How Many Mothers?
How many mothers do you have?
I have one mother. She is very different from me. She is all sunshine & mornings & friends & family. She is social.
I am grey.
.
.
I have one stepmother. She was young when she met my father. She & I are more alike. We understand each other.
I did not like her, at first, and now I can see that there are many times that she “gets” me better than my mother does.
My mother thinks I am her…my stepmother knows I am not.
I love them both. <3
.
.
.
I have at least four grandmothers. My mother’s mother, my father’s mother, my stepmother’s mother, my mother’s aunt (her mother’s sister), two adopted grandmothers, my sister’s mother-in-law and on and on…
I call them grandmother except for my mother’s aunt who was Tanta.
None of them had cats. LOL. They all kept busy and knew how to cook – which I am trying to learn.
.
.
.
All of my mother figures have let themselves grow old naturally. No face lifts or wrinkle creams for them. My eldest sister, not a grandmother yet, recently let her black hair go salt & pepper. I think she looks tres magnificent!
My grandmother role models plant flowers and cultivate their own gardens. 
.
One of my elderly next door neighbours (an adopted grandmother) had the most beautiful garden from May to October. She made us coloured popcorn every holiday and let me and my friends use her oven to bake imaginary cookies made up of peanut butter & oatmeal.
.
.
.
.
I also have many aunts. I am an aunt.
I am the type of aunt who bakes cookies & sends you packages through the mail.
My aunts were the sort who listened and treated you the same as they treated their own children.
.
.
.
.
My aunts mostly lived on farms. They were farm wives. They knew how to milk cows & make butter. They appreciated the beauty of sunrises and sunsets. They were early risers – I was not. They reinforced my belief that I was not suited to farm life!
.
.
These women – mothers, stepmothers, aunts, grandmothers – introduced me to many things I would not have been able to experience if I had only my poor, divorced mother to raise me.
My other adopted grandmother,another neighbour, had a summer cottage. I did not think such a luxury was possible. To have both a house in town and a house by the blissful, quiet lake.
.
.
.
I am a city aunt. I would like to be seen as an Auntie Mame. Someone who would take you to plays & festivals & magnificent stores.
This is what I aspire to.
I am not there yet.
.
.
I have no flower gardens. I only have memories of gardens & sunshine & happiness.
I have no cottage. I only have memories of soft breezes & warm mornings & laughter.
I have no children. I will never be a mother.
I am an ant {:-O} I am lucky in having had a multitude of mothers to teach me and love me and nurture the very essence of me.
.
.
.
How many mothers do you have? Count them 
My Button Jar
I started a button jar today. This is a time honoured family tradition on my mother’s side of the family. My mother has a button jar. My grandmother had a button tin. I’ll bet my grandmother’s mother had some sort of container for buttons.
Up until today, I had buttons strewn about in various places. You know how it is…you buy a new shirt, you get a spare button or two. So today I had an empty jar. A teeny, tiny jar. Which was okay because I don’t have a lot of buttons. Just a pittance of buttons, not a multitude, can be found at my apartment.
My buttons are not pretty like the buttons in this picture. They are more monochrome. I have a lot of navy buttons, a few beige ones and one bright peacock blue button that is from my only silk shirt.
This is the size of my button jar. It is much smaller than a pint jar. It is much smaller than my mother’s button jar. It held, when it was full of jam, about 4 ounces. My mother’s buttons are stored in an empty Kraft Cheez Whiz jar. This is the type of jar I store pens in. The biggest Cheez Whiz jar is perfect for storing pens. My grandmother’s buttons were stored in a shortbread tin. A Walkers shortbread tin. Which seems strange to me now because this is my mother’s mother, who was Polish. It was my father’s mother who was from Scotland (the land of shortbread cookies. LOL).
So here are the button jars. You’re going to have to imagine them full of buttons. I’m not that technically advanced yet.
It seems to me that containers for buttons might be something universally rendered. What do you think? Did your mother have a button jar? Or a button box? Did your grandmother? Do your sisters? Or brothers? Do you?
I think Neil Gaiman’s mother had a button jar/box. How else could he have come up with the other mother in Coraline? A collection of buttons, stored all together, definitely makes one realize how scary button eyes staring into your own eyes would be.
There will probably not be a post next week as I have family issues to deal with. See you in two weeks.
My Witch
October 24, 2010 at 12:42 pm (Book Commentary, Life, Memoir) (Alice Hoffman, aunts, Bewitched, crone, crones, grandmother, Green Angel, Green Witch, Halloween, old woman, older women, To Be Read pile, witch)
I knew her…
I knew her heart…
In Spring, Summer and Fall her weathered, old shack was hidden. In Winter, it was a stark reminder just at the edge of town.
I don’t remember her name. I’m not sure I ever knew her name. I don’t remember what I called her, but I must have called her something. I use to spend time in her house. I slept there on occasion. I never called her a witch – that was my older middle sister’s name for her.
Her house was small and weathered. There was only one small window that faced into the woods. There was a dirt floor. There was a curtained off bed where we would sleep. There was a hearth, for heat and cooking.
Her house was a place of quiet and warmness. It was a cozy little cave.
She was eastern European. My grandparents (my mother’s parents) knew her. I suspect she was a childless widow. She lived alone at the very edge of a small town. Small as in everyone knows you; who you were and who you belonged to. Small as in 4 streets across and 5 streets down.
The town ended. The slough began. On the other sides of the slough there were farms. One of these farms use to belong to my grandparents. But this was after – after my grandparents built in town. I was seven. I was small & quiet & well behaved.
I recreated this
We would spend part of the summer with my grandparents; my two older sisters, my younger brother and me. Two of us were handfuls. My grandparents were old. Their friends were old. My mother stayed home to work and build up provisions for when school would start.
The old lady, the witch, would get lonely. She would need help. I would get sent to spend the night. I was quiet. I was well behaved.
Crone waiting
We would gather weeds from the woods. We would make soup using vegetables my grandmother had sent along with me. We would bake cookies. She would talk. I would listen. We would go to bed when the sun went down and I would go home to my grandparents after breakfast was cleaned up.
I never called her witch. She was mine. She was my friend. I knew her heart and she knew mine. The quiet, scared child I was found refuge there.
I met a lot of strong older women through my grandmother.
There was Mama H. She was Darren’s grandmother (LOL. Bewitched.) Darren was the first boy who kissed me. I was thirteen. My grandmother knew of the kiss before I got back to her house, which was three houses down from Mama H. There was a Papa H as well but he died before she did. I could go have tea at her house all by myself.
There was Tanta Emma. She was my mother’s aunt, my grandmother’s sister-in-law and thus my great-aunt. It was at her house that I learnt how to make Honigplatzchen (Honey cookies). She had thirteen children; ten boys and three girls. Her youngest boys were only about ten years older than my eldest sister. My grandmother had two children, a boy and a girl born ten years apart.
There were other assorted older crones who lived alone and enjoyed it. Their husbands and children were gone. They survived in spite of the gossip and the labels.
These strong women, these crones, these witches are my role models. I wish I could go back and spend a century or so listening to them talk. Why are we so old so soon? Why are we so soon gone and so late smart?
Sitting at the top of my To Be Read pile is Green Witch. It is the sequel to Green Angel, a book I adore. I have renewed this book twice. It is a small book that will take me only around three hours to read. It has sat in my TBR pile so long because I am fearful that it won’t be as good as Green Angel. I would rather forever anticipate new books then be disappointed in them.
However, in anticipation of the season, tomorrow I will sit down and finally read Green Witch and recall, with fondness, all the old crones I have known and loved.
Permalink 1 Comment