They led the way

Marion Sly Hart | Dec 16, 2015

It would be next to impossible to not remember our mothers or for me to share with friends, family and neighbors anything in our daily lives without referring in some way to our mothers.

Sitting here with the sun rising on the land where they

brought children into this world I have to include Arlene and Marlene Hawley and their mother Myra Stinchcombe as part of this tribute. From where I sit, I see the laneway to Violet Asselstine Sly's home; her recipe for bread pudding I still cherish.

I used to make it for Mom and Dad. When Dad was by himself and Mom was in the seniors' home I still made it for him and usually told him it was Violet's recipe. Someday soon I intend to have Velma and Carmel over and have the pudding and we each bring recipes of our mothers and grandmothers to pass down. What a great idea - to make a recipe book of ours with recipes passed down from our generations and generations past.

I didn't learn by lesson, it was by example I guess.

Clothes frozen stiff, fresh from the line. She must have got up in the night or as I have done, just

stayed up. Water caught in a rain barrel or anything suitable to wash our clothes. In the winter, icicles, snow and water from I don't know where.

My niece Nicole recently sent me a disk of my sister Margery's pictures. Mom is standing by the stove and Margery is bathing Linda in the sink. it would have been about 1965. Violet is likely cooking side pork in the oven of her wood stove, maybe still in her kerchief she wore to the barn. I see her yet on the way to the barn in her kerchief and boots, often with a pail in hand followed by a number of cats. Their home is as vivid in my memory as my mother and dad's; what I didn't learn from my mother I did from Violet.

Throughout my home are quilts of every pattern and piece, tied with wool, cloth from clothes and material too good yet to discard, sewn by hand or on an old treadle sewing machine. Blankets piled high, covering her children. Nights when the fire was purposely let out; protected from the winter winds and cold, the weight of the blankets keeping us in bed; a thunder mug in case we had to get up.

Violet's blankets - stitches so fine. Mother's gathering to make quilts that now generations later cover her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, one for each marriage to pass down to their children.

I talked of this the other day - in generations before and after, Violet's talk would be of marriages, births, deaths - who needed a newspaper to announce it? Word of daily events and happenings were part of the gathering as mothers, granddaughters and daughters learned the lessons of life from each other.

It is no surprise that marriages or the possibility of

future ones were discussed, passing down new lines and blood and the family ties that would last forever.

as they stitched and shared recipes and whatever home remedies worked best for the day. Back and forth these passed down the generations. The kettle

singing on Violet's, Myra's and Mom's stove, inviting anyone to sit and rest and share.

I have a couple of Mom's aprons, the ties made of red and white checked cloth, the rest of some other material that was originally one of her dresses, a pocket of sorts sewn and made part of the apron, something necessary, worn as she went back and forth from clothes line to stove to sewing machine, to a mustard plaster, to cutting up venison or pork that had been hung out to cool.

Pies made from the fat melted down in the oven of her cookstove from the pigs scraped and prepared for the coming winter. Sometimes for us and sometimes for her brother Fred or whoever came, stored in the old Hoosier cupboard.

Born in a tent in 1917. For her, memories of making whatever was available for her brothers and sister in the mining town of Timmins.

In the fires that went through northern Ontario in 1922, she would have been five and her sister Evelyn three. Grandma Coaty stood in the water protecting her children.

Mom taking us, whoever was at home, to our neighbors in the middle of a thunderstorm, doing what her mother did to protect her children while Dad worked.

Memories for me of Hurricane Hazel. I would have been four, watching out the back window as the

wind tore the clothes from the line. When it was over I'm sure Mom salvaged what was left, put it into a

quilt, or used it to wash dishes, maybe a piece tucked in her apron pocket to wipe a tear, a nose or a scraped knee.

Dad said Great Aunt Hannah (Scott) Drew would come for a visit in the early 1940s. She always brought something, maybe only a scrap of cloth. Are there some of those scraps in the quilt that covers my grown daughters?

Dad had struggles of his own in his last few years. To write of them now is another part of life we have to deal with, to see our parents face the changes age and life had brought. Our strength, especially mine, came from the mothers who endured and taught by example. Not something owed, not something we had to do. It was there to do.

A question with its own answer is "Who am I without them?" When I remember my mother's words and say to someone, "There are better days ahead." To give from the top, not what's left over. I am never