Thursday, May 7, 2015

Remembering My Mother's Mother's Mother


Easter Jane Sullivan was my great-grandmother. She had one daughter, who had one daughter, who had one daughter - each of us twenty years apart.

She was born on a prairie farm in Texas and grew up working with her sisters to feed the hands that came to work there. Her teenage boyfriend died tragically, beginning a melancholy that would follow her through her years.

She met my great-grandfather when he came to the farm to work the land. After they married, they moved to a small boomtown in the Texas panhandle where she worked to start the church. Easter was known for her pies and Parker House rolls, tatting and crochet. She made my mother's clothes, all ruffles and lace and sashes for her tom-boy granddaughter.

She kept vegetable and flower gardens, raising irises that she fashioned into corsages that she wore to Sunday service. She loved the bible and her family. Easter Jane was Irish and good and true. She is part of the women she made, her delicate, gloved hand guiding us. How lucky we were to have her.














6 comments:

  1. Wow. Such young mothers! (Sounds like Utah!) My own family is much more spread out; thus, my great-grandmother died decades before I was born. (In fact, not a single one of my grandparents was born in the state of Utah; they were all born in Utah Territory -- pre-1896.)
    If my calculations are correct, then your great-grandmother was younger than my grandmother! (PS. You and I are close in age.)

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  2. I would love more of these. I think I"ll do my grandmother this week.

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  3. I haven't thought about tatted lace in a hundred years. This is a lovely tribute.

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