What I’d give you if I could — to you, Mom
Posted: May 11, 2012 Filed under: Women | Tags: Mothers, Women 33 Comments »I’d like to give you flowers
that overflow the kettle, and boxes, and pots,
with bright colors of reds and pinks
surrounded by a cloud of butterflies and hummingbirds
who flit between.
Morning glories that climb on the railing and brick walls
blanketing the house with blue and lavender blossoms.
Sweet fragrances of hyacinths and roses
placed in small vases on the kitchen sills
or table beside your bed.
I’d like to give you strawberry pie
bright red in color, sweet with glaze and topped with cream,
and all your favorite foods
with no guilt,
no worries,
no problems.
I’d give you entertainment.
Musicals at your command,
Julie Andrews singing on a mountainside,
Richard Harris hiding in a tree,
Yul Brynner asking,
“Shall we dance?”
Technology that is easy to learn
and easy to use.
I’d give you appliances that never break,
doorbells that always work,
plumbing that never leaks,
lush green grass that never grows,
leaves that never fall,
snow that melts on walks and drives.
I’d give you restful days
waking up without pain,
filled with laughter from children,
and lunches with friends.
I’d give you quiet nights with the sweetest of dreams.
What I’d give you if I could is a
a heart that heals,
and hope
of a bright tomorrow.
Instead, I give to you only what I can—
love
that never ends.
May 2008
Happy Mother’s Day.
The stitches I’m leaving behind
Posted: April 30, 2012 Filed under: Women | Tags: grandmothers, handwork, Mothers, needlework, quilts, sewing, The Knitting Sutra, Women 16 Comments »“Handcrafts belong to an earlier world, the slower pace of preindustrial life where one had the leisure to sink deeply and profoundly into the rhythms of nature within and without and to feel a connection with the earth as a living spiritual entity.[...]
“Self-expression, whether individual or tribal, religious or secular, is to my mind one of the most beautiful impulses that we humans possess. We look at our brief time here on earth; we perceive our inconsequentiality in a vast universe of planets and stars; we know our connectedness to our ancestors and descendants and feel our mortality as we pass along the eternal continuum of time; and yet we still want others to know who we were, how we lived, that we were here and saw and felt and knew beauty.The pioneer women with lives of endless work, half buried underground in sod houses on the prairies, often without trees or neighbors for company, fashioned quilts out of pieces of cloth, which might have been the only color they saw for months on end.[...]
“And now, when, with each piece of handwork I do, I connect with the centuries of women who cultivated their inner lives and expressed them through the humble works of their hands.” The Knitting Sutra—Craft as a Spiritual Practice by Susan Gordon Lydon.
Circa 1975
As I went on my search for the stitch work of my fore mothers, I was happy to find out that there were quilters in my family. I am sad to think that I may not find any examples of their work.
Not knowing I had this heritage, when I was a young adult I became interested in making quilts. The first quilt I ever made I gave away to my boyfriend to take to college the summer after my senior year in high school. I made it from fabric scraps left over from articles of clothing that I or my mother had made for me during high school. There was a shiny light blue piece from the dress my mother made for a dance my junior year. A pastel yellow fabric with tiny pink rosebuds that was made into my senior prom dress was also in the quilt. In many ways it was a quilt of memories.
I cut little 4-inch squares out of the fabrics and created 3 by 3 larger panels with a loose repeated design (the four corners and the center square within the nine-square panels matched, the remaining four squares in the panel were somewhat random). I backed the quilt with a soft flannel and tied the layers together with yarn knots at the large panels’ corners. I remember sitting in my parents’ family room and sewing it together.
My boyfriend loved the quilt, used it at school, and really cherished it for a while, until we broke up at the end of our junior year in college. The quilt, if it still exists, is probably stained and crumpled in the corner of a garage or basement somewhere. I should have kept it.
