My mother grew up poor. I know this because she told me. Now I also know there is a whole range of what one might consider “poor,” so in the context of this, I’ll say I’m not exactly sure how poor she was in comparison to anyone else, only that food and money were tight, space in her home was limited and they had to “make do,” as she puts it, for much of her childhood.
But I’ll also say she never knew she was poor. I know this because she also told me that. I think it’s important to write because I do think it makes a difference in how my mom thought about her situation and how she proceeded in the future, in what she would do to make her life more like the way she wanted it to be.
One of six children, one of two girls, she was the younger one. But she was in the middle of her brothers. My Grandma, her mom, was a nurse. She worked nights, and helped deliver babies. She worked as the primary “breadwinner” as it’s been called, providing for her family, including my Grandpa “Bud” as they called him, who couldn’t work. He almost died nine times as the stories go! Whenever I hear that number I think of a cat. Nine lives… He was lucky. But he passed away when I was three from a heart attack.
I only have two memories of my Grandpa. One I tell the story of here:
My First Memory 👈🏽 This is a “members only” post. Become an Annie Lynn Club member and access it here)
The other memory is driving away in a car from his funeral with my sisters in the backseat with me. My other grandparents were taking us away from him and my parents. There were lots of trees above, green leaves overhanging the road like a canopy shading us as the road twisted. I hadn’t wanted to touch his sleeve. My Dad had held me over his body laying there. It wasn’t the flannel shirt I remembered before.
My mom recently pulled out her wedding veil to show me. (It’s the item that’s inspired this post.) I was over visiting a week or so before a 50th wedding anniversary party my sisters, and my husband and I threw for my folks. She had had a recent health scare herself and I wasn’t sure if she was bringing out old things because of that, until I connected the dots it was because of the upcoming day. Of course.
I had heard the story of her veil before, but this time I listened more carefully. We sat on the couch in their large open room with the new fan above they recently had installed. I asked if I could turn it on. She had hated the fixture that came with the house since they moved in seven years ago. She was proud of her new purchase and texted a photo after it was in. The cool air blew down on us.
Mom recently lost two of her brothers, my uncles, in the past couple of years. As she began I wondered what that would be like, and how memories like she was going to share are important to share in order to keep people’s memory of others alive, to keep our history from being forgotten. I thought of that as she started.
Like I mentioned, my Mom’s parents didn’t have a lot of money. They lived in a small three bedroom house next to the airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My Mom was born in 1950, met my Dad at the University of Madison, Wisconsin after being introduced by a mutual friend my Dad was in Spanish class with. They were there in the late 1960s, like 1968, so lots of stuff politically and socially going on, especially in Madison on campus. My mom was kinda a hippie actually. I say “kinda” because this is how she’s referred to herself from that time, well not as much anymore. But my sisters and I like to remind her of this. She told me once she used to sit on the floor and her Dad would comment about it. I guess when her parents met my Dad they were happy he didn’t do that. From what I know he didn’t challenge my Grandpa on the topic of the Vietnam war like my Mom did. My Dad would sit at the table and listen and my Grandpa would ask my Dad a question. My Dad would just kinda not say too much. My grandpa in his Polish accent would be like “O’boy.”
My Dad missed the draft for Vietnam. I am lucky there. But my Mom had other brothers in the war. She was still against it. She told me she could talk specifically to her Dad about it even though they disagreed. But she also told me they always could talk about it with mutual respect and love.
I pause here because I need to. Maybe because I would have loved to listen to their conversation, to witness this kind of interaction. I wonder how it would have gone? How would it feel to leave a conversation such as that, but feel that such different views can be respected peacefully? It’s something I know I’ll always be curious about. It seems like it could be a movie plot. It’s a story within this story, wrapped into this one about a veil, just because it is.
