My family came to America from Pomerania (Pre-Germany) in the late 1800’s. With them they brought many things… their devout Lutheran beliefs, strong, stubborn German blood, a legacy of trials, hardships, hope and vision… the trunk I have tucked away in my closet… generations of knowledge and tradition. Tradition that today is all but forgotten.
Strength and honor were the measure of a mans character back then, and women, well, I don’t really know if they were even entitled to character. I look into these old black and white photographs and try to sense these women, my “mothers”… with strength born of necessity and survival, cultivated on the knowledge passed down from their mothers, and the mothers before. In their faces I see my own mom, and my children… that intangible “thing” that was passed from them, through me, and on to the generations to follow, and I feel in my heart that in honoring them, I honor all that I am, all that my children will be. I owe it to them to pass the knowledge, to learn what I can and in turn give that back… for in their ways there is strength, and honor. Honor that, entitled or not, ran through our mothers like a great wave, and comes down to us through our blood.
Augusta is my mothers grandmother, my great grandmother. She lived during a simpler, harder time, on a farm in western New York state, where her people settled after their long journey to America. She bore 2 children, and lived to be 80 years old. She represents a long line of mothers (aunts, sisters, grandmothers) whose strength, sacrifice, honor and love is what sustained them in their daily lives.
It is their ways that brought us here, and it is their ways that will carry us forward.
Augusta’s Way – Honor The Ways of Our Mothers