The second quilt I made, I also gave away. When I found out that my boyfriend’s older brother and his wife were expecting a baby, I bought yellow gingham and while muslin and fashioned it into a quilt. I think the squares were probably about 6 inches. I drew little designs on the white muslin: an alphabet block, a teddy bear, a duck, among others. I embroidered the designs onto the fabric. My boyfriend and I broke up before the quilt was finished or the baby was born, but I finished it anyway and delivered it. It was the first and only time I saw the child, and the last time I saw the quilt.
Mark, me, and Michael - 1983
The third quilt that I made was more functional than sentimental or aesthetic. I had just moved to Cincinnati and started a job and I decided I wanted a blanket for picnics. So I bought four pieces of fabric: a floral pattern, and three solids in the colors of cream, rust, and brown. I made large panels out of the pieces of fabrics and just sewed them together. Thirty-three years later, it is now torn and stained in the back of Mark’s truck. It has been used for romantic picnics early in my relationship with Mark; for small family picnics when I’d take our firstborn son to meet Mark for lunch; for baseball games, Fourth-of July fireworks, and days at the beach.
Dragon quilt - 2007
I’ve always thought I would like to make a “real” quilt from a pattern. I don’t know if that will ever happen. I would also like to make a crazy quilt, which may be more likely to happen. A couple of years ago my daughter Anna helped me make a quilt for my new grandson. Several years earlier I had found a picture of a dragon quilt pattern online and bookmarked the page, anticipating I might want to make it when my oldest son, who loves dragons, had a child. When I tried to go back and buy the pattern, it was gone, offline, kaput. But I still had a small picture of it I had saved. So using Adobe Illustrator, I traced the picture, enlarged it, and printed patterns from it. Anna helped me shop for fabrics and sew it.
I have embroidered pictures hanging on my walls, although again, most of what I made I’ve given away. I have simple crocheted shawls in the closet. I sewed outfits for myself, and my children, including many costumes. I have dresses I made for Anna and boxes of scraps of fabric and bits of ribbons and lace that I can’t bear to part with. And like my Grandma Smith, I have unfinished needlework projects stuffed into cupboards.
2010
I’ve made things because I needed them, and I’ve made things because I wanted to create something beautiful or meaningful. I have my mothers before me to thank for my ability to do this. I am proud of the simple, big-hearted, talented and creative women who came before me, and those who may follow.
See The Stitches We Leave Behind under the Series tab above for more links in this 10-part series.
Mary Katherine Lemmon Smith—my mother
Posted: April 22, 2012 Filed under: Women | Tags: crocheting, Mothers, needlework, sewing, Women 18 Comments »“I take the vest out of the storage box that I keep under my bed and I am transported. [...] I knitted the vest during one week of our vacation in the Adirondacks. Funny how seeing it, touching it, brings back the time and place. This vest holds the Adirondack Mountains, the lake, and my young children for me,” The Knitting Way — A Guide to Spiritual Self-Discovery by Linda Skolink & Janice MacDaniels
Mary Katherine Lemmon Smith
My mother, Mary Katherine Lemmon Smith, taught me most of what I know about needlework. And if she didn’t teach me how to do it, she helped me untangle it—from bungled articles of clothing to early knitting attempts. When we were younger she sewed a lot of our clothes, including formal gowns.
She is a very creative individual in all aspects of her life. If she doesn’t know how to do something, she figures it out. In addition to practical items, she also enjoys making beautiful things like crocheted afghans, fabric album covers, and decorative flags. She worked for a while as a decorator’s seamstress and sewed many custom-made draperies, comforters and other items. One year at Christmas she made a set of custom drapes for my living room.
Mom and Dad circa 1953
Mom was born May 15, 1934 in Piqua, Ohio. She was a straight-A student. She worked in a department store after high-school graduation and married my father when she was 19.
Mom at her 60th birthday party.
She primarily stayed home to raise the five children she eventually had, which include my sister Annie who was severely handicapped with brain damage.
