When the tide is right, I will hold you tight in the way

[sovay]

On May 6, 1923, my grandmother was born in Brooklyn. I have seen the naturalization papers of her parents and the census records of her childhood, but never her birth certificate, so I have no idea at which hospital or under which name, but her eyes as deep-set as a cat's looked out of the photos of her toddler self that papered the walls of the guest bedroom in my grandparents' house in Maine with the rest of the family collage. For her memory this afternoon, we baked the traditional strawberry shortcake for her birthday and tuned in to the Kentucky Derby, which my mother watched with her for years. She liked violets, so I brought some inside with the lilac, in a glass jar that used to hold horseradish.

Comments

Hospital?

[lauradi7dw]

My parents were born in the 1920s in NC, not Brooklyn, but they were born at home. Actually I'm not sure about my father, but my mother definitely was. I don't know anything about regional variance in home births vs hospitals at the time in the US.

[choco_frosh]

Cool!

[gwynnega]

How lovely that you have lilacs and violets. Your grandmother was born only four years before my mother (who was also born in May, in Chicago).

[asakiyume]

What a lovely day. Strawberry shortcake, sunshine, violets, a remembered family member, and a horse race. <3

[thisbluespirit]

That sounds like a good memorial. <3 The violets are beautiful!

[pameladean]

What a lovely memorial.

And the violets are wonderful. I keep thinking I should recognize the plants that are not blooming yet -- bouncing bet?

P.

[nineweaving]

What a lovely remembrance! She was just a half-year younger than my mother and her twin (December 9, 1922).

Nine

[thistleingrey]

Sounds like a lovely remembrance. (Generations are weird--not many years between you and me, but my father's parents were born two decades earlier.)