa would have to paint the house, which forever and ever had been a the traditional old white house. my dad thought, you know, he's getting older, I don't want him up and down on the ladder. ⁓ he paid to have their house sided. ⁓ So the siding salesperson comes and they give him all these different color choices, ⁓ my was just adamant, like we're just going to be, it's just going to be white. We're doing white. ⁓ And I could tell because my grandma was just kind of like again, she had this little fun side to her. And ⁓ ⁓ asked me for some reason, ⁓ color did I think they should go with? And I picked this soft yellow color. And there were a couple of reasons for that. One, yellow is always my favorite color. ⁓ when I was pretty young, ⁓ the house we lived in when I was born and for many years of my first years of my life, the owners of that house we rented, they wanted to paint the interior walls and gave us the option of picking colors. And they asked me what color I wanted my room to be. ⁓ And I yellow. So I had this soft yellow colored room. Loved it. Then right kind of before my grandparents are gonna have their house sided, my best friend, their family had their house sided, which they had also had older white house on a corner ⁓ And they went with this buttercup yellow color with white trim. And I was just like, my gosh, I freaking love that house. I love that color. ⁓ It so happy. ⁓ And that's like my grandpa was just, ⁓ no way are not doing a yellow colored house. ⁓ Who puts on their house? And I don't know how my grandma ended up winning out, but she went with yellow. And ⁓ well, they went with yellow, I guess I should say, but once it was done, people would stop and tell them how great their house looked. And what a great, you know, looks so so good at with the new color, whatever. So my grandma just got such a kick out of that that my grandma didn't want a white house, but everybody loved the yellow house. But the other kind of fun opposites of my grandparents was my like I said, my dad my dad Lincoln was my dad's hometown and he had actually raced ⁓ himself there when he was living there. And I guess my grandma had gone to go watch him race and his helmet was painted this cherry red color and he had an accident of some sort. I don't know if he got upside down or not, but His helmet flew off. I don't remember if the chin strap broke or if his helmet just wasn't on tight enough or what, but his helmet flew off. And she said the lady sitting next to her fainted because they thought that was my dad's head, like because it was red and flying through the air. But yeah, it just never phased her. Like it just was like she's so even keeled. And then when my brother and I started racing, my actually my the opposite part of that was my grandfather's opinion about racing was that racing's foolish. It was, you know, you're spending I and obviously because they went they grew up through the lived through the entire depression era and he was a farmer and all those things. So for him it was you're wasting all this money on ⁓ on something foolish dangerous. But my grandma fell it was just exciting and adventurous. So when my brother and I started racing, ⁓ now my grandma didn't drive. I don't know if she ever drove. She might have, but the entire my entire time that I I ever knew them, she did not drive. My grandpa drove her everywhere, or somebody would pick her up. So she would have to ask my grandpa to take her out to the track to see my brother and I race. And they didn't come out a whole lot, but they'd come out. You know, maybe a couple of times a year, once a once a year. And the last year that I was racing quarter midgets was when I was really starting to kind of get the hang of it and getting a lot better. And so I quite often would come home home with at least one trophy, whether it was the heat race or the feature. And so she started collecting my trophies and she put them on their TV the room. And so that way she could brag about her grandkids whenever ⁓ you know they had visitors or whatever. And to the fact that she she wanted those trophies so much to the fact at one point I I don't know why I just decided I wouldn't want to race one weekend. I mean we we were there, but I told my dad like, yeah, I don't, I don't know, I just don't want to race this weekend. And my grandma was upset. Like not mad. Like I said, she never got mad, but she was she kind of was just like let me know that she was disappointed that I wasn't going to race and be able to bring her home. ⁓ you know, whether it was a ribbon or a trophy that weekend. So, you know, she wasn't just cheering from the sidelines. She was very proud of of us ⁓ to save the of our wins ⁓ to keep home with her. So my grandma passed away very early in my junior year of high school. I was 16 years old at the time. And that was my very first hard death that I had to deal with. you know, my parents were divorced when I was before I'd started kindergarten. but my mom always was very fond of my grandparents. So my mom and her sister came to the service, and I was, of course, sitting up ⁓ front with the family, and I remember when the service was over and people were walking by the casket to kind of like say their last goodbyes or whatever. And when I stood up and I looked at the casket, I couldn't walk up there. I just remember thinking this is the last time. I'm ever going to see her. And I just I lost it. And I turned