with me and my six year old niece, it makes seven generations of women |
presiding over the dining room above my mother’s head is the face of her mother’s mother flanked on either side with her mother's mother's parents and her mother’s mother's mother's parents five generations of women with young faces and dutiful eyes we have no semblance of great-grandpa the one who left his two children to find a new life down the road never seeing them except in passing when Great-grandma (who looks almost wistful from her place in the middle) died too young Grandma’s grandma (the stern faced woman on the right) took in the children raised them knowing their worth was measured by the labor of their hands she didn’t have to take them in she told them they could have ended up anywhere if she had not known her duty instilled with the heavy hands of her mother (the woman on the left) is it any wonder that Grandma was a difficult woman bearing four generations worth of passive aggressiveness to bear on my mother’s slender shoulders so that when we went to visit Grandma’s house Mama cringed as she loaded us into the car certain her mother would find some fault in everything (from the way we stayed so long to the way we left so soon) but knowing her duty |