Ever wonder what tree you fell out of? I have, often, and my accumulation of years makes these wonderings an ever more interesting topic.

What actually does form a person? Certainly DNA and genetics play a role. When I was a child people told me that I was a “mixture” of my mother and father. I don’t know what this means and strongly suspect they did not either. Perhaps it is just easier, and potentially safer, to tell a person they are a “mix.”

Environmental factors also must have a lot to do with one’s makeup. And here is where mine diverges from the typical because my formative years were so vastly different from the norm. Both the dusty climate of central India and the gloomy skies of western Oregon made me what I am. But first, the genetics.

My maternal grandmother was Ruby Elmore Blackman. I have no idea where this name came from—perhaps a reference to the “far above rubies” scripture in the Old Testament.

I met Ruby’s mother, my great grandmother, on a cold, wet Oregon morning when I was 16 years of age. She was a very short, very stooped, very quiet, very old lady. I felt no connection with her whatsoever. My only concern that icy and slippery morning was getting her in a car without having a major accident. A fall at her age could be fatal. I was not used to having anyone, especially an old woman, lean on me, so I was awkward. It never occurred to me to ask where she came from, or any other questions.

I know very little about the Elmore family. I don’t even know if Ruby had any siblings. She never spoke of any, and I was too “dumb” to ask any questions. I don’t know where Ruby was born, where she went to school, or how she met Frank Blackman, her short-lived husband.

I do know Ruby was an interesting woman. As a teenager I would get very annoyed at her for reasons which now escape me. I have the sense that she may not have finished high school, but I am not sure. Unlike now, formal education in her era was optional.

Ruby had an artistic bent. I remember her playing the piano (not particularly well, but adequate for a sing-along of mostly religious music). She also painted and drew on hanging cloth with crayons, and she did these quite well. I still have a drawing she did of a Bengal tiger in India.

She always noticed flowers, plants, flora of all kinds. In the Himalayan mountains of north India she used to collect ferns, no doubt some