For My Daughters~Our Matrilineal Line

I decided to do a photographic history of the matrilineal line in our family. We are a long line of strong and feisty women, all with very definite ideas and opinions, all with wicked cackles and off-the-wall senses of humor, all with stoicism and endurance that likely came from this woman here. This is Julia Fitzsimmons, "Grandma Julie", my grandmother's mother. She came from County Cork in Ireland. My  Grandma was very proud of her Irish heritage. This woman's face shows the hardship she lived through, likely harsh times and poverty in Ireland, then living roughly in the bush on arrival in Canada, raising her children with all of the hard physical work life entailed in those times. Cooking on a woodstove, chopping wood, hauling water from the creek, heating it on the stove - imagine what doing the laundry and simply having a bath meant in terms of work and effort, in those times. Raising several children, tending the farm........physical labor from dawn till dusk, and then some...........baking her own bread, cooking for farm hands, sewing clothes for everyone, growing a garden and canning the produce, raising cows, chickens, horses. No end of hard work.

At the time of this photograph, her husband had died, and she lived a few months of the year with each of her children, traveling to each home in turn, living on her tiny pension, without many possessions, her few dresses folded in a small suitcase. My grandmother said so many times how much she had loved having her mother with them, and that my grandfather loved her mother as well. My sister still has one of Grandma Julie's dresses, a threadbare flowered cotton print dress.

My Grandma told me stories about when she was a girl, living on a small farm near the spot where her father worked. My Grandma was born in Montana,  while her father helped lay the tracks for what would become the first cross country railroad in North America.
Grandma remembered seeing the ruts in the ground made by the covered wagons that had made that journey first. 

By the time Grandma was a girl, growing into her young womanhood, they lived on a small farm in the Canadian Prairies - in Esterhazy.

This is Florence Fitzsimmons, my grandmother, at around the age of thirteen. She was the youngest in her family and her older sister Dolly used to grumble that my grandma was spoiled because she didn't have to work as hard as the older kids had. Florence also had a sister called Rose. The two sisters had a falling out  early in their married lives, and didn't speak to each other for the remainder of their lives. My grandma's brother Frank I believe took over the family farm. Grandma used to visit it during her married life.

In Esterhazy, Florence met and three years later married Wilfred Lloyd Marr, the bank manager. They had their first home in Esterhazy, later moved to Brandon, Manitoba , and then to Saskatoon. Finally, in the 1940's, they moved to Kelowna, where they lived for the rest of their lives.

This is the only photo I have seen of my grandmother holding my mother as an infant. My mother was named Irene Julia, in honor of her Grandma Julie, and was called Renee all her life. She was a beauty, with the family sense of humor and strength, the grit needed for getting through hard times.

Renee and Grandma Julie had a special bond. They called each other "Julie" affectionately, recognizing their sharing of the same name. In this photo, my mom looks so much like  my daughter Lisa, who definitely inherited the beauty gene from her. Mom was around sixteen in this photo, had already met my father, and soon would leave home to be with him. 

I love this photo of my grandma, one of the few photos where she is herself, a young woman, not someone's mother or grandma. I like the pretty dress, the effort to look dressed up and faintly provocative. Grandma discounted how hard it was raising five kids through the Depression, in the years when my grandpa did the books for small businesses in exchange for a sack of coal, or whatever they could offer to keep his family looked after. My grandma told me she would wash the family's laundry by hand in the bathtub, that grandpa would come home from work and help her wring them out. Sheets, frocks, pinafores, leggings, for five children - all by hand in the tub. In the middle of a frozen Prairie winter, 40 below outside and no dryer. Canning, searching for enough food to keep everyone fed. This woman somehow got all her children through the hungry 30's. "But I had my husband," she said, "He helped me."

My  mom remembered her as a "fun mother" - with that zany sense of humor, the cackle, the pranks. I remember both her cackle and her pranks, when she was in her 60's, 70's, 80's, even into her 90's. That sense of humor never failed her until the very end, when she was living in extended care and no longer wanted to be inhabiting her body.

This family has been through a lot of pain, but there is always laughter, great surprised hoots of it, at the most unexpected times:)

In this photo, my grandma was somewhat older. From the look of it, she was still living in the Prairies, before the move to Kelowna.

My mother, looking so beautiful. My grandma often told me my mother could have been a model, that someone had sent Norman Rockwell a photo of Renee, and he had written back and said, if she went to New York, she could have a career in modeling. However, she chose life with my dad, and she never regretted that.

My mom and a very young me. My mother looks so young here.

