Bramblings: Strong moms

By BECKY NELSON
By Becky Nelson

Another Hallmark moment is upon us this weekend. But this card and flowers moment is an important one. Whether it is the birds nesting above our front door light, the turkeys starting to set on their nests, the does in the forests or the horses in the fields with their bulging belies almost ready to give birth, the young women with their infants and the dog with her pups, motherhood is always all around us.

I think of not only my mother, but my mother’s mother and my father’s mother this weekend.

Both my maternal and paternal grandmothers were a lot younger than my grandfathers, which posed challenges in their lifetimes as they were both widowed earlier than many women, forcing them to make tough choices in their lives. My mom’s mom grew up in Manchester and her own parents lived in an apartment upstairs in their home. My mother fondly speaks of trooping up the stairs to visit her grandparents on a daily basis and recounts stories that her grandparents told. mom’s mother, my Nana, was a strong and fierce woman. One of our favorite family stories was of her meeting my grandfather.

Working in the shoe shop that my grandfather managed, my Nana was just out of high school when she attended a baseball game in which my grandfather was playing on the company team. Family legend tells that when grandfather got a hit, she yelled at the man who was a slow runner to hurry up to the base. “Hurry up you old ice wagon!” Grampa apparently found this charming, and said, “that’s when I knew I was going to marry this feisty lady.”

Suffering through my grandfather’s job loss in the depression, raising three women in a time when it was not easy to be a woman and chauvinism and life opportunities were limited and personal freedom suppressed and weathering the hardships that followed the depression and death of her spouse, my Nana was a tough lady. I remember Nana most as a warm lap and a gentle hug and a particular perfume as she died when I was only three and my memories are faint.

My paternal grandmother, also a young bride with a much older husband, suffered the same hardships of the Great Depression and added on a layer of struggle here at the farm. My grandfather travelled as a government employee spraying pesticides to kill gypsy moth caterpillars that were denuding the forests of New Hampshire, which is actually how he met my grandmother on a call to the farm. Four children later, he died when the kids were young. My dad was only 8.

My grandmother, Grammy, then faced the challenge of hanging onto the farm, providing for and raising the four children and making a living through the impossible economic times of the Great Depression. I cannot imagine the hardships she weathered, but she lived for a long time. We lost her when I was a college freshman.

Growing up, I always admired her grit and spunk. She was quick to temper and worked like a workhorse despite crippling arthritis. We kids stayed with her when little while my parents both worked, and I learned a lot about hard work and life on the farm. She gave me my first calf that I helped (learned to) raise, taught me to milk cows, taught me to waste nothing and be frugal and spent countless hours with me in the garden, cutting firewood, sticking “green stamps” into booklets, entering sweepstakes, listening to the radio, enjoying afternoon tea and cookies, playing checkers and picking berries. I was born on her birthday, and will treasure the lessons she taught and the special bond I held with her to the end of my own days.

Mother’s Day always makes me think about all the strong and resilient women who came before me. Through the struggles of home births, becoming the breadwinners and single parents at the deaths of their spouses, struggling for equality in a lopsided world that treated women like possessions and didn’t allow them to work when and where they wanted, took advantage of them sexually and emotionally, paid them a pittance in relation to their male counterparts or and denied them a vote with a voice in politics…I find it hard to imagine their hard lives with the freedoms and rights I enjoy on a daily basis.

My mother, at 93, has just as rich a story of struggle and resilience to tell as well. We owe a lot to these mothers and grandmothers, whether blood relations or as unknown heroes that came before us. Let’s remember them and celebrate their hard work and sacrifices as we hand our mothers a card and a flower, visit them in a nursing home, make them a special breakfast or visit their graves. Whether your “mom” is an aunt, a grandmother, a foster parent, an adoptive parent, or some other special woman in your life, they deserve a thank you on Mother’s Day.

Thank you, moms, for being superheroes and for helping to mold us into strong men and women.

Becky Nelson is co-owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, New Hampshire. [email protected].