The Women in my Bloodline

I begin this story where I hope it also ends, with myself. Within me I carry stardust and ancient untold memories from generations past. My line of women needs comforting, the soothing understanding that can only be given by another woman in our line

.

I begin the motherly sway (watch any mother with her babe and you will see what I mean.) It’s the motion of slowly shifting my weight from one foot to another, with a soft tuneless melody being hummed as I move. I cradle the beloved one’s head against my chest, gently patting their back in a heartbeat rhythm. It is imperceptible to almost all but them. pat, pat, my fingers touch upon their back, with only the slightest movement of my hand…. “There, there”… I croon in a whisper tone, while holding them securely with great tenderness. Pat, pat… “there, there.”

I know, as my daughter knows, there are stories my mother never told me, and even older ones before my Mother’s knowing. Women can carry the past silently, as they keep moving through today. “No good comes of complaining”, Bess would say. The broken old bones of these stories are buried deep within our hearts, passed down each generation while never spoken out loud. They poke holes in our hearts that we cannot explain and become more brittle with time. The exact story fades in clarity, while the pain remains unexpressed.

I’m told I come from “Strong Stock”, which came to mean that we had rugged strength, a family history of physical and emotional strength, that we were robust. While I cannot say I agree with this description unequivocally, the emotional strength is most assuredly true.

My paternal Grandmother, Betty, Dad’s Mom, lost her husband when her twin sons were 11 years old. It was 1935. Throughout the years I knew her, she insisted we all call her something other than Grandmother. Oh, how she hated even the thought of anyone calling her that. She made up name from Grandmother and Hutchings (her last name). Her initial choice was “Grutch” (which sounds even more awful to my adult ears than it did when we were little). None of us could say it. It morphed into Dutch. (Thank goodness.)

Dutch had never worked outside her home. Her husband, William, contracted Strep Throat and died from the infection. Penicillin, was discovered in 1928, yet was not made available to the public until 1938. Three years after his death. Dutch and her twin sons lived near Seneca Falls, New York. From early Monday mornings until late Friday nights, the 11 year old twins lived by themselves in Seneca Falls, and Dutch stayed in Rochester where she got a job in a curtain making factory. To this day I do not know why they didn’t all move there, or why Dutch’s Mother didn’t take care of the boys. No one ever spoke of it. The tale told within our family was that (in a semi joking tone) “it’s amazing the boys didn’t kill each other.” I never thought that was funny.

Grandma Elisabeth Hastings, Bess, was my mother’s mom. She too lost her husband sometime in 1935. My Mother was the youngest at 10 years old. My Mom shared a few stories from those days with me. She told of her dad being sent to stay in Willard State Mental Hospital for “depression” after the time that he was found choking Bess. He had no awareness of what he was doing. He also lived one winter in the one room cabin at the lake, where there was no heat, no insulation, and no running water. I never heard how that came about. I was told that he died of an enlarged heart, but who really knows. There was no documentation

(The graveyard at Willard State Hospital.)

The term “Strong Stock” was often used in reference to cattle lines, where “Good Stock” was used for lineage and inheritable lands. I have wondered if the women in my family were indeed unbreakable. None had famous lineage, nor lands in their names. They lived through heart breaking times. Their losses overwhelming. No one spoke of it.

Bess, and her three living children were taken under the wing of her late husband’s brother, Peter Hastings. My Great Uncle Pete was a celibate Episcopalian priest, and headmaster of a Boys school in New York City. The hodgepodge family divided their time between New York City during the school year, and summers spent in Upstate New York at the cottage. Bess never did earn any of her own independent money. She never learned to drive. No one spoke of how she lived with this, nor who paid for what her feminine needs might be. Bess was a proper lady, and would never have spoken of such things

(My grandmother Bess)

My Dad and his twin were lightly “looked after” while at school by their football coach and the local Boy Scout leader. Leaving 11-year-old children alone all week to feed, dress, do laundry, get to school, and study would be illegal nowadays. As far as I know, no one ever took care of them at home. It was never spoken of.

I cannot begin to fathom the stress and relentless pressure placed on just these two women in my lineage. Phones were a rare commodity; mail took forever it seemed to get from here to there. Who comforted these women in their times alone? Neither of them ever had any gentleman callers, nor suitors after their husbands passed. Bess’ sisters lived far away, and Dutch had no siblings. Bess would write letters. I wish I had some of them now.

Many things evoke memories from my life, and from my lineage. It could be a time of year, a perfume or cologne, a tune you once heard whistled down a far away hall. The untold stories of the past can arise within my emotions and still have no words.

I too have come by my battle scars honestly, not from any accidents. The unacknowledged scars on my heart seem the most challenging to exhume. Ghost shadows lingering behind doorways. Are they gone now? Am I safe to speak? Is this fleeting scrap of a memory from my mother, or from Bess, or is it mine? It no longer matters. It’s the feelings that remain.

There are days that tears well up out of nothing from the present, aches, deep within, wounds inflicted decades ago. Specific images are no longer important, details need not be shared. No healing will come from condemning others long gone. There is no one still standing to pay their dues. The amorphous ache deep within must be grieved, with words or without. I cry the tears of the women in my bloodline. I hold the hope that they rest in peace.

I place my hands over my heart, one on top of the other on my chest. Quiet witnessing of the old unshed tears. I allow them to flow now. Tears from Dutch, or from Bess, my Mother’s and my own. After a time, the slow motherly sway begins once again. A soft rhythm is gently tapped upon my heart, pat…pat, “there, there” I say softly. Soothing, not needing any other words, tender allowing, no denying.

Pat, pat……. “There, there” I say.