Mom, Dad, and Annie
Because she was basically house-bound with the care of my sister, my mom put her energies into doing those kinds of things that could be done at home, and sewing became a source of income and pride.
See The Stitches We Leave Behind under the Series tab above for more links in this 10-part series.
Anna Matilda Adams Lemmon — my maternal grandmother
Posted: April 16, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized, Women | Tags: 1930s, crocheting, embroidery, fiddles, genealogy, grandmothers, Women 17 Comments »“Except in rare and isolated areas, crafts no longer exist as a way of life.[...] In our day, crafts are newly respectable, but chiefly as ‘hobbies,’ as ‘occupational therapy,’ or as new fashions in interior decorating. Yet behind the excuses given for indulging in craft activities, there lurks a kind of half-buried question, a faint suspicion that there is more to all this. . .
“The myths and traditions tell us that it begins from above; that all art, all craft, starts as a divine revelation. ‘Ideas,’ writes Coomaraswamy, ‘are gifts of the spirit,’” A Way of Working—The Spiritual Dimension of Craft, edited by D.M. Dooling. (A.K. Coomaraswamy quote from Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art).
Anna and Cory Lemmon
By far, my grandmother, Anna Matilda Adams Lemmon, produced the most needlework of the women in my family, at least the most that remains in the family.
Anna Adams on her parents farm with some kind of bird
Anna Matilda Adams was born August 3, 1915 in Covington, Miami County, Ohio. She had to help with farm work when she was a child. Beginning at the age of 5 or 6, Anna started attending school at a one-room schoolhouse that contained eight grades.
They didn’t have electric lights at home, so they used coal oil lamps to see with and would take one from room to room. They had a large coal stove for heat.
Anna Adams and Cory Lemmon - early 1930s
My grandmother’s family was quite musical and for entertainment in the evenings they would get together and play music. My great-grandfather played the fiddle. Her brother played the guitar, and Anna played the piano. She said, “We had a good time, just playin’ music and singin’.” That’s how Anna met Cory who would eventually become her husband and my grandfather; he came out to the house with some friends for the entertainment.
Dresses our grandmother made for my two older sisters and me - 1958
Anna was happily married, raised three children and never worked a day outside the home. She stayed busy embroidering and crocheting throughout her life.
Crocheted dress for great-granddaughter Anna - 1988
She produced numerous embroidered pillow cases and doilies; she crocheted numerous doilies and various other items; and she produced probably hundreds of crocheted afghans. I personally own four.
My daughter Anna with my grandmother who she was named after, 1988.
We celebrated my Grandma Lemmon’s 90th birthday in the summer of 2005. I made a display of photos and some of her needlework that we had collected over the years. At the time, she suffered from dementia and was eventually moved out of her home and into an assisted living apartment, and later to a nursing home where she died in 2010. The last years of her life she had very poor vision and was no longer able to do any needlework.
See The Stitches We Leave Behind under the Series tab above for more links in this 10-part series.
Katherine Roecker Adams, a farm wife
Posted: April 9, 2012 Filed under: Women | Tags: genealogy, grandmothers, Women 14 Comments »“Through the history of embroidery — in the very threads of samplers, firescreens, table runners and dress — can be traced another history: the history of women.”
(From The Subversive Stitch)
When I was in college the second time, this time earning an English degree, I took a concentration of Women’s Studies classes. This is the 6th in a series of posts from a project I wrote while taking a Women’s Studies/English class called “Reading between the stitches.”
Katherine Roecker Adams with her four oldest children. She holds my grandmother in her arms. Her husband (my great-grandfather) Harrison Myron Adams holds two horses. Circa 1917.
Katherine Roecker Adams
My mother’s maternal grandmother was Katherine Roecker Adams. She was born January 21, 1885 in Piqua, Ohio. Katherine’s father was from Germany, but her mother was born in Ohio. Katherine spoke German.
