July 19, 1916

Mamére & Grandpa, 1950s,
originally uploaded by Ablevayble.

was my Mamére's birthday, despite what it says on her marriage certificate. She was my mother's mother, stood about 5'2" and was at least 7 feet tall in my memory. There wasn't anything she couldn't do when I was a kid - she knew all of the family stories, could cook or make most anything, knew and loved almost anything that grew in "the timber" behind their small farm and she was the absolute and unquestioned center of my mother's extended family.

She married my grandfather at 16 - he was 32 and it was scandalous even then. It was hard to reconcile the idea of a defiant, wild flapper with the kind, patient and self-controlled woman I knew as an adult, but pictures of her cutting-up with her sisters show another side to her that I couldn't appreciate fully as a girl.

Her father was killed in a very avoidable accident when she wasn't much more than 10 and her long-suffering mother had a hard time keeping her six high-spirited children in line at the same time as keeping body and soul together. Mamére wanted to have fun and to be free. That's not difficult to see from a creased photograph of the spit-curled girl with the flirty skirt, hoydenish smile and the flashing dark eyes.

To my Grand-Mamére, it must have seemed that Mamére had driven her ducks to a pretty poor market (as the family saying goes) when she picked my grandfather as her suitor. He was a tall, handsome dandy of a fellow, quick with a story and a smile. Perhaps she was looking for someone who reminded her of her father - or just someone who would get her out of the small South Dakota drycleaners where she worked long hours. More than likely, she wanted to be grown-up, with all the rights thereto pertaining.

"If you knew all the dishes you'd ever have to wash in your life, you'd put your pocketbook on your arm and walk down the road," Mamére often said about how lucky we are not to be able to know all the future has in store. They did alright, though. Mamére and Grandpa were married for 48 years, with five children to show for it. Though there was too much work, too many worries and surely their share of sorrows, there were many, many good times. This photo, taken in the late 1950's at their house in Rockford, Illinois, was clearly from one of those good times.

Happy Birthday, Mamére!