I took this picture in September of 2019 after church before a family lunch at my mother’s house. It is of my youngest daughter wearing a dress that my mom kept from my childhood. The dress must have been one of my mom’s favorites because we wore it for family pictures. There is a portrait of Rachel and I posed so calmly and sweetly, that also must be one of my mom’s favorites because she used it for our high school graduation invitations. What I really wanted was a picture of both M&M, like the one my mom has of Rachel and I. But I am not Olan Mills. So I just placed them on the piano bench next to some good window light and snapped a few clicks to document the fact that they wore the same dress I did.
Even though there is not a good picture of them together, there is a whole lot of sentimental value in this single image. Maggie is wearing her mother’s dress, in her grandmother’s house, sitting on her great-grandmother’s bench next to her great-great-grandmother’s piano, holding a doll another great-grandmother gave to her sister. I don’t think I have to say more to make you agree with that previous statement. But since you are here and Mother’s Day is on Sunday, let me tell you a few stories about the mothers in this picture.
She is wearing her mother’s dress. That’s me. I’ll let her tell you stories about me as mother, but I will say that I get “I love you, Mom!” and “You are the best mom ever!” along with “You are so mean!” cards from her older sisters.
She is sitting in her grandmother’s house. My mom is affectionately called “Bebe” because that is what we came up with because she didn’t want to be “another” grandma to her grandchildren and Oma just didn’t quite fit her. If you ask my mom, she would say that she was a “young mom and made a lot of mistakes.” Not true. Well, she was young, but I don’t remember her making many mistakes. I can tell you that she actually only made two. She said the word “crap”…once. And she told my brothers to “bop him back;” which led to 15 years of fighting in the bedroom, in the garage, in the barn, in the shop, everywhere basically except out in public (and in fairness, they probably would have fought regardless of her telling them to). She is a patient and wise mom and grandmother. And I am thankful for her.
She is sitting on her great-grandmother’s bench, whom I grew up calling Mom-Mom. MomMom was sweet…seriously, she let us have sugar coated cereals for breakfast and have as much candy as we wanted anytime “after 9am.” (I might have adopted that rule.). She also loved cows. I remember trying to count all the cow figurines and decorations in her kitchen. I never came up with the same number twice, but I do have 2 pink figurines of hers in my china cupboard. I remember at her funeral, the preacher talking how well named she was. Eva Grace. She was full of grace. All memories of her are full of love, sugar, and grace. (Also, my youngest carries her middle name. May she own that adjective the way MomMom did.).
She is sitting next to her great-great-grandmother’s piano. Grandma Brunton lived in the farm house below ours. I remember her being a quiet old lady who never let us play the piano. We might have “tinkered” once or twice but that is it. She would always shut the lid on our fingers. Ironically, as shown in this picture, the keys are exposed and my mom permits her grandchildren to play “one finger at a time.” After she passed away, my sister and I started taking piano lessons and the piano moved up to our house.
She is holding a doll that her great-grandmother had given to one of her older sisters. Grandma Cox grew up on a vegetable farm, never finished high school, and raised 7 kids. She was a hard-working, no fuss kind of woman. I can still hear her saying “Can it!” (I was the quiet one, so she was never saying it to me. Probably to one of my other 30 cousins.). She also had a fancy side. She wore high heels. The higher the better. And red was her color. She is the grandmother I had for the longest. Three of my girls met her and two remember her. Goodness, all the memories floating around in my head and trying to make this little paragraph worthy as a small attribute to her.
So, there you have it. All the memories this one portrait holds. Well, there is more..like the Canon in D sheet music behind her that I played for a friend’s wedding in 2008, a picture of me and my dad at my brother’s wedding, the lamp that we bought my mom one year for Christmas…. I guess a picture does not have to be of a moment in time to take you back to those memories.
