Mothers and Daughters

Instead of sewing or stitching anything this week, I am organizing my family pictures. It seems like a good thing to do before the start of a new year. Besides all the cute snapshots of my kids, I also have a good collection of family pictures that I would eventually like to scan and store on my computer. Here are a few that got me thinking:

This is my great-great-grandmother Julia Catherine Bellew. I don't know much about her except that she was the youngest child of a large Irish Catholic family, she had red hair, and a wicked sense of humor. And, for some unknown reason, she did not raise her only child--a daughter named Margaret Elizabeth Byrne.

According to the family lore, Margaret was raised by her grandmother, Julia's mother Ann, in Ft. Dodge, Iowa. But we can't find her living with Ann in any census. An old rumor has it that when she was a child, other children were told not to play with her. It could have been that she was an illegitimate child or that she belonged to a family made notorious by an uncle's murderous rage in a bar brawl. We don't know.

She died a year before I was born and I know her only through my own mother's memories. She was very concerned with keeping up appearances, she often modeled for local newspapers, and she had auburn hair which she cropped during the twenties. She married a nice young man named Ross Phipps, but for whatever reason, she never seemed like an entirely happy person. She had a lot of secrets.

And an only child, my grandmother Margaret Ann Phipps.

This is my favorite photograph of them.

In a treasured box of my great-grandmother's belongings, we found this and many other pictures of my grandma as a little girl. She seemed to have been an adored child, although later in life my grandma and her mother didn't get along. I don't really know why.

My Grandma Margie is an immensely talented person. She used to be a gifted artist.

My favorite story about her as a girl was the time she was taking an advanced art class at her Catholic school. She got in trouble with the nuns who were teaching her because they caught her sketching nudes instead of an assigned still life. That says a lot about my grandma--she did what she wanted, and often got in trouble for it.

She could draw anything. She could cook anything. My mom also says that she could sew anything. She used to pick the most challenging and intricate Vogue patterns and sew them in her bedroom where her sewing machine was. And often when she calls and there isn't much common ground to discuss, she and I talk about sewing and fabric and dresses or the lamentable latest fashions, and when I get off the phone, I feel at least there is some small connection to a woman whom I love, but have never understood.

My mom is her only daughter.
My mom inherited a matriarchal line of mothers who struggled with both being mothers and being happy. But she turned that around. And while I may have inherited some minute artistic ability from my grandma, it's my mom who showed me what a love of creating can do for a family and home. I started sewing on her machine. I watched her make things for the house and decorate for the holidays. She and I share cross-stitch patterns and a love of shopping for fabric. She always jokes that she never finishes any of her projects--but she doesn't always have the time because she has too many daughters. And they all need her.

Here's my only daughter. She is a very happy little person. And she loves to draw. She fills notebook after notebook with drawings of her friends, her toys, her cat, and her little brother. For Christmas, she gave me an illustrated book called "Ashley and Abby's Holiday Book"--and because she has Irish grandmothers, she can draw a really good leprechaun.

Hopefully I've followed my mom's example, and have instilled in Abby a love to create and a willingness to be happy. If she is ever interested in learning about some of her great-grandmothers in my mom's family tree, I won't have much besides a couple of photographs to share with her. But who knows, maybe that invisible thread that binds us with our ancestors will manifest itself in Abby's own talents. It has a little bit in mine.