Reckoning the Ages
In my bookcase are two volumes titled
The NEW Century Dictionary. The first
copyright date is 1927 and the last is 1944. One would assume that each edition
might have included new words that came into being from the first copyright
date. Be that as it may, I suspect that those who published these books might
have used words quite unlike those used today. Certainly, the authors would
find the speech and vocabulary of today quite confusing. It would not be enough
to say that the word gay no longer
means happy. No, those writers of 1944 would find that new words exist and
continue to appear with increasing regularity.
While our language is only a small
measure of the changes in our world, the relationships we have had in the past
in our families have faced changes that seem just as startling to me. When I
became a grandparent, I suddenly remembered my own with a particular and
poignant vividness. Oh, how I miss their simplicity and their love! I can only
hope that my grandchildren can enjoy being grandchildren as much as we did in
our day.
All of my grandparents were born in
the early 1900s, and my in-laws and my own parents were born from 1910 to 1928.
So their childhoods and upbringing were quite current with that two-volume
dictionary. In fact, my grandparents,my parents, and in-laws saw World War II
as well as the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Living through those days
left an indelible impression upon all of my family. But that impression has
only faded to the extent that my memory has lapsed because I still remember the
stories and the admonitions to make do with what we had and not waste whatever
we used.
My paternal grandmother taught me how
to embroider and to make a cake using apple butter or jams from the cellar.
Sugar was rationed during the time she was cooking most of her meals on the
farm, and she had to make do with whatever she had to sweeten a special cake
for her family. She also embroidered simple designs on all of her pillow cases
so that anyone staying the night with the family thought that “Mrs. Astor” had
no better place to sleep. She served cake, made a lovely bed, and fed her
guests from her garden. She was not a pioneer woman, but her mother before her
was the epitome of pioneer. Grandmother learned from one of the best.
Great-grandmother used her husband’s tobacco sacks to piece together quilt tops
that were made from leftover scraps of flour sacks. When she wasn’t having
babies, she cared for the pigs and chickens and milked a cow. She churned her
own butter and made pound cakes with real pounds of ingredients. And when she
was not feeding the hired hands or relatives, she took off on her horse and
delivered babies as a midwife.
The men in our family were good
providers; the women made what they provided work to the last inch of
usefulness. When I think about the examples set by my grandmothers, I realize
that I am as different from them as the old dictionary is to the language of
this day. We still serve our children and grandchildren and do our best to lead
by example, but our world is changing so very quickly that the children may
never understand what it means to grow their own food or sew their own clothes
or even to provide a restful place for their families. My grandparents did
these things as a matter of course—by default of the times in which they lived.
Today I try to adapt my commitments to the grandchildren in much the same way
as my grandparents adapted to their world—one word, on love at a time.
