Family

(If you click on this picture, I believe it will open a larger image--the details
show quite well on my computer).

It's been awhile since I've blogged about family, but since I am back in the thick of the book, they've been on my mind. A little over a year ago, I posted a very fuzzy picture of my grandmother Mary at her sister Rose's wedding, which took place on July 8th, 1923. One of my cousins contacted me recently via this blog and it has been wonderful to be in touch with her. She sent me copies of many family pictures, including one of the wedding. The bride is my grandmother's sister Rose, and my grandmother is the other woman in the picture. My cousin told me that Rose's girlfriends made her dress and veil, and also my grandmother's dress. The workmanship is amazing to me (Rose was also an accomplished seamstress). The groom's name was John, and the best man was his brother Joe. I love looking at the faces in this picture--my daughter told me that Rose looks like the women in ancient frescoes she's seen, and I think my grandmother looks like my younger daughter.

All these photos seem miraculous to me in their presence in my life, as well as discovering family again when I thought I had no chance of finding anyone at all.
It gives me an extra dose of hope to keep going--I am in such a difficult part of the book, remembering how traumatized my mother was after losing her mother, how deeply their ties ran to each other, and how unbelievably lost my mother was when she lost her mother forever...and yet in some ways, it's healed my relationship with my mother to write this book, as I feel I can understand more of what she went through and can view her with compassion.