Baby Ruth

November 15, 2019 (and later)

To my Baby Ruth,

I started this note to you the day you were born, and here I am three months later getting back to it. 

We (Granny and I) bought our airline tickets early, trying to time things so we’d likely arrive in San Diego County as close as possible to your arrival. As it turned out you beat us there, but only by three days. 

Like your sister you made a lot of work for your wonderful mother on November 15. Your Dad was there to help her and cheer her and welcome you. So was our friend Sue.

And what beautiful pictures there are of you with your happy but exhausted Mom and Dad and later with your sister and Gamma — thanks to a family friend who is also a wonderful photographer.

I am so happy those folks could be with you. But how your Granny and Grandshaw wanted to be, and how joyous a meeting it was when we got to Vista.

Your name is so special to me, Ruth Irmgard Carlin. I love “family names”. We named your mom Brannon Ruth to commemorate two remarkable women. I am glad that you and your mom share one namesake.

Annie Belle Brannon Snell was your great great grandmother. She lived to be 96. She was a school teacher as a young woman in L.A. (Lower Alabama — Dale and Henry counties) before she became a mother of five wonderful daughters. She was a great cook, a devout Christian, a quick intellect, and a very practical loving mother, wife, sister, aunt, grandmother, and in-law. She (and her daughter Mavis) welcomed me into her family immediately with open arms. She had very weak eyes and bad knees when I kew her, but still a quick wit and an infectious laugh. And how I loved her Butter Roll. I hope that recipe continues in the family — though if you inherit certain family genes you’ll need to be careful to enjoy so many calories only occasionally!

Sarah Ruth Baird Shaw is your great grandmother and my mother and we still get to visit with her almost every day. I’ll let you read about the namesake that your share with your mother here. You will also want to read her books to know more about this fascinating woman that you are named after. She looks so forward to seeing the photos and videos of you that we bring to her house across town here in Rome, Georgia.

Whatever anyone can say about us, they cannot say our family is “Ruthless”!
We have 

• Sarah Ruth Baird Shaw
• Deborah Ruth Shaw Lewis
• Brannon Ruth Shaw Carlin
• Jessica Ruthanne Shaw
• Hannah Ruth Yoest

Your other namesake is also a remarkable woman. Irmgard Charlotte Klebba Huzel lives in Los Angeles but she was born even farther away than Grandshaw. Your Dad calls her Oma. She was born in Germany and her childhood was lived during the terrible years between the two World Wars when Germany was experiencing terrible social and economic revolutions and the terror of the Nazi ascendancy. You should read your great-grandfather Huzel's (her husband) book about his experiences as a German soldier then an engineer with the rocket program, and after the war as a prisoner of war in America and then as a new American citizen. I have told Oma that she should write up her own life story. It would be fascinating to hear the story of the war and later the escape with Dieter from her perspective.

I wrote to your Mom when she was only an infant. I told her that I knew that she was a person of great strength. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did. And I was right. She is a person of character, and determination, and deep love. I have watched her with your Dad and see the love they share, and I see those same traits in my son-in-law, and in your sister, and now in you. Like most babies you had a struggle getting here, though not as hard as Clementine had, thank Goodness! I know that those traits will carry you through the hard times and enrich the good times. I look forward to getting to see some of those times myself. 

My father was named Grandshaw by your cousin Joey. He said something about his grandfather and his Dad asked, “Do you mean Granddaddy Johnston?” “No,” Joey responded, “You know, Gran..Shaw!” Well my Daddy has been gone since 1986. When my sister Carol and Debi and Joan were sitting with me and my Mother and your Granny not long before Clementine was born, they asked what I’d want my grandkids to call me. One suggested Granshaw. I wondered if I had a right to that name! My sisters seemed to like the idea, so I guess that will be it, unless, of course, y'all exercise every granddaughter's prerogative and give me a name of your own choosing.

Like I told Clemmie, I hope I get lots of chances to talk with you. but at 72 I suppose it is practical, if also a little morbid, to suppose I ought to be as proactive as possible, just in case. I want you to know a little about me, and Granny, and my parents, and theirs.... all the wonderful people who made me who I am, and who would love you just as much as I do.  But I want to know all about you too! Your questions, and dreams, and wonders.

So this first letter to Ruth of, I hope, many. One of these days, I hope you will begin to respond yourself. Maybe till then your Mom and Dad will keep us abreast of all your doings over there on the other side of the continent.

I promise you exactly what I promised Clemmie: for all the spins of this big globe, across all the miles between us, through every joy and deep into every sorrow, at the apex of every triumph and into the depths of every despair, I will love you to the moon and back. That’s a promise.

So you can always look up at that old moon and imagine my love in an endless stream of kisses banking off its shining face from wherever I am and down to wherever you are, Ruth Irmgard Carlin, my granddaughter. I love you.

-Grandshaw

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From Facebook:

April 19, 2019

Our granddaughter Ruth Irmgard Carlin as well as Charles Shaw Lewis (my sister Debi's grandson), who are my mother's thirty-fifth and thirty-fourth great-grandchildren were among the 23 babies of 2019 who were rcognized in the 38th Annual Louise Langham Baby Recognition Sunday at our church, Trinity United Methodist, this morning!