Uprooted

As I tried to think of a title for today’s blog, the word “uprooted” came to my mind. In searching for images via google, I was amazed at both how powerful and universal the concept behind that word is.

What was on my mind is what happens to a young woman when her mother dies. She is only 11 years old. She has 4 younger siblings. My grandmother’s father, a sharecropper most likely working for his wealthy cousin who accumulated a lot of land, never remarried.

What does a mother do in a family? I got a taste of what it means to step in and become the substitute “mom” when my mother died and I was already over 60 years old. I wasn’t a child anymore.

In my birth family with no brothers, only sisters, my mom was the hub around which all the rest of us rotated. In my husband’s family with no sisters, only brothers, the mom was the strength of that family unit too.

Some of us as moms are the supply officer of the family. We make sure that everyone has what they need in the most basic ways – food to eat, clothes to wear, a comfortable home in which to spend our private lives together.

I know how intense it was for me to become “mom”, though only for a few months. I can’t imagine, given the lack of modern conveniences we have now, what it would have been like to take over the household duties at such a tender age, with no one to teach how it should be done. With a little brother only about a year old.

Somehow, my self-reliant grandmother must have simply pitched in to do what had to be done. That is pretty much how I did it too. I missed that my mom couldn’t explain to me how she was paying the bills. I ended up paying some twice. I got up to speed pretty quickly, I guess my grandmother did too.