The Work of My Great-Grandmother’s Hands
I hope all you mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, fur-mothers, feather-mothers, and beyond enjoyed a blessed, joyous Mother’s Day in celebration of all you do to nurture generations, rearing them up in values that ripple out light and love across the universe 💐💓🌟
My intention was to publish this on Mother’s Day, but life intervened (a subject for a future essay), so I hope you don’t mind the belated wishes.
In A Tale of Two Scams, I introduced my maternal great-grandmother (from whom I inherited the workaholism gene) and promised to tell the humorous, poignant story of how she and my great-grandfather met.
On Mother’s Day morning, Visceral Adventure published an inspiring piece titled My Mother’s Hands that reminded me of a matrilineal photo essay I wrote around fifteen years ago titled “The Work of My Great-Grandmother’s Hands.”
I realized Mother’s Day would be an appropriate day to share this article, which I wrote in response to a magazine call for submissions on the topic of work. It was rejected and has since been sitting in a folder gathering digital dust.
Preparing this post turned out to be more time-consuming than I anticipated as I had to compare and quilt together patches from two different versions. The earlier draft contained several stories—including one devastating footnote I uncovered through research—I’d excised to meet the word count limit for the magazine submission, but I wanted to retain the fine-tunings in the truncated version.
I am publishing this with identifying details obscured or altered to protect family members. I ask that you keep the content and photos of this post private for that reason. Thank you.
The Continuous Thread of Revelation
After I wrote the above introduction, a friend who has been helping me with yard work stopped by and needed to access the sprinkler system. As I was moving some boxes out of the way, I happened upon this quote at the top of a 2006 presentation handout by one of my dearest departed friends:
“An integrated life is one in which ‘we are nurtured by our work … and we combine different kinds of tasks so they feed each other—mostly—instead of competing.”
—Mary Catherine Bateson (1989), Composing a Life
Someday, I will share more about that brilliantly creative and precious friend, but for now, I thank her for this synchronistic gift.
I was about to return the handout to the box after transcribing that quote when another one caught my eye:
“The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order … the continuous thread of revelation.”
—Eudora Welty
Again, this feels too coincidental to be ignored. I am grateful for the continuous thread of revelation that brought these significances to me at this moment.
The Work of My Great-Grandmother’s Hands
