Mums and Grannies

I really never thought I'd be a grandmother because I was pretty darned sure I wouldn't be a mother. And that was OK with me. And then I met Rick who shared his two boys and time flew. Before I knew it, there were two Baby Grands to love!

I don't know how Molly does it. She has a very stressful and responsible job. She may well love what she does and be very good at it, but it can still eat your lunch. For the past two years, while Kevin was in grad school on weekends, working days and doing homework in the evenings, I think Molly did a good deal of the heavy lifting. (Especially the Little Little Guy!). I'm worn out after an afternoon!

It makes me think about my own mom and grandmothers. The other day, I saw Harry and Meghan introduce their little baby to the world at Windsor Castle, cameras clicking in the background. I suspect my mom had the same feeling showing me off when they returned home from the hospital!

After all, I was a pretty big deal in her life, all six pounds, four ounces of me. The war had made my mom and dad part of the group that was "older parents." She was 33, my dad 35 when I was born. These days that's more common but when I was in school, my parents were often the oldest in my class. In fact, my mother would have been 100 earlier this month, had she lived so long. Many of my friends still have both parents, well into their 80s, perhaps, but going strong. But age didn't stop her from being a "room mother" and Brownie troop leader or engaging in multiple volunteer activities. Her energy was indefatigable.

One thing I discovered as I was doing my family genealogy is that I come from a long line of working women. And I don't mean just working in the home as a mother. That's hard enough. But out working for pay, making their own way.

I know little about my great grandmother, Angeline, apart from the fact that her mother died when she was quite young and that she raised six children on a Mennonite farm in Michigan, dying when my grandfather was only five. That was farming in the 1880s when everything was by hand. Could I have done it? I guess you do what you have to do. But it wasn't easy.

I don't know what brought Elizabeth Grainger, my second great grandmother, from Wales to London in the 1800s but I do know that after she married and emigrated to the United States in 1855 with her husband, Stephen, she was listed on census documents as "huckster." I'm assuming that meant that she was a clerk or salesperson, although I'm not sure if that's the case (it wouldn't be now!). Nor do I know if her daughter, Bessie (also Elizabeth and my great grandmother) worked, since the city directories list only a working "Elizabeth" and it could be either.

But when Bessie married William Wood, after a number of years they moved from Buffalo to Michigan and Bessie was a big part of the grocery store and market the two owned together.

And I know that Bessie and William Wood's daughter, Minnie, did indeed have a job, working as a clerk in my grandfather's insurance agency, where they met. After they married In 1912, her clerking days were over as she raised four daughters, a son who died at age seven and two babies who died shortly after birth.

With a family like that, Minnie would probably tell you that her work never stopped; it just changed.

Minnie passed many gifts down to her daughters. My mother clearly received her crafting and art gene, which has most certainly come down to me. But like her mother and grandmother before her, Mom was also a working woman of the 1930s and '40s. She and her sisters were the first in the family who went to college. Mom was a teacher for many years (in fact, when I was in college I did an internship at the same school where she taught elementary thirty-something years before!) Then during the war she worked for Capitol Airlines. After, she managed a dress shop. I did not inherit the fashion gene from her.

Of my other grandmother, Ellen, I know little despite spending countless hours with her when I was a child.

She had been a teacher, that I knew, moving from her birthplace in Wisconsin to Montana (and how she met my grandfather, I have no idea!). After their marriage they had a bakery in the small town of Webberville for several years until it was destroyed by fire.

I spent many afternoons with her on the farm she and my grandfather had. There was plenty of corn, berry, bean and tomato picking to do. And when that was done, it was time to bake. Grandma always made her own bread (I didn't get that gene, either -- but fortunately, Rick makes up for that!). And she made wonderful peanut butter cookies. Molasses, too. Pies that couldn't quit. I still remember the root cellar under their farmhouse, dark and dank with a large cistern. Jars of jam, pickles, and fruits and veggies, carefully but efficiently canned on hot summer days lined the walls.
 

She loved her garden and flowers, too. Enormous peony and bleeding heart bushes. When I see bleeding hearts, I think first of Grandma.

I haven't often thought back on that "working girl" part of my lineage. Instead, I've thought of kind, lovely women who clearly adored their families and those I knew certainly loved me to bits. But I never thought of the struggles.

The struggle of leaving your homeland and family and making the journey to America as an immigrant in the mid-1800s; of being in the cramped quarters of steerage with three small children.

Source: Norway Heritage.com

I didn't think about learning to live in a new land, probably under-employed, hoping for a better life for your daughter.

I didn't think about what it would be like for a woman in turn-of-the-century Michigan to have a job in an insurance office, walking the eight or so blocks to her office, rain or shine, four seasons, in a long dress, coat and hat, long hair piled high.

Nor had I thought about what it would be like to be a young married couple who started a new business and then saw that business burn to the ground. How do you start over in 1919? I wish I knew. You just do.

Though I spent a good deal of time at the farm, I never thought about what it would be like to be working that farm in all seasons, canning the produce, planting, weeding. It wasn't a working farm in that only small amounts of things were sold, usually berries, sometimes corn. But there was still a lot of land to manage. And the food they grew helped sustain them during the winter and especially during the Depression. How did she do it?

The struggles, the era, the conveniences that make our lives easier -- these weren't part of my grandparents or great grandparents' lives. I can connect to my mother's story because in many ways it wasn't all that different than mine.  But then again, I can only try to understand what it would be like to know you were dying when your daughter wasn't even quite 25 yet. So much life to live you'd never see.

I know that I will never have the status of "official" grandmother that Molly's and Kevin's mothers have. But I do know that I plan to give this little guy...

...and this one...

...all the love they deserve and as many experiences as we can.

And to all moms and grans -- especially this beautiful and pretty remarkable woman who has her hands full every single day and never ceases to amaze me -- I say it with extra feeling.

Happy Mother's Day.

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