Katherine Roecker Adams - circa early 1900s
As a farm wife, Katherine did various farm chores like milking the cows. She also baked all of their bread and cake and pies. She made her own noodles and strudel. She sewed all of their clothes.
Katherine and Harrison Adams with two of their granddaughters - my mother is the child standing in front.
My great-grandmother Adams made quilts for their use out of pieces of fabric from worn out clothes. She also embroidered, crocheted, and did tatting. I have never seen anything that she made. I wish I could.
Katherine, Harrison, my grandmother Anna Adams Lemmon and my mother holding two of my sisters.
See The Stitches We Leave Behind under the Series tab above for more links in this 10-part series.
Mary Etta Conner Lemmon — a pillar of strength
Posted: April 2, 2012 Filed under: Women | Tags: genealogy, grandmothers, Mary Etta Conner, Mothers, Women 12 Comments »This post is part of The Stitches we Leave Behind series.
My mother came from a tradition of creative women on both sides of her family, specifically, her grandmother on her father’s side and her own mother and maternal grandmother.
Mary Etta Conner Lemmon 1880 - 1970
My mom’s paternal grandmother, Mary Etta Conner, was born September 7, 1880 in Champaign County, Ohio. Mary Etta’s mother died when she was very young. She was from a rural area of Ohio, and according to her daughter-in-law, my grandmother Anna Adams Lemmon, her family lived in a one-room log cabin where the snow sometimes sifted in through the cracks between the logs upstairs in the loft where she slept.
Mary Etta Conner
Mary Etta only went to school until the 3rd grade. According to my uncle, Cory Jr. Lemmon, she was proud to have received an education. She married Cory Oscar Lemmon when she was sixteen years old. He was twelve years her senior. According to my grandfather, Cory Oscar “was a drunk.” The marriage was rocky and after eight children were born Cory Oscar reportedly left the family and started a new one. When the marriage broke up, she was left with six children to raise, alone and without support.
Mary Etta worked at the Imperial factory making ladies stockings to support her family.
My great-grandmother was a mid-wife and helped deliver my mom into the world. Uncle Cory said, “She ‘doctored’ herself, with her own remedies until she was unable to care for herself any longer.”
Mary Etta, icing a cake for her granddaughter's (my mother's) birthday celebration.
My mother said my great-grandmother was always a hard worker, and “she’d be up on a chair at 80-years-old washing the walls or something.”
Santa Claus made by my great-grandmother. It's sitting in a sled I made in shop class during high school. The Santa's beard and white fur on outfit has been refurbished.
My great-grandma Lemmon made us a little stuffed Santa Claus one year; my mom still sets it under her tree at Christmas.
I remember very little about my great grandmother, only that my mom used to do her laundry for her. I remember one time my sister and I had braided our hair when it was wet and then let it loose after it dried. The result was that it was kinked all the way down. My great grandma really liked it. I remember the one-room apartment she had in a duplex. And that she had a pot-belly stove that she baked the best big soft sugar cookies in I’ve ever had and never have been able to reproduce.
I was a little intimidated by her, and perhaps even scared as young children sometimes are around the elderly. As an adult, knowing what I know now about her and her life, I wish I had had the opportunity to know her better.
See The Stitches We Leave Behind under the Series tab above for more links in this 10-part series.
Katherine Clara Wirrig Smith – my paternal grandmother
Posted: March 26, 2012 Filed under: Women | Tags: genealogy, grandmothers, Women 21 Comments »
Katherine Clara Wirrig Smith 1914 - 1984
Cecelia Pearl Bryant Wirrig’s oldest daughter was my grandmother, Katherine Clara Wirrig Smith. Katherine was born April 9, 1914 in Piqua, Ohio.
According to my father, Katherine liked to go to dances on the roof top when she was young. That is likely where she met my grandfather, James E. Smith. Unbeknownst to Katherine, James suffered from mental illness. She then suffered from the results of it throughout her married life. My grandfather was in and out of jobs, and at one point served a year in jail for breaking and entering. During that year, Katherine and her children moved in with her parents. Cecelia and William Wirrig, and she started working at the mill sewing underwear.
