On this All Saints’ Day, with gratitude for all who have gone before, are with us now, and are yet to come…
Saving the Story
There’s something that happens when women gather in the kitchen, preparing a meal or cleaning up. The particular task isn’t important; what matters is that hands are busy and hearts are open. This is not a new phenomenon, it’s been happening since God was a little girl.
On a Saturday morning, the sun rises outside as it casts new daylight on the barn out back. I take out the “Ultimate Bread” cookbook, given to me by Mom two birthdays ago, to make Cranberry Muffins. Mom comes into the kitchen, with one of her signature cloth bags, and we continue our conversation about creativity and writing. “Whenever the day comes that you and your brothers have to go through our stuff, you know that there will be lots of papers. I save all the cards and letters that you three write. I can’t throw them away. I just like the way you use words.” We talk some more about saving cards and such. At this point I open the back of the cookbook I was using, and show her the birthday card she had written to me when she gave me the book. I had taped the card inside the book. To save it. “I think I understand,” I tell her. “It must be in our genes and we can’t help it.”
Mom continues to tell me about all the journals that her Grandma kept. Great Grandma Frank is my mother’s mother’s mother – that direct maternal link that mysteriously weaves together our hearts. Twenty-two years ago I wore Grandma Frank’s wedding dress as my own. And now I feel a stronger bond with her as I learn of her writing. Mom tells me more about her. She kept daily journals, not necessarily poetic but recording life as it happened. She wrote to senators and the like, expressing her concern about events and decisions. But she didn’t spend all her time with pen in hand. She was married to Bert, a farmer, which meant that she was also a farmer ~ skimming cream from the large milk basin, making buttermilk, growing and harvesting grapes (I remember the trellis near the kitchen), tending to the chickens which probably meant she also butchered and cleaned chickens (I’ve entertained the thought of raising chickens – but only for eggs – perhaps this too is in the genes,) and the countless other jobs that a farmer’s wife did 100 years ago. She gave birth to seven children, and grieved the death of Phillip’s twin and of Margaret who died on her fourth birthday. Various folk sought refugee in her home – her mother after she had a stroke, Aunt Lizzie, Bob, Johnny, Barbara, Tom, and probably a few others. She was deeply interested in genealogy and researched the Howell and Newberry families – before the days of easy library access and the wealth of information available by Internet. Fortunately Mom has a copy of this, among the papers that she is saving.
On her 63rd birthday, Grandma Frank wrote, “Today I turn 63. What do I have to show for my life?” The age old question that us women ask of ourselves – as if we’ve done nothing! Women who have raised families of their own and of others, who have nurtured and nourished family with what was on hand, who have found avenues to direct creative desires and gifts, who have contributed in countless ways to the larger community. It is in the genes, but not just in this family. The particular expressions vary from mother to mother, but it is how we have been created. And when we listen to our hearts, and follow that leading, the world is a better place.
Stirring the muffin batter, looking out at the barn that someday could house chickens, recalling the words that have spilled forth from my heart and how Ruthann and Rachel have done the same, the bond between daughter and mother and grandmother and great-grandmother grows stronger. And my roots grow a little deeper. And, from deep within my heart, I offer words of thanks.
(This was written 2 years ago and this seems the place to share it, at least for now…)
Back Road Journey 