Grandma Loved Flowers

 

Grandma with her big sunflower.

It wasn’t an easy life. But then, who has an easy life? Not many who lived through the depression. Not many who start a farm from scratch in the middle of said depression. Not many who live without modern day conveniences. The work for a farm wife was relentless. It was mundane. It was mostly done in solitude. It wasn’t pretty. That was my grandmother’s life.

Esther Miller Epp (1905-1995) liked pretty dishes (but never used them) and having things “just so”.  For years her legs ached with varicose veins. Yes, she should put her feet up, but when? And what should stay undone? Not gathering eggs from two large chicken pens and preparing them for sale. Not caring for and preserving a large vegetable garden. Not dealing with the milk and cream separator. Not preparing meals and washing dishes afterwards. Grandma often seemed slightly overwhelmed by her heavy workload. 

My grandparents began farm life with two young children in 1936 with a moved-in barn, a few horses and a cow in an empty field. They worked hard to make a farm.

As a child of ten or eleven I would sometimes spend a week with my grandparents and help Grandma. It wasn’t fun and games. But it wasn’t unpleasant either. By this time in her life surely her workload would have been reduced some but she was always working. I suspect that for both of us the least favorite chore was washing the cream separator in the rusty sink in the dank basement where there always seemed to be a faintly sour scent (Still, it was less work than Grandpa’s who cared for the cattle and milked twice a day by hand.) Although I never helped her, I remember seeing squares of homemade soap laid out neatly on old newspapers in the attic. Lye soap no doubt.  

The culmination of all the hard labor took place during the early part of August when it was time to bale hay and all the work, urgency and stress were multiplied. So much of the farm depended on a good hay crop.  As the menfolk toiled in the blistering heat slinging heavy bales onto the wagon and then into stacks in the barn, the females prepared food in Grandma’s warm kitchen. Grandma cooked with a slop bucket in the middle of the kitchen. Every scrap -- potato peelings, egg shells, moldy bread and sour milk, etc. went into the bucket which was doused by the dishwater (and eventually fed to the pigs by Grandpa). Meanwhile as she cooked she somehow managed to use an enormous amount of dishes creating a bewildering mound of dishes which all had to be washed, dried and put away by hand. Still we managed to put together a “lunch”(served around 4 p.m.)  menu of bologna salad sandwiches, cookies and very sweet tea. 

 “She had to work so hard,” said my aunt wistfully, remembering her harried mother. 

Grandma's beloved grandchildren with her geraniums.

But she had flowers. Almost a luxury in their beauty. Impractical, because who eats flowers? On the path to the chicken pens, near the gate was a cloud of four o’clocks with a sweet scent that greeted all who entered on summer afternoons.  Near the house, old troughs were filled with flowers. Geraniums mostly, I think. Grandchildren were lined up around them for photos. Photographs were another of her passions as were her grandchildren.  

Grandma's zinnias 

Finally the day came when  my grandparents retired and moved to a sweet little brick home in town. Our family moved to the farm.  It was not an easy adjustment for Grandpa who would continue daily visits to his beloved farm, fixing fences and checking on his cows for several years. Grandma, however, seemed to enjoy town life. No, it still wasn’t an easy life. Did the new house come with a dishwasher? “We’ll never use it,” she said. And she didn’t.

But here she really had flowers. Potted plants, sunflowers, and  a plot of zinnias arrayed her yard.  As a young mother I visited them one day. Grandma took me around to the side of the house where a lovely Angel Wing begonia was planted. “I want to give this to you,” she said. I wanted that plant! But I think we both knew that sending it home with me would lead to its demise. And it did.

With Angelwing begonias

I wish I could tell her, “I’m doing better now, Grandma!” 

I’m glad Grandma had some retirement years with her plants in town. I wish she had had more time there. Sadly Grandma suffered a stroke and spent the last eleven years of her life confined to a nursing home. When I remember her it’s often the nursing home years that come to mind. But it's more important to remember the inquisitive and opinionated dear grandmother with a deep Christian faith who was so fond of her family and wanted photos to show it. 

And yes, as someone who worked really hard and loved flowers.  

Grandma