Grandma Smith with my oldest son - 1983.
It was piece-work and she never made a lot of money at it. My sister remembers, “Grandma worked, and walked to work, every day of her life. She worked at a place making less money per hour, even when I was sixteen, than I was making working at the Dairy Queen.”
Grandma loved her grandchildren and she used to like it when we brushed her hair. She was a very religious person and had a lot of religious items in the house. Her house was the old convent across the street from St. Boniface Church in Piqua, Ohio, and there were little holy water containers hanging beside each doorway. She also had little statues of Mary and Jesus scattered about.
She liked to cook a lot and made large family meals on Sundays. She also liked to garden, decorate cakes, sew, knit and crochet. My Grandma Smith taught my father how to crochet to entertain himself once when he was ill as a child. She taught me how to knit.
Rose afghan my grandmother was crocheting for herself and my mom finished after her death.
Rose detail from afghan.
When she died we found many unfinished needlework projects stashed away in a cupboard. She was crocheting a large afghan for her bed when she died. It had beautiful decorative roses on it and she was very excited about making it. After she died, my mom collected the finished squares, then finished several more, and turned them into a cover for my parents’ bed at home.
See The Stitches We Leave Behind under the Series tab above for more links in this 10-part series.
Cecelia Pearl Bryant and her Singer treadle sewing machine
Posted: March 20, 2012 Filed under: Nostalgia, Women | Tags: genealogy, sewing, Women 15 Comments »This is the third in my 10-part series about women ancestors and needlework called The Stitches We Leave Behind.
Cecelia Pearl Bryant 1887 - 1971
The real story of sewing in my father’s family starts with Mary Katherine’s oldest daughter, Cecelia Pearl Bryant, who was a quilter and kept a quilting frame in her dining room, folded up and pushed against the wall when it wasn’t in use.
Cecelia Pearl Bryant was born October 6, 1887 in Kentucky. Her family moved to the Salina, Ohio area when she was six years old. She was the oldest of nine children. Her name was Ora Pearl originally, but she changed it to Cecelia when she converted to Catholicism. Her family and friends called her Pearl.
When she was 22 years old, Cecelia Pearl had a son out of wedlock. She had worked for a family named Hall. According to my great aunt Agnes, Mrs. Hall was either pregnant, was in the hospital, or was deceased. Cecelia later went to court to prove paternity. She named her son Louis Hall. But according to my great uncle Ben, she never talked about Louie’s father.
Cecelia Pearl Bryant and William Wirrig 1913
Cecelia moved to the city of Piqua and got a job in the mills, sewing, to support herself and her son. Later she worked at an underwear factory, the Hosiery. Cecelia met William Wirrig who was from a farming family north of Piqua. They were married on November 6, 1913. My father’s mother, my grandmother, was their first child.
Times were difficult when Cecelia and William were raising their family. But although money was scarce, Cecelia always tried to give the children a nice Christmas. She would make doll dresses for the girls. A car accident and arthritis eventually prevented Cecelia from being able to walk later in life.
Cecelia with her pet bird Toby sitting on her head.
My father remembers, “She used to sew and sew and sew. And talk to her bird.”
I never knew my great-grandmother Cecelia quilted until recently. I don’t have anything that she made. I hope to locate one of her quilts some day.
I do have the treadle sewing machine that my great-grandmother Cecelia Pearl Bryant Wirrig used at home. My sister and I used to sew doll clothes, that we designed ourselves, on it when we were young. Too bad I didn’t save some of those gems.
See The Stitches We Leave Behind under the Series tab above for more links in this 10-part series.
