Five Minute Friday: motherhood should come with...

More than anything, I wish motherhood came with the accumulated wisdom of our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

I look at my own mom, who raised the four of us...often while going back to school, making a farming income possible, and finding ways to supplement it with her talents.

My Grandma, widowed with three teenage daughters at home...the mother of six total, including two sets of twins.  

My Grammy, who went back to school at a time when women rarely did, while raising four children and putting up with my Papa.

My great-grandmothers... one who came to California during the Dust Bowl from Oklahoma, canning her own gravy to eat on the road.  Another who grew up in San Francisco, was a child during the great earthquake and cooked not only for her own family, but for others in restaurants and logging camps in Yosemite.  And still another who grew up, the eldest of a very large family...with so little, and yet had a gift of hospitality that inspires me still today.

 

How I'd love to be able to sit with them now, and learn from their wisdom.

Linked to 5 Minute Friday@thegypsymama

Comments

[Caitlin]

Thank you for the beautiful comment on my post. I am praying for the hearts of your household. I really enjoyed reading your entry above! How great of a reminder to fight for every bit of time we have with those who are running ahead of us while we still have it. God has hidden so much treasure inside of them :)

[Diana Trautwein]

This is just lovely. Thanks for the peek into your own family history - and thanks for the shout-out to us grandmothers. I did the same kind of thing, only I thought of it near the end of the SHORT five minutes, so had to add a little after the time was up!

[chksngr]

oh, amen, my sister!! I wish I had the wisdom of my grandmother Dorothy...she quit school in the 8th grade to take care of her younger sister. She still managed a farm, the household and three children. She was an amazing cook and and amazing gardener, growing beautiful roses, strawberries, rhubarb, corn, beans, squash, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes, peas and then whatever else she fancied. She Was all of 4 feet and a few inches tall and had diabetes...but she always managed the miraculous.