Since granddaughter, Brandy Leah Schwan, has published her first Gothic poetry book, I'm often asked what she was like as a child. I can tell you she was a most interesting child, for sure. She could be down to earth one moment, and head in the clouds the next. Her favorite companion, our big German Shepherd "Maximillian Thorntondell”. She referred to him in her poem, "Red Riding Hood". “The Sixteen Acres", about our place in the country, and behind us the tiny community cemetery where so many of her relatives are buried. This was, and still is, a favorite spot atop a little knoll she loves to visit and hear about the lives of family buried there. She was sad for the tragedies, the heart breaks, and the romantic side of her loved the love stories. It was as though she could see in her mind these people of long ago.

Since a child of three years, Brandy seemed sensitive to energies surrounding her. I remember many incidents that gave the family chills. One, the strange happening in the first home her parents lived in. Her mother often heard the child in her little room talking to someone; yet no one there. That is not unusual in young children, but when asked "who are you talking to Brandy?" she would reply, "grandma from the flowers mama".

Some time went by, and she still insisted on the same answer, that this grandma came to visit and play with her. There was no answer for us until it was figured out she was seeing her father's mother, who had passed away, and mentally impaired at the time, but always knew who little Brandy was. Perhaps the flowers were from the funeral service surrounding the open casket, when she had attended with the family.

Another favorite thing in Brandy's young life were my stories. The spookier the better. When she was five I made up a tale one evening, about something howling in our woods at night. She was beside me on the bed, eyes as big as two blue sapphires. I told it with eerie details, but not wanting a nightmare ending, told her the mystery was solved. It was Max, our dog doing the howling, who liked to hunt at night and cornered a raccoon under the oak tree that had a barn owl hooting on an upper limb. Every time she visited the story had to be told in a spooky voice, not allowing a single change, or I would be reminded of how it was told the first time.

As soon as Brandy learned to write she would make up rather cryptic poems and stories. Sometimes it was her interpretation of something that had happened, or it was just plain mischief. Halloween was a special holiday for Brandy and her sisters, with creepy decorations in the house and yard. Their mother had parties every year for the girls, and Brandy, with great imagination provided the tricks.

As a young girl Brandy loved the writings of Edgar Allen Poe, as I did. "Grey's Elegy" in a Church Yard, a favorite. She loved mythology stories of the 'Old Gods'. Brandy accepted the unusual, not always needing answers. Sometimes things were just the way they were. She didn't have to see with her eyes, but feeling inside that she had special gifts, of knowing what others did not.

There was a lighter side of this little girl, who loved wearing old dresses, my shawl, and a pretend paper crown, dancing in the sunroom to the record album, "Camelot." Peaking in, I would see the imaginative princess, with her mysterious smile, dancing and singing to herself in another world. A world of magic. (Strange, I just discovered the old worn out album recently, bringing back memories).

Brandy's poetry has meaning… often hidden meaning. The women of our family seem to be gifted with some knowledge of the ancients. The ancients spoke with a cryptic language of their own. Perhaps it comes from our Scots-Irish-Welsh ancestry. We women belong to the "Clan of the Cat" and have traced family back to those ancient times. The time of the Celts. Every so many generations a gifted one is born, and as those in our past, we believe Brandy to be the one in this generation.