The Stitches We Leave Behind – Mary Katherine Bryant, Gone Fishin’
Posted: March 13, 2012 Filed under: Women | Tags: genealogy, grandmothers, Women 16 Comments »
My father is the child. He is being held by his great-grandmother Mary Katherine Martin Bryant. His grandmother, Cecelia Pearl Bryant is standing directly behind him and beside his mother, Katherine Clara Wirrig Smith, the young woman in the photo. The man in the photo is Mary Katherine's husband, Ulysses Grant Bryant, born during the Civil War in Kentucky. (Circa 1934 in Piqua, Ohio)
My father’s mother’s grandmother was Mary Katherine Bryant. She was born September 12, 1869 in Washington County, Kentucky, the fifth of twelve children. She married Ulysses Grant Bryant, February 15, 1885, in Washington County. They subsequently moved to Piqua, Ohio in Miami County, where I was eventually born four generations later.
Mary Katherine’s granddaughter, my great aunt Agnes Wirrig, said her grandmother was illiterate, and that she used a lot of country terms and “Kentucky twang.” Aunt Agnes said, “I’d go to the house and she’d say things that I didn’t understand at all. If she’d want me to get out of the way, she’d say, ‘Tik ere’ (for ‘take care,’ or ‘get out of the way’).” Agnes also said that her grandmother had an old-fashioned way of doing things, and she was a hard worker, but she never seemed to be an overburdened person.
Mary Katherine took her great-grandson, my father, fishing one time. He remembers that they didn’t catch anything, but someone there gave them three large carp. He said that she cleaned them and evidently cooked them, although I think as an adult he didn’t consider carp particularly appetizing. He was about 10 years old at the time. Mary Katherine Martin outlived her husband. She lost the property their home was on after he died because, although I don’t completely understand it, according to my great-uncle Ben they were on old-age pension. She spent her last years going from one of her children’s homes to the next to stay for a while until she died at the age of 78.
The story of needlework in my family, from my father’s side, undoubtedly goes back well beyond the days of Mary Katherine Martin Bryant, but she is the oldest link that I have specific information on through the memories of my father who was about 14 years old when she died, and my great aunt and uncles. She certainly must have taught her daughters how to sew.
I have never seen anything that she might have made.
For other posts in this series see The Stitches We Leave Behind.
The Stitches We Leave Behind — Introduction
Posted: March 12, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized, Women | Tags: genealogy, sewing, Women 16 Comments »When I was in college the second time, this time earning an English degree, I took a concentration of Women’s Studies classes. This is the first in a multi-part series from a project I wrote while taking a Women’s Studies/English class called “Reading between the stitches.” You can find other series I’ve written, or am writing, about on my “Series” tab above.
Hand-stitched album cover for "The Stitches We Leave Behind" project
THE STITCHES WE LEAVE BEHIND
By Christine Grote - February 20, 2006
Introduction
I have humble roots. Many of my ancestors were farmers, with a few craftsmen and women thrown in. Although a few of my ancestors came to this country in the mid-1800s with the great German migration, many of them had been in this country since pioneering days. Much of the needlework the women in my family did reflects a simple, utilitarian purpose, typical of the pioneering mindset, as opposed to elaborate and fancy quilts and needlework.
From a genealogical perspective, women in families are difficult to trace, but logic tells us that if there was a male ancestor here in this country, he had a female mate, although she may be unknown to me. When I think about my women ancestors, I realize I may never know much about them, but I may have a connection to them even so.
I know how to do many kinds of needlework. I sew, embroider, knit, and crochet. Without exception, I learned these crafts from a female member of my family. My mother taught me most, but my grandmother on my father’s side of the family taught me a few things as well. Reason stands to offer that the women who taught me were likely taught by their mothers and/or grandmothers. This passing down of a talent or craft probably occurred from early times. My needlework abilities have come to me through a curious, unidentifiable, circuitous path through the women in my family for generations. It is my connection to them.
See The Stitches We Leave Behind under the Series tab above for more links in this 10-part series.