Here I am a little bigger. We are sitting by the Okanagan Lake in Kelowna. Soon my mother had her dream, a two acre small farm called Twin Acres, across the road from the lake. She raised chickens and rabbits, and tended a huge garden, happy as a clam. When I was five we moved to the city, and for the rest of her life she keened for a return to farm life.

My mother holding my sister, Lori Lee. I had begged and begged for a sister, but when she arrived, I was jealous of all the attention she got, and was less enchanted with the idea:)

Big and little sisters.

Mom, Lori and I.

Mom had a hard life, too, and the strength to get her through it. My parents struggled with addictions, with accompanying poverty and violence. There were harsh years. But there was a lot of love between them and when my father died when I was thirteen, my mother was inconsolable. But she put one foot in front of the other and kept on working, slowly working her way up through the ranks to a position in the Attorney General's department.

All through the years, she would hold out a dream for herself and for us, that one day we would have a place on the land, where Lori would have her horse. She had about given up on it when, in her 70's, Lori found a two acre hobby farm in Port Alberni and convinced Mom, whose eyesight was failing, to leave the city and move to the Island. For a couple of years Mom was in her glory. Lori's horse was in the barn, chickens were roosting in the trees, Mom baked her own bread, and she had what she had so longed for.

It is so good she had that gift. Soon, her health took a sudden turn, and suddenly she was gone.

On her death bed, it wasn't the hard times of her life that

she remembered, but her glory years, when she and my dad were so in love. "I had it all" she said. Not many can say that and mean it as she did.

Me, thinking I was very grown up.

My sister Lori

Me with Lisa, my older daughter

 

Lisa

Lisa and I

How could I have looked so young, yet felt so old?

Lisa in her early teens

Stephanie and me - at the time of

this photo, I was a single mom of four and accessing some of the matriarchal strength and grit required to raise kids in poverty, provide for their needs and do so somehow with fun, laughter and happy times. I had been through a ton of heartbreak by then. But it is the years when I lived alone with my children that were the happiest for me. We had good times.

Steph was always a sunny child.

Steph and Snoopy

Before you know it, Lisa had Baby Alison, and there was another generation

of women in the family.

Lisa and Ali

I was a Grandma, and thrilled to have a wee granddaughter.

Ali and I had a special bond.
 I wasn't a conventional Grandma, she called me Grandma-By-the-Whales

because I lived in Tofino, where the whales lived.

My mother, Alison and I -I wish we had gotten Lisa into the photo-

four generations. And at that time, my Grandma was still alive!

Looking so cute.

Chasing her mom on the beach with a starfish.

Here I am on the Tall Tree Trail on Meares Island in my glory days.

My beloved Chestermans Beach.

It took some strength, courage, hope and a huge risk-taking leap to make the move from Kelowna, where I finally had a well-paying job, and "security", (a huge issue for a single mother accustomed to poverty), to move to Tofino where there was no security of any kind, accommodation was seasonal and scarce, one had to work two or three part time jobs to survive. But I knew if I didn't make the leap, I'd have to give up my dream and I knew I couldn't live without a dream. From the moment I arrived there, I was ecstatic, and never regretted the move for one moment. I had to struggle very hard to stay there, to find some stable accommodation for myself and Stephanie, who was still at home. I worked hard, with joy, and lived the ten most glorious years of my life.

Lori, on Beau.

Lori watched how hard my life was raising four kids as a single mother, and she made different choices. Her animals have been her kids.........she and Beau enter cattle  sorting events, she rides long hours in good weather, and when she's home she hangs out with her three dogs and a cat.

Lori and I both inherited stamina, grit, a terrific work ethic, strength of character and that zany humor from the line of women who walked the path ahead of us. We have both endured our share of heartbreak, disappointment, and have both started over again so many times, it's amazing we kept getting back on our feet. But quitting has never been an option.

Here Lori cuddles her boy, Luke, and my girl, Jasmine. On the left is Noey. And bad little Blakey hadnt arrived on the scene yet.

Here Lori is with her real baby, Baby Leo, the little foal who was born too small and compromised, who fought a valiant fight to live.

Leo the Lion Hearted, he had so much spirit and life. He grew to be a spunky spirited little guy fourteen months old. He had passed the one year mark, we thought he had come through the worst and was going to be all right, when suddenly he was down, with what turned out to be a ruptured bowel. He suffered through two weeks trying very hard to live, but finally succumbed. This broke Lori's heart. I'll tell the full story another time. In our lives, it always seems that when a dream comes true for us, we pay for it with a very high price. Perhaps it is that way in every life. But losing this little guy was a real blow.

