09/05/2026

Today is the birthday of my maternal grandmother, and she's on my mind. Truth telling, she's been on my mind for a while.

To tell you about my grandmotheris to tell you about the teacup pictured above. My own mother has shared this snippet of a story with me several times, and each time I hear it, I want more: more details about the cup, more about a grandmother I have only one memory of.

First, the teacup...

It's close to 80 years old, maybe much older, and it sits on a corner shelf in the sun-filled living room of my childhood home. The cup itself isn't prominently displayed, but my eyes find it almost every time I enter that room.

The teacup is fragile, and yet it endures.

I don't know how the cup got broken; Mom either doesn't know that part of the story, or she hasn't shared it. Next time, I'll ask her if she recollects anything about the accident. But like many accidents in our lives, the breaking part doesn't matter as much as what comes after.

Here's where I have more curiosity about and admiration for my grandmother than I have answers.

The cup itself was, as Mom tells it, repaired with a concoction of whole milk, vinegar, and other household ingredients. For some reason, i can see my grandmother in her olive green kitchen over her olive green stove, a steaming pot of roiling milky-white liquidon the front burner. When it cools, she patiently "paints" the pieces of the broken cup back in place.

Confession! I have no clue why I have such a vivid image of her old kitchen from the 1930s, 1940s. Likely, I'm imagining it. But those details aren't as important as what they signify. At least to me, and that brings me to this...

Second, my grandmother...

My grandmother was one of eleven kids (I think I have that right), and sheended up have seven (?) of her own, including my mother, the youngest. I'm not entirely sure about the exact number of children grandmother hadbecause, according to Mom, there were lots of family secrets. There were miscarriages, stillborns, and infants deaths, at least that's what I've pieced together.

What's important about these broken pieces of my grandmother's story is what they reveal about the woman herself.

Grandmotherwas broken and put herself back together, and she helped glue others together too. The end result doesn't always sound like it was pretty. But like the teacup once repaired with milk, it holds. It endures.

There is one old photo Mom keeps on her dresser, and as with the teacup, I look at it often when I visit, as if it will finally tell me the family secrets held in the creases and shadows.

Grandmother is young in that sepia photo. She stands with a man of her age, and her smile is wide and unrestrained. Grandmother is also well dressed, as if she had bought that outfit in some high-end Manhattan department store, and she may have.

I don't know much about that period in which the picture was taken of her. What I see is a young woman frozen at the point when she's Becoming Herself. The Future is hers. The city is hers. Her life is hers.

She did live with relatives in New York around 1918 (when and where the picture was taken); that much I know. The rest is lost to me, her story in fragments that I must glue together.

Apparently, not long after that photo was taken, she was summoned back to her small hometown in Idaho, back to her large German Catholic family. The Flu Pandemic of 1918was ravaging New York and much of the globe, including rural areas, like her hometown.

The story goes that she was called away from New Yorkback toIdaho to care for her numerous siblings since her mother was ailing. Don't ask me what her father was doing.

So grandmother gave up a life she loved in the cityto help hold togetherher family.

What I don't know was the impact on her. I'm talking about the impact on her spirit, her heart.

She stayed in Idaho, raised her siblings, then married and had her own children. One of my aunts claimed my grandmother was a "cold" woman. I'm trying real hard not to glue together the pieces of this fractured story in a way that makes sense to me but ultimately is untrue.

Maybe my grandmother became a cold, broken porcelain cup. But she was also much more.

At a time when women had few professional opportunities, especially in smaller traditional communities, grandmother wasan oncology nurse and later, a hospice nurse. She lived with rich families, leaving her own kids at home, to provide private care for patients with dementia and those dying from cancer.

There was also a time when grandmother worked the graveyard shift in the local hospital. After work, she'd return home and, as Mom tells it, would can fruits and vegetables all day. It seems that the kids didn't like it much when grandmother was at home; they'd be forced to pick for hours from the garden and orchard.

Another time, she was cornered by a wolverine, apparently, and stayed calm until it wandered off. Now that's a story I wish I knew more about. You know as much as I do.

Again, like the repaired teacup, the pieces of grandmother's story, once assembled, don't necessarily yield something pretty or smooth. She was a smiling city gal. She was an obedientdaughter. She was a cold mother. She was a nurse for the dying.

She endured.

The only memory I have of her is when my family traveled to Mom's childhood home. The house was old, stained, and scared,and it sat on a sprawling piece of property, a ragged, overgrown orchard in the back. It remains absolutely beautiful in my mind.

Grandmother is smiling warmly at me in my memory, and she'd telling someone (I have no recollection who) to hang a simple homemade swing for me. The swing was made from a plain 2 x 8 plank of wood — I think — and two sections of thick, coarse rope. And the tree was enormous. It had to be a couple hundred years old, and it was love at first sight for me.

And that's it. That's my memory.

But as in the sepia photograph on Mom's dresser, grandmother is smiling in my memory. I'll lovinglyadd that piece to all the other pieces of her, and I'll glue them together into something that will endure.

As I wrap up, I'm thinking about grandmother again at her kitchen stove, the shattered cup close at hand. She didn't throw it away. She mended it to the best of her ability.

With everything going on right now, with all the beautiful things and beautiful people being broken by carelessness or cruelty, we need patient menders. We need people like my grandmother who will pick up what's been shattered and glue them together into something that endures, hopefully.

Happy birthday, Grandmother.