indigo pears

I had a nice post written here...then decided to add my black and white self-portrait...(which I "made" from a color photo.) So it isn't really a self-portrait!

So who knows how this will look after Blogger does the layout!

At anyrate...this is me, 2 years ago.... and my grandmothers many years ago!

It's time for me to go to work again...but I have the weeked off...more time off than at work this week...

Inspired by what Janet wrote yesterday.....

These two young girls are my grandmothers....both photographed dressed in white on a special occasion.

Dora at her Confirmation and Ruth at her Graduation (?) .....around the turn of the last century.

Both eventually lived in the Oklahoma Panhandle.... Ruth married to a cowboy/rancher and Dora to a wheat farmer. Ruth's household (my father was her eldest son)was completely classic Western with Scotch Irish/English roots and Dora's home (where my mom grew up) was German Lutheran....church and faith were important to these women. Neither could drive a car...their days were spent working hard...and Sunday was special...by going to church, they had contact with people and music...a time to rest and think.

Both had the experience of trying to earn a bit of money by selling eggs...only to have the husband take their money for something other than their own plans and dreams.

Both were quilters...from necessity and probably as a way to create and control something entirely their own...(until it was given to whoever needed it).

Ruth's husband divorced her and remarried , she lived with us for the first decade or so of my life. I remember her as being sweet and comforting, she taught me to make biscuits, to do an outline stitch, hemstitch and other things.

Dora was a woman of few words, very shy and quiet, except when she and my mom would be sitting and laughing and send us away to play elsewhere. I loved the homemade teacookies and even raised donuts she would make for us.

And we usually did have the world's best fried chicken on Sundays in the summer...I even got to help with getting the chicken ready on Saturday...plucking off the tiny pin feathers after Grandma had dispatched the chosen chicken and scalded the dead bird.

Both encouraged my creativity. But there were "rules" too..."If you sew on Sunday, you'll take it out with your nose on Monday." "Pretty is as pretty does." "Color inside the lines!" "Don't squint!" (I needed glasses at an early age and felt so grown up because all the grown-ups wore glasses!) "stand-up straight" (practice walking with a book on your head)...both wore those old fashoined lace-up shoes...oxfords with a little heel ..and tan cotton stockings. Oh,and corsets! those were enough to make any woman strong!

I have Dora's facial bone structure and Ruth's brown eyes...and I hope I also have their strength and compassion.