My Grandma, in the final years of her life. Her humor still evident in her eyes, though she was living in a seniors facility and hated it. "To many old people in here" she'd say, herself in her 90's............."Still here!" she'd say disgustedly,

as I popped my head around the door. "Just too damned healthy!"

My mother, still beautiful as ever.

My mom adored her mother. She thought the world of her. At Grandma's funeral, when the strains of "Galway Bay" sounded, my mom broke down and wept. It wasnt very long before she, too, was gone, unexpectedly, far sooner than we ever would have dreamed.

Grandma and I

When I lived in Kelowna, I spent a lot of time with Grandma. I knew she lived for visits from family and often after my workday I would bike across town to sit with her as the afternoons faded into sunset. I remember one evening pushing her wheelchair to the window and us wordlessly

watching the sun go down behind the hills. We often simply sat in companionable silence. I was exhausted after working all day. She was retreating within herself more and more the final year or two in the extended care unit.

Lisa, my older daughter, as she is today, a beauty.

She has the trademark family humor........she has been on an amazing journey, this lifetime, and has gone through a ton of hard times. But her spirit continues to rise. She has worked hard on the inner journey (which is the real journey) and today cracked me up by saying, "I have all these tools...........but how

 come MY toolbox has to be so f-ing BIG???? Everyone else just walks around with a sledgehammer!"

Lisa raised four kids as a single mom, in poverty, too. A daughter Ali, and three sons. I doubt there is a harder job in the world than raising several kids with no money and little help. I helped however I could, but given my own financial straits, Lisa and the kids have experienced much the same challenges as her family of origin experienced. But she did it with love and humor and her kids are sensitive and considerate. They get that from her.

Stephanie with her boy, Sanchez. Both my girls are beautiful.

Steph has another little fellow, Chase, a black Lab. She is a big dog lover and dog rescuer. Her dream would be to open a Canadian version of Dogtown. She too has had her share of heartbreak, has the same grit the rest of us have, has started over many times, rolling up her sleeves and working hard to get the job done. Same trademark humor............when we get together, all you hear are cackles. By now, we are all pretty strong, pretty cracked and pretty independent.

              I am bursting with pride over my two daughters.

  And, for the record, I am still waiting for some more baby granddaughters:)

Ali as a young teen.

Ali, a little older.

As this is the matrilineal line, I dont include a photo of Ali's little fellow Damian........(saving him for the boys' page:) But he is adorable, four years old, making me a Great-Grandma, and, unbelievably, given how young she looks, making Lisa the youngest looking Grandma on the planet!

So we are just waiting for some girl babies to arrive in the family to continue this line of strong women!

The matrilineal line includes those born to descending generations. But since this is entitled For My Daughters, I have to include another daughter, a daughter of my heart, my adorable daughter-in-law Zenny, who is married to my older son Jon. Zenny is the sweetest girl in the world, and our whole family just adores her. Bonds of the heart are as strong as those of blood. So this piece would not be complete without her.

                                                        Zenny at Lori's birthday bash
                                                                             

                                                       Zenny - Zenaida - on the beach.

THE GRANDMOTHER SONG

Florence Fitzsimmons, one of the first women in her area who rode for pleasure -

she rode well into her sixties. Note the wagon to the right. No cars then!

February 14, 1998

I wear my grandmother's ring

for medicine.

Rubbing my fingers over it,

I feel my connection

to her

and to the long line of old, wise women

who came before her,

who walked the grandmother path
before she

who walked here

before me.

One of them was a healer;

one of them spoke with ghosts.

In my past are Celtic crones

and warrior women,

mystics and dream weavers.

In my past, women galloped
on horseback

across the plains,

gave birth in tents, in covered wagons
and in captivity.

A medicine woman
is back there,

and an Untouchable,

a witch and a nun.

In my past are bent, exhausted
and determined women,

digging in the unyielding earth

trying to feed their children

during the potato famine.

Once in vision

row upon row of silent,
dead-eyed women

wrapped in blankets,

I saw, weaving their way

through the frozen blackness
of a winter morning

in the Gulag

and, with a chill, I knew them,

and knew I had been there.

Somewhere back there

there was a woman of vision

and a fool.

Somewhere back there,
wise women sat around a fire

in Council,

speaking truth and governing.

Somewhere back there,

women were

burned at the stake.

Some raised swords
and led armies on horseback.

Some were shackled together
in a ship's hold

to be sold as slaves.

Some lived in castles
and some in caves.

Somewhere back there,

once women's spirits flew;

somewhere back there

our souls were
kept in bondage.

Somewhere back there

our feet were cruelly bound.

Somewhere back there
we threw off

all the bindings
and stood tall.

And now I am watching
my grandmother's face

emerging before me daily
in the mirror.

