My Mom has been gone for almost twenty years. Every now and then I dream about her. It almost always takes place in my childhood home and is always a little fuzzy and not spectacular at all. Kind of like the real thing. Time spent at home with my Mom. Just doing the simple everyday things in life. It usually feels like I am around ten or twelve and my Mom would have been about 40ish. She is almost always in the kitchen and I am usually in the adjoining room at the piano; where I spent most of my childhood (it just seems that way). The dreams are comforting to me, like a gentle hug.
My Mom's illness took her away just at the time in our lives when we both were appreciating each other the most. The miles had separated us for a few years and we were finally starting to get to know each other as adult women and not as mother and daughter. Sadly she slipped away far too soon. I often wonder what she would have been like at 70, 80 or even at 90 -- which was as long as her own mother had lived. Would her beautiful dark hair have turned white? She hardly had a gray hair when she left me. Unanswered questions that I shouldn't dare ask, but I do.
I think I was quite lucky to have had such wonderful, strong women in my life. My grandmothers were both true 'Pioneer Women' or maybe 'Prairie Women' is more accurate. They were the typical farmers wife in the 1930's in the prairie states of the Midwest. They did all the things in the poems below -- baked, cooked, cleaned, quilted, gardened and mostly without the modern conveniences of today. I want to share a few family photos and some poetry I came across that reminds me of my own Mother and Grandmothers.
|
art by Edith Holden |
Grandmother's
Recipes
Her
cookies are the best ones made;
No one can
match her lemonade;
She cures
the best of country ham
And makes
delicious berry jam.
A better
pie no one can make,
Or even
touch her chocolate cake.
Her
pickles are so crisp and nice;
Her
peaches are just right with spice.
And when I
ask her recipe,
She shakes
her head and smiles at me,
"Oh,
I just guess at it, my dear."
And now it
seems to me quite clear,
One things
that's used, all else above --
Her main
ingredient is love.
Esther
L. Dauber
Mom at Graduation Me & Mom Before marriage she worked as a secretary
Old Quilt
Like
swift-winged swallows, her small hands flew,
Dipping
and darting the bright thread through,
Over and
under the steel flashed true--
Silent
staccato and constant rhyme.
And, oh,
I wonder -- did she divine
That the
threads would hold, and the quaint design
Should
someday rest on a bed of mine,
Bridging
the mystical gulf of time?
Betty Cornwell
Memory Garden
Lengthening shadows bring memories
Of days that have passed us by;
And I think of time and I think of life,
And I sometimes wonder why
That time can't be stayed and enjoyed without loss
As the sun and earth and sky.
and the more I think, the more I am sure
That nothing can ever be lost,
That time is the garden of memory
And life is but part of the cost.
So we trade our lives for those memories
And we live each golden day,
And the flowers we grow in our garden
May have petals bright and gay,
Or they may be dark and depressing things
If we live our lives that way.
So each one may choose and invest his time,
For time is a part of the cost;
And each one must live with his memories
For nothing can ever be lost.
Robert M.
Clarke
Here is something dear to my heart. I found this poem in my Mom's things a year or so after her death when I was sorting through a box. Here it is pasted in my journal.
It's a poem by Longfellow, written in her own hand.
Thank you Mom for this wonderful gift!