Mother's Day

 

A year ago Mom had just celebrated her 90^th birthday and I don’t think any of us would have really believed that by Mother’s Day this year, she would not be with us   I think that pretty much all that can be said about mothers and mothers day can pretty much be said but I just wanted to acknowledge not only Mom, but the two Northen family Grandmothers.  To say the least, they all lead hard lives, but they too were young at one time and as beautiful in their day as many of the younger Northen women in their twenties and thirties are today.  Rather than seeing them as grandmotherly, I think it is rather nice to think of them as young women who had many hopes and dreams themselves.

This is a picture of Laverna S. Wilkins – aka Grandma Wilkins – at 18.  I never knew what S. stands for, so I’m glad if anyone wants to fill me in.  We all know about her having to raise eleven kids and work at Kerr Glass company later in life, to boot.  As for being young, Grandma always looked old to me from the time I was little, but she was like a portrait, as the years changed and everyone grew older, she never seemed to.  When she came to visit me in Buffalo in the 1970’s her hair was as black as it was when I was a child.

I never met my Grandma Northen, Mattie Lewis.  Unlike Mom and Grandma Wilkins who made it to 90, she only lived to be 45.  There are few stories about her, though we all have heard the one about her drowning in the river  In this picture, though she is in her wedding gown.  At 22 she was three years older than her husband, and as was common in her day, married in her father’s home.

As I look at these pictures, I wonder what they must have been thinking, what they thought their lives were going to be like, and what secrets they kept themselves that we will never about.