Incase you missed it, the Steemit Blockchain Memory Project was launched last week and am excited about the comments and posts that are being generated.

A huge THANK YOU to all who have participated thus far! I’m really happy to see this initiative gaining momentum.

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Memory Journal (2) - Mrs. Willow Werkhaven

Most of us have a few mentors who’ve serendipitously crossed our paths. There are those people who show up at just at the right time to teach us what we need to know at a particular moment in our life.

There are other kinds of mentors, far more rare, who teach us deep lessons that have a way of unraveling through the course of our entire lives. Mrs. Werkhaven was a mentor of the rarer variety.

This grainy picture is the only image I have of Mrs. Werkhaven.

My parents bought the house I grew up in, 586 Elizabeth Avenue (in Columbus OH), in 1971 when I wasnt even a year old. I had my first birthday there. It was an 800 sq ft house, built in the 1930’s, with asbestos siding.

Yes, you read that right... asbestos siding.

Mrs. Werkhaven was already newly retired when our family moved into the house. She’d worked for Lazarus, a local department store, for almost her entire working career. She had been married but divorced in the 1940’s when she learned about her traveling salesman husband’s infidelities. She raised three daughters and put them through Catholic school on her own. I’m sure this wasn’t an easy task.

She was worldly, an intellectual, and aside from travel, her greatest love was classical music. She had gone to college to study and eventually teach music but I’m sure the hand that life dealt her made her choose a job that was more stable and had benefits.

When we first moved into our house my parents thought the house next door was vacant. They found out later that Mrs. Werkhaven had embarked on a whirlwind post-retirement trip around the world just before we moved in. She traveled to Egypt, China, Europe, and nearly everywhere in between.

When she returned from her travels her and my mom became fast friends and she become like a surrogate grandmother to me since only one of my grandparents were alive when I was born. She was a very stern woman and took no back talk or rudeness from anyone. She was also very slow to trust people, her main companion was her dog Boomey. For those lucky enough to be on her good side, she was the most kind and giving individual you could ever meet but suffered from the bitterness of someone whose life didn't turn out as they wished it would have.

She exuded culture, class, and the manners of a bygone era. When my brother and I were really young we called her “Who-Who” (like the sound of an owl.) She would stand on the porch, wave and say “you who” and I think the words just got misinterpreted one day and stuck for the next five or six years.

The front porch we spent many summer afternoons on. The house I grew up in is to the left.

Mrs. Werkhaven and I would sit on her front porch and page through stacks of National Geographic magazines. She’d share her personal experiences about the exotic places the magazine was featuring that given month. She also told me about how her daughters would ride their horse just a half mile down the road to an apple orchard. I found this hard to believe because, by then, the neighborhood was deep in the city and there was a gas station where she said the orchard once stood.

She had a piano in her living room and noticed my interest in it when I was about four years old. We began lessons shortly after and she taught me the basics, which was the seed of my lifelong love of music. She made me repeat runs on that piano what seemed like hundreds of times until I got them right. I went on to later learn to play violin, guitar, and clarinet.

She gave me my first real job. I took out her trash for $.50 per week and, starting at age seven, I cut the grass on her double lot for $5 per week. She would closely inspect the yard after I cut it and if any of my work wasn’t to her liking I would have to redo it until it was. This taught me the importance of responsibility, hard work, and also the value of a hard-earned dollar.

After my younger brother Curt came along in 1974 Mrs. Werkhaven would occasionally babysit us. One summer day I distinctly remember a lunch that she made for my brother and I. She plated what looked like a chicken patty on a bun but didn’t taste like chicken. She told us it was something called, “sweetbreads”. There was nothing sweet about it but we ate all we could stomach. Later, Curt and I discovered what we ate were actually cow brains and this was the last time we ate at Mrs. Werkhaven’s house. As it turns out, she was the daughter of a butcher so she grew up eating what didn’t readily sell in his butcher shop.

For Christmas and birthdays Mrs. Werkhaven would give us educational gifts. I remember gifts like a dictionary, books, and a globe.

As I got older and spent more time with my friends I started spending less time with Mrs. Werkhaven but would stop to talk with her whenever I saw her on the porch. As I approached my high school years we saw her even less. She had suffered from diabetes for decades and it was getting more and more severe. She split her time between her own house and staying with her daughters.

The last time I saw her was in the hospital in the summer of 1989. Her body was terribly ravaged by diabetes at this point. It was so hard to see her in that condition. Being a boy of 17 I couldn’t seem to find the words to tell her how much she meant to me. This is one of my biggest regrets. I hope she knew exactly how I felt and what an impact she had on me.

All these years later, I still think of her and cherish the memories of the time we shared. Whenever I achieve something significant in my life like publishing a new book or helping to create the HardFork series, or even travel to a new destination I think about how none of that may have been possible without her guidance in those early years.

I hope you enjoyed these memories! Stay tuned, there’s more to come.

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Steemit Blockchain Memory Project Rules of Engagement

• Share any significant memory you’d like to. Think about things that have shaped who you are or may be unique in some way. Think about memories you’d like your great-great-grandchildren to read about....now write posts about these memories in your Steemit blog.
• Use proper tags (see below)
• Share a link to this post in all of your Blockchain Memory Project posts so others can find the rules.
• Share your posts with your friends and family on external social media outlets (optional but encouraged).

Tag Suggestions

We want your memories to live on forever. We also want those memories to be searchable by those who might be looking for them in the future.

For this reason, I suggest the following tags for your first four - “Story Life Blog BlockchainMemoryProject”.

Your last tag should be very specific to what you’re writing about in your post, something that will help people who are searching for it on the internet.

I'll be sharing memories of my own along the way.

Prizes

Each month I will comb through the posts tagged with “BlockchainMemoryProject” and choose my favorites. The post owners will receive a surprise in their wallets...a portion of a monthly prize of 10 Steem! Note: all rules of engagement must be followed for your post to qualify.

As always, I thank you for reading.

Yours in the Chain,

Eric

Please follow our official Steemit account for the film series @hardfork-series. Did you miss our last post? If so CLICK HERE to read it!

*I am an American novelist, poet, traveler, and crypto-enthusiast. If you’ve enjoyed my work please sign up for my author newsletter at my website. Newsletter subscribers will receive exclusive updates and special offers and your information will never be sold or shared.
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