The ceiling fan kept spinning, circling and circling…
She told me how when my parents got engaged, my Mom planned and paid for her entire wedding. She had gotten a job as a teacher shortly before, and saved her salary to help pay for it. And it was a large wedding! My mom said my Dad’s parents, who were very very social kept inviting people too. When my Dad sitting nearby heard this part of the story he looked sympathetic and sorry, and also like “that was my folks!” Not much anyone could have done about that. My Mom accepted it right away then and as she told the story not even missing a beat to continue on. I couldn’t help think, no wonder they’ve been married this long! She didn’t seem bothered by that memory, or had long let that go if she ever had. If she had any resentment about paying for everything I didn’t feel it, she seemed proud. That’s it.
Holding her veil in her hands, she continued saying the veil was put together by her and her two brothers at their kitchen table in that small house piece by piece. They used cuticle scissors to individually cut out lace flowers from a larger piece of fabric to then sew on and attach to a piece of tool netting she had picked up. I mentioned before my grandmother was a huge sewer in her later years. Maybe the scissors were hers?
There was a headpiece part it all connected to that she said all together was maybe five dollars total. She looked at the stitching, running her fingers over the thread, she said she couldn’t remember who had actually sewn on the flowers they had cut out. She looked proud though. The memory is a good one for her. I like imagining my Mom and her brothers doing it, her younger brother cracking a joke like her Dad was good at and making them all laugh.
I long for that kind of laughter, finding the humor in a situation. How good it can feel to laugh. I wish I had that gift.
It was a simple veil, but it looked beautiful on her. She’s kept it since 1974 when she married my Dad, 50 years ago.
A friend of my parents’ who they invited to the anniversary party sent my Dad a link to photos he’d recently had converted from slides. My Dad shared them with my sisters and I less than a week before the party and after my Mom and I sat down to look at her veil. They had had a friend take pictures instead of hiring a photographer to save money and these photos were maybe from that person or another friend, but either way I had never seen them. I don’t believe my folks had either. It was a great surprise and I quickly had all but a couple printed up to share at the party, and a few extras for my sisters and I to have.
My favorite photos are of my Mom wearing her veil. Having the story to go along with it makes them mean more too. Knowing how it was assembled with her brothers just reminds me how sometimes the simply made things are truly the most memorable. Not being perfectly made, but perfect in its own way, because of the time she shared with her brothers making it piece by piece.
I like to remember how my mom was independent, capable and spoke her mind. How she didn’t agree with violence the war and protests brought, and how she wanted peace. How she worked and saved, and raised me and my sisters to be strong independent women who also would have their own views.
I’ve often found it easier to discuss life through the lens of something like the veil she was holding that day. Tangible. You could feel the fabric between your fingers, see how it’s handmade, how it represents something more than just a wedding veil. She had made it herself, gotten her brothers to help complete it. She added place setting counts as they came in and the cost that she’d pay increased.
As I listened I wondered why the woman’s family has been required to pay for the wedding in our culture. My sisters and I all got married and my folks paid for each of our weddings. One of which was only a year apart! We talked a few more minutes about that and I thanked them for their generosity and planning for that. My Dad reminded me how at a young age I told him how sorry I was for that to be in his future… paying for the weddings of three daughters! He laughs at the memory, but it also makes me want to pause, and ask why?
Maybe there’s something here to uncover about how traditions, and ways of doing things stay the same or take a long time to change. Maybe there is a way to have a life we dream of that is both meaningful and our own intertwined with all the rest. A life where we’re not defined by whether we sit on the floor or not, speak up at the table or prefer to listen. Maybe we do the best we can, with what we have.
I’m told my grandpa came to my parent’s wedding and said “what kinda a church is this?” His Polish accent, I’m sure echoing off the bare walls my parents described as cold and more like a dark basement or cave. But it was on campus and where they met, where they chose to have their wedding. It was clearly different than what he’d expected or maybe hoped for. But even so, Mom said she’d never been more sure of herself that day.
As Mom held her veil next to me I could feel the memory light up something in my Mom. I believe Marie Kondo would call that “joy.”
We looked at photos next. I’ve never heard my Mom use the word before in my life, but she said … and our cake was “perfect.”
I’d love to know what this story brings up for you. Leave a comment if you like.