#200 The Women

I've had a few questions about the women in the previous entry.  One about the strong family resemblance, and another about faith.

Yeah, the cheeks and chin seem to breed true!  I'm a bit of an anomaly, my version is a bit rounder, but Daughter has the same cheeks and chin as her feminine forebears.  They came through in her!  They all had enormous soft deep dark brown eyes.  Mine are gray (if you love me, you will see some green there), and Daughter's change color with the weather and her mood, all the way from light brown to turquoise.  Daughter has my mother's mouth and her smile.  All three of them had the most amazing translucent butter-soft skin, it glowed in soft light.  Daughter and I seem to have lost that - but perhaps it's still lurking, waiting to pop out again in a future generation.

GreatGramma, Mary Elizabeth Twiss Evans, came from Wales.  She spoke Welsh.  She could speak and understand English, but refused to use English unless absolutely necessary.  She used to tell me bedtime stories in Welsh.  In Wales, she had been a wisewoman - you know, fairies, herbal remedies, mild spells, ancient knowledge.   A white witch.  I believe she was a founding member of the Puritan Church on Market Street in North Scranton, the one with the big round rose window in front.  The only thing I have that I know(believe) once belonged to her is the gold cross I gave Daughter on her 21st birthday. 

Gramma, Mary Elizabeth Evans Morris, aged rather quickly (although she lived semi-independently into her nineties), I guess because she was raising a young family during WWI and the Great Depression.   Grampa worked for the Lackawanna Railroad, so they were relatively secure, but with everyone else around them in imminent danger of ruin, including her sisters and brothers, she became pretty much the head of the family.   I didn't realize until she was gone, and I learned some of the family secrets, that she was a very intelligent and strong person.  Much more than I ever gave her credit for.

Gramma was also Puritan, but not especially religious.  She went to church every Sunday, but I think it was mostly social.  She was a member of the Eastern Star,  and active in the church auxiliary,  especially in the making of the Welsh cookies, the major money-maker every year.   She would not allow alcohol, tobacco, or playing cards in her house, but I suspect that had less to do with puritan tenets than with having seen bad results.  She took oaths seriously.  When I went off to college, she made me promise on the Bible never to gamble.  And I didn't, until I bought my first lottery ticket when I was 40.  Even then, I sat in the car and had a silent discussion about it with Gramma, first.

There are a few funny stories about Gramma and alcohol.  The big family gathering every year was Thanksgiving, and we always ended the meal with plum or mince pudding with hard sauce.  Grampa always made the hard sauce from his own secret recipe.  He'd shoo everyone else out of the kitchen and close the door when he was making it.   At some point, I realized that hard sauce is made with brandy.  I asked my mother if Gramma knew, and she laughed and said "Why do you think it's a secret?"  Gramma knew all right, but figured if she didn't acknowledge it and thereby approve it, then it was ok.

Mother, another Mary Elizabeth, was a butterfly.  She was a bottle of champagne.  She was also unusually intelligent, mainly a kind of social intelligence and skill, but she wasn't much of a fighter.  She was a lifelong member of the Puritan church, even paid her dues and tithed until the day of her death, but that's about as far as it went.  Sort of like insurance, I guess.    If we lived on a base where my father was the commander, as the commander's wife she was the social and moral leader, and we went to the weekly multi-denominational services on the base as a duty, but otherwise, religion was not a big deal with her.    

I was baptized Puritan, and still have a little bit of the prude about me, but religion-wise, I have gone my own way.  If you have to put a label on it, I'm Pagan.   Bit of GreatGramma coming through, I guess.  Daughter is even more so.

I've been asked why the photos I have included seem to be just me, and deceased people.  It's because the live people I'd most like to include mostly don't want their likeness broadcast all over the ether.  I understand and respect that.