My grandmother's eyes
are looking out of my face.

They know me.

Somewhere from within

my grandmother has told me

to put on the ring:

for now I am worthy.

I, the baby grandmother,

just coming into my power.

No longer a granddaughter,

now an elfin granddaughter
walks beside me, looking up,

and the vast peaceful knowing

that lived in my grandmother's heart

has come to reside within me.

I wear my grandmother's ring

for love, for memory,

for connection

to the line of strong women
who came here before me

and for the line of strong women

who will walk here behind me,

for the passage of time

that is timeless,

for the circle of love

that is endless,

for the circle of life
that keeps turning and turning:

one grandmother out,

one granddaughter in,

footsteps walking in footsteps,

heart upon heart,

all the way Home.

The Orphans of Addis Ababa

[I am reading There Is No Me Without You, by Melissa Fay Greene, about the heroic struggle of a tired grandmother called Haregewoin Teferra to care for the orphans brought to her small compound. Life, reduced to the most basic, where giving up is not an option.]

"Allah, Allah,"
comes the morning chant
from the Grand Mosque
and, from their blankets
emerge
the weary orphans
of Addis Ababa,
as they
prepare
to face another day
among the living.

The dispossessed
of the earth
make their cooking fires
as the sun rises
above the steep
mosque spires.
Donkey hoofbeats clop,
a rooster's cries
pierce the air,
while the children's
hungry eyes,
still too hopeful
for despair,
remember
those they love
who are
no longer
there.

What will
this continent
of hungry orphans
eat today?
As we enjoy
a second cup of coffee,
the comfortable knowledge
that we will eat
later this same day,
little Mintesinot,
Prince of the street
of paupers,
leaves the marked-off
square of earth
under his feet
where he was lying
for the four years
since his birth,
the piece of earth
where his mother died
and his father now lies
dying.

He is moving
to a shack
where 60 other orphans
are living
with a tired but
indomitable
Grandmother
who keeps on
giving
because someone
has to feed the children
whose families
are dying,
so she is
trying.

Little Mintesinot,
young Prince
of the barren roadway,
one of 13 million
(say this number slowly)
orphaned by AIDS,
a number so large,
our minds do not engage,
cannot process
it wholly.
What this means:
one small child
13 million times,
alone and scared
and hungry,
with no parents,
with no prospects,
with no dreams.

"Allah, Allah"
the chant continues,
on the air,
rising
on the wafting smoke,
a prayer
of faith and hope and need
so true and clear,
it hopefully finds its way
straight
to Allah's
ear.
But it's the world
of humans
who can help
who most
need to hear.

BLOCKADE

[In August of 1993, environmentalists in Clayoquot Sound launched B.C.'s largest  peaceful incidence of civil disobedience, in protest of the multinationals' clearcutting the pristine old growth of the Sound. All that summer, dawn after dawn, larger and larger numbers of people gathered at the Kennedy Lake bridge to block the road and stop the logging trucks. A Peace Camp was set up nearby, and people came from all over the world to join the movement. Bobby Kennedy came, so did Paul Watson of Greenpeace. The Greenpeace boat was in our harbour, very exciting! By the end of the protest, over nine hundred people had been arrested for standing on the road for the trees. Some spent time in jail, went back to stand on the road and were jailed again.

The multinationals, who were destroying the area and laying it waste, served no time.

 I was working two or three part-time jobs, so could not be there as often as I wanted. But I was there some mornings, the most emotional and passionate mornings of my life, united in standing on the road for the trees....for the planet!

I was there the morning of the Women's Blockade, when we spiral danced on the road. That night my conservative son called me: "Mom, I saw you on the news, dancing around the road with a bunch of hippies." Hee hee. My kids never know what to expect of this wild mother of theirs. Keeps it interesting!

It is now many years later. The trees are still coming down. Here is the poem I wrote the morning after the Women's Blockade: I can still remember the pride, the joy, the POWER we felt that morning, as the men formed a circle respectfully off to the side and accompanied us with drums.]

August 1993 - Clayoquot Sound

Grandmother,

I can feel you near me

as I dance and sing

with this group of women

on the road.

We mourn man's treatment
of the earth

as, at the same time,
we celebrate

our power.

We have a voice

and we will use it.

Our drumbeat is
the heartbeat

of the Earth Mother.

After all the untold years

of pain and tears

that held me down

I have risen

as an eagle
seeks higher ground,

no more earth-bound.

I have found my voice

and I will sing with it,

laugh into tomorrow,

feel my strength,
my peacefulness

and my joy,

along with love and pain

for Mother Earth.

Grandmother,

now that I am
a grandmother too,

I can hear you.