My Mother’s Bible

This morning my niece gave me inspiration for this post when she inquired about the birth order of her cousins. I went to my mother’s Bible and there in the front of the Book on a piece of notebook paper was the information she needed. I emailed my niece a list of when each of her cousins was born. As I leafed through Mom’s Bible, I saw other records: birth and death dates for family members going back several generations and continuing through the births of her children and grandchildren and sadly, the deaths of some. Those important dates that Mom had recorded give me a sense of continuance, of where I came from and the many directions family members have gone. Those records are just bare facts but stories came down to me too, those tales that remind me that these dates represent living, breathing people who had dreams, goals, shortcomings and challenges just as I have.

I know, for example, that some ancestors came from Georgia in the 1800s, some fought in the Civil War and at least one was in the American Revolution.

Because of family stories, I know that my great-grandfather played the fiddle and his wife made certain he never played at dances. I know that my grandmother loved to quilt. When my grandmother’s aunt along with  her mother and friends gathered at her house to put together those bright pieces of material with tiny hand-sewn stitches, the children, Mom included, liked to hide under the quilt and listen to the women visit. It is easy to picture those long ago ladies gathered in the living room at Etta during the winter months, a wood fire roaring in the fireplace, catching up on neighborhood news. That love of quilting has been bequeathed to many of my grandmother’s descendants but not, I’m afraid, to this descendant.

My mother’s experiences as a child are recorded in my two small books about Etta Bend so our family is blessed to know about her life before the advent of TV or computers. Looking back at those stories, it is amazing to see how vastly life has changed.

It seems appropriate that the records of my family are in Mom’s Bible because the Bible is a record too, of births and deaths. The Bible tells where we came from and ultimately, where we are going. It is a plan for successful living as well as a warning about what happens to those who stray from that planned path given to us by God.

Continuity, belonging, a sense of who I am, these are what my mother’s records provide. No matter where on earth I might travel, I know where I came from. Even through changing times, past and present generations, those born into our family and those who married into it,  come together in our own particular pattern of colorful pieces known as Family.