The beginning

 We are meeting today in our sibling/dad call.  Olivia is running the show and asked us to share something we're grateful for from the past year and some ideas for my dad's life story because she and he are working on it.

I come from a life story kind of people.

I remember my mom working on helping some of my great grandparents with their stories.  She gave me a printed copy of Grandma and Grandpa Wood's and Great Grandma Jaynes's stories.  She helped create life stories for my Dahl grandparents and Jaynes grandparents.

Olivia helped our mom with her life story in some of her final months.  She really wanted to finish.  

So I have been sitting with all this life story stuff percolating in my brain and I decided to embark on a project.

I decided if it was on my blog, I would stay more accountable to it and Marianne and Olivia could tell me if I am not remembering correctly.

(My dad will also tell me that I have "a creative memory", but I am what I am.)

She who writes, writes history.  So here I go.

I was born March 23, 1973 to Mark and Coralee Dahl.  Both their families were from the Salt Lake area and both their parents had moved to Elko County to ranch.  They grew up together and were high school sweethearts and to my eternal fortune, were married.

My parents in high school.

I was born in Elko, Nevada.  My dad was working as a cowboy at the River Ranch at the time.  He lost his job and my grandpa, Homer Jaynes, died all in the same week. I can't imagine that for my parents.  I was 15 months old.

My dad started working for my uncle Demar, my dad's oldest brother.  He was still a cowboy.  We lived in a little single wide trailer nestled in some trees next to the bunk house on my grandparents' ranch.  It's the first house I remember.

This is a picture of my Grandpa Jaynes holding me:

I love this picture because he is looking at me so intently and it reminds me that I had a grandpa who loved me even though I don't remember him.  My mom had a tape recording of him speaking and also a recording of his funeral.  She listened to both tapes sometimes when she was cleaning.  She would tell us stories about him and she would say, "I wish my dad could be here!" whenever there was something big happening in our lives.  She also told me, "He loved you so much!"

I don't think I really understood until Adam became a grandpa. I saw how giddy he was about the whole thing and it occurred to me that maybe that is what my mom meant.

My dad told me once that he fell in love with my mom because he loved Homer so much.  

I am grateful for my heritage.  My ancestors were faithful and hard working and imperfect and passed on a legacy to me that I think about a lot and want to preserve.