around and there's my mom. And I went straight to her and sat in the chair next to her and just cried like a baby in her arms, you know, at sixteen years old. know, I'd lost my best friend. That was my first best friend. And I didn't I had never known life without her. And I thought, you know, she was the first phone number I ever memorized. And ⁓ all the moments we shared and were special to were were gone. That, you know, that was she was such a solid foundation to my life. And you know, throughout the years I lost many other family members, you know, all my grandparents, ⁓ my mom, my dad disappeared. and so I ⁓ obviously became much more accustomed to losing loved ones in my life. And sometime in my thirties, like maybe in my mid thirties. I started having ⁓ this Now I didn't dream ⁓ of else. All the other people that I lost, including my mom, you know, who was also very special to me. ⁓ and had in I never had any dreams about other people that ⁓ relatives that I had lost. ⁓ But in my mid or my late thirties, I started having this dream ⁓ it was very vivid. It was a dream that my grandma French she had died, but she had come back to life, like basically from the grave type of thing. Not in a zombie type of way or any weird thing like that. Like she was literally living, breathing person in that house on the corner of Elm and 10th Street. I could see her in the kitchen. And I could just I could just feel her presence, like nothing was different. I I can't really, I I there's no way for me to articulate it. And I remember just thinking, ⁓ my gosh, like my grandma's alive. And I would wake up from that dream. And it would take me a little bit to actually question myself, like, wait, is my grandma really alive again? Like, like, how is that even possible? Like, why would I even question that? Why would I not realize that was a dream when I woke up? But yeah, every time I have the dream, I would feel like, ⁓ my gosh, my grandma's alive. And then I'm like, what are you talking about? That's a dream. So a not only that's the only person I ever had a dream about like that or at all in any kind of situation or ⁓ capacity, but Like it was so it felt I could feel her. And I the fact that I didn't only have that dream just once. I'd have it like a couple times a year. So in two thousand and eleven, I think it was, that what I went to a what they call a metaphysical fair. I went with two of my best friends and who were much into all those things and I was just very curious. ⁓ so they had different kind of different ⁓ all kinds of different booths. You know, some people were mediums, some people were psychics, some people whatever. And some were just other things like they're selling crystals or ⁓ I don't know, like you name it. You if if it was the metaphysical realm, it was ⁓ it was at this fair. And I just walked around and just kind of took everything in. And I'm I'm looking at all the different booths, stopping at different tables. ⁓ finally I decided I picked this one lady and I put my name down for ⁓ what she called a channeling. So she a for you of some sort. ⁓ And when I to her, I told her about ⁓ the dream that I had had about my grandma. And I said it's I just feel like it's a dream. Like the fact that I'm having it, I've had it multiple times and how real it feels when I wake up. Like I'm still feel like it's real when I wake up. ⁓ I felt like it's trying to tell me something. And so she did a channel and she said that this The my grandma French, the dream is about my grandma French, is telling me that she is my spirit guide and she is live, so therefore she is living through me. So that's how she has come back to life in in her in that way, is that she is living through me, my my experience, and she's guiding me in my life. And when she said that, I just like, ⁓ well, of course. You know, she was my very first best friend. Like she was my very first hardest death. Like I was so devastated when she died. ⁓ ⁓ it just made sense. I thought, well, of course she's my spirit guide. Like she was my bestie. And I never had that dream after that. It was like ⁓ I the answer so I didn't need to have the dream anymore. Like I got the answer. I still think about that lot the corner of Elm and 10th Street. The house that appeared at the end of the road, like was just waiting for you, the buttercup yellow with a white trim. Every once in a while I'll even look it up on Google Street View ⁓ from to time, just to see if it's still there. ⁓ And it is. It's there. It's still that yellow color with a white trim. And I think about the happy home, ⁓ and of it, how woman lived there who showed me what it looks like to be grounded and fully present in your life, to show up for adventure and the joyful and small beautiful moments. She's the reason I know that people who love us the most don't leave They actually get closer. So as always, I have a couple of free resources for you. The links are in the show notes. I have a link to my visualization guide, which it is a method of creation for various things in your life, ⁓ And also ⁓ there's a link to my newsletter, Hello Possibility. If you subscribe to that, you'll every Tuesday that will go to your email and it's similar stories and talking how to build a life that you really truly love. So thank you so much for spending time with me. ⁓ truly appreciate you being here. Until next time, just know that you are always in the driver's seat of your life.