Nurture

I am participating in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, a writing challenge encouraging genealogy researchers to write about their ancestors. The challenge is hosted by genealogist, blogger and podcaster Amy Johnson Crow.

Here's my post for Amy's Week Nineteen prompt: Nurture

By Nancy Gilbride Casey

Anna Margaret Kozlina Gilbride, my Mom, and me. December 1988.

 

Did you know that you could sew a little dolly jacket out of a washcloth? I do, because my Mom taught me.

I remember it so well. These were the days before my parents divorced and she was still at home. I don't recall exactly what had happened at school, but I have a vague recollection that I was being teased or some such. I came home upset. She didn't have a lot of words of wisdom to say, but she did this: She taught me how to fold a washcloth in half and then half again, cut out a square from the bottom corner to create sleeves, sew up the sides, put bias tape around the neck opening to keep the cloth from fraying, and to create ties. Voila! Dolly jacket.

The list of things my Mom taught me goes on an on: How to cook and bake. How to grocery shop. How to do laundry. How to clean and how to make a bed. How to fold sheets. How to iron a shirt, and embroider. How to use a sewing machine and hand sew. All the typical mother-to-daughter knowledge which is passed down—at least when I was young it was typical.

But, as a divorced mother of four, and a child of the Depression, Mom also taught me these things: How to scrimp and save and use coupons. How to find a sale. How to recycle items that seemingly have no use. The value of leftovers—oh, so many leftovers—recreated as other meals.

Mom knew how to make being not rich, feel like you were rich. Mom's two-week vacation from her 50+ hour a week factory job was spent taking us four kids all over Northeastern Ohio so we could have some fun—from Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky to Sea World & Geauga Lake in Aurora, and pretty much every where in between. She created "staycations" 30 years before they were a thing, driving from Downtown Cleveland to the Terminal Tower, going to Mentor Headlands beach with a picnic lunch, traveling to the Cleveland Aquarium in our annual pilgrimage to see if the grouper still had that big tumor on its lip! We never knew she was being frugal because she made it seem so special.

Every outing included homemade food: cold chicken, her amazing potato salad, cupcakes or brownies, chips, and pop! (That's what we called soda up Ohio-way, and it didn't matter what flavor, it was all "pop.") She would stay up the night before prepping food and packing the coolers. When we arrived at our destination, we would rush to claim an empty picnic table, plop down our coolers and then run off, knowing that delicious food was waiting for us when we returned—sunburned, sweaty and tired—to feast.

Mom worked hard and she worked long hours each week, so she was often tired. Sometimes the only time you really got to chat with her was either doing dishes, or while she was setting her hair. Some of my favorite memories are sitting with her at the dining room table, as she put her hair up in rollers, catching her up on whatever was happening in my teenage world. I can't recall a single specific conversation topic, but I just loved the chatting with her.

Mom was proud of the life she gave her kids, in spite of not having a lot of money and having to do it essentially on her own, with assistance from my Grandma - who offered her help with housekeeping and summer babysitting. ("TIMMYNANCYJOEYSHARON!!" But that's another story...)

I will never forget the smiling glee on Mom's face, in her later years, as she reviewed her retirement account statement one day, showing me how much money she had, and saying that she intended to give it all to us kids when she was gone. I never even knew about the money, much less expected it, and we all urged her to spend it on herself in her retirement, to do the things that she wanted to do.

But if you knew my Mom, you knew it would not go that way. It was just not her way.

What she wanted to do was to give everything she had to her kids. She did just that.

Until next time...