A friend of mine posted on the book of faces, an article about our great grandmothers. My friend and I are a lot alike. And also quite different. We tend to agree more than we disagree and are usually surprised when I, it is almost always me, disagrees vehemently with her.
So it is with this article.
According to the author, my great grandmother, Lizzie, wasn’t worried about a beach vacation. In fact, she wasn’t worried about quite a few things that the author shows that she herself is: curating…optimizing. If the author wasn’t worried about these things, she wouldn’t be writing for the public. But for now, let’s stick to the mythical things that Elizabeth would be worried about.
Lizzie would be worried about filling her pantry, making sure her children were healthy and having a roof that didn’t leak. She would also be concerned with making sure her husband came home. A few clothes options. A good stove and Sunday dinner with the family. Lastly, following the golden rule.
The author goes on to say that in the 20th century that women began to be sold, for great profit, a different lifestyle. There is some truth to that idea. Some. Not quite enough. But some. Women were further “embarrassed” into thinking that a home cooked meal wasn’t as good as the things out of a box or a can. And that capitalism raised the cost of living until it took two incomes to support modern life. Again, some truth there, but not enough. It isn’t the whole truth. She finishes by commenting on how modern women can’t keep up. And one more time, some truth, but not enough.
So, let’s talk about Lizzie. Lizzie was born, in the backwoods of Alabama in October of 1884. In 1900 when she was 16, she was the second oldest of 7 children and the oldest daughter. According to the census that year, her mother was 37, her father was 45 and their youngest child was 1 year old. Medium size family for those days. Which likely means there were deaths among the children. A walk through any old cemetery will tell that tale. The census lists Lizzie’s parents as farmers. Farm life was no image of tranquility in those days and jobs were few. Remember, this was only 20 years after the Civil War.
By the 1910 census Lizzie was 25. She had 2 children of her own, Odie and Ace. Her husband James worked in the coal mines. That was no picnic in Alabama either. These were the days before unions. It was dirty, dangerous work for very little pay. Profit before people.
In 1920, Lizzie and James had 5 children, including a set of twins. None of those children were named Ace. By 1922, Lizzie was a widow.
There are a couple of versions of this family story. The gist is that James and one of his brothers got into an argument and James ended up on the wrong end of a gunshot wound. He crawled under the porch to get away from his brother and died there.
Well. I guess that proves that Lizzie had reason to worry about her husband coming home, even if it isn’t the one that minds today would leap to.
But wait, our great grandmothers aren’t supposed to be worrying about making money! Or having ambitions. I’m sure Lizzie’s ambitions were focused on keeping body and soul together rather that a career. Those 5 children were aged 9, 7, 6, 6 and 3. I’m sure she would have loved the idea, just the idea, of a vacation. But this was backwoods Alabama. Her husband was dead in a traumatic event and no matter what idealized version we would like to have about our great grandmothers, her life was not that.
She was 34 years old, and a widow with 5 young children. Can you even imagine? It gets worse. Lizzie likely didn’t know it yet, but she was pregnant.
Oh, it seems so simple to say our great grandmother’s didn’t wish for vacations or status and all they desired was a full pantry and healthy children and a Sunday dinner with the family gathered around. I’m sure Lizzie prayed for those things as any mother would. But her life wasn’t full of “simple” desires. It was full of manual labor, grief, destitution. That desire for a few decent dresses? She didn’t have that. She desired to have one work dress and one Sunday dress that was a little better than the work dress. She desired shoes for her children as they grew. She desired more hours in the day as she sought to work in the fields, cook, clean, garden, make sure kids got to school or at least learned to read and write and all the other things that had to happen to keep the family alive. She was likely the neighbor that prayed her neighbor’s had some kindness as she tried to keep body and soul together in a time when women having to work was a disgrace, even if she was a widow by no fault of her own.
Don’t you feel down to your soul that if she’d had any chance at daycare for that baby that she wouldn’t have jumped for that chance?
Lizzie was successful in keeping body and soul together. By 1930, her oldest daughter was married (at age 14 to a young man who was 17). The rest of her children were with her. She worked the farm with one of her sons, while another worked at a sawmill. She ended up with 14 grandchildren out of just that oldest daughter.
I barely remember her. I think I may have met her just once when I was 6 or 7. She died when I was 9. Her oldest daughter followed her a year later. People say she was a hard mean woman. She likely was. Living life just better than starving will make you that way.
She was a traditional wife. She did what was expected. Married, kept the tiny humans, most of them, healthy enough for adulthood, didn’t have grand dreams of beach vacations. But it wasn’t enough. She still lost a young child, her husband and outlived at least 2 of the children that made it to adulthood.
Tradition isn’t some special magic elixir. It doesn’t stop the hard. Our hard may be different than Lizzie’s hard, but would you really choose a life like hers? Didn’t she go through the hard in the hope that her children or theirs would have a better life? Can she be forgiven for losing hope and becoming mean after the life she lived? Can we descendants of our great grandmothers be forgiven for wanting a life where the hard hurts a little differently? Where we get that break that Lizzie never did?
I’m going to tell you the answer is: we don’t need to be shamed for having ambition. We don’t need to be shamed for wanting a house that we never clean, because we work to maintain that house. We don’t need to feel ashamed because we don’t want to grow a garden, make our own clothes or bread or can our own food.
We don’t need to be ashamed because life didn’t work out the way we expected. We don’t need to be ashamed for wanting something different than we have, even when our decisions led us to where we are. Lizzie isn’t the only widow in this story. I’m one. The friend who shared the post is one. That friend was brave enough to try again at marriage and has endured a second tragedy. Me? I was like my great grandmother. I don’t use the word never, but I will say I am one and done. I had the love of my life. We choose each other. And now I’m choosing something different. I’m choosing to remain single.
By the author’s own webpage, she has chosen differently than her list of simple desires as well. She maintains a webpage, full of recipes. She writes. She may live on a homestead, but that homestead isn’t the sole focus of her life. She might not work an outside job, but she is monetized and has 54 thousand followers on the book of faces. That is nothing to be ashamed of.
We women have a duty to one another to not piss on someone else’s parade. Life would certainly be boring if we were all alike. We need women who like to cook and garden and sew and chase after the kids and all the other things. We also need women who are engineers, single, nurses, married, farmers, and all the other things.
We need to value women, right in the circumstances where women are. We owe it to our great grandmothers, like Lizzie, who didn’t get the chance to just worry about the simple things.
What on Earth are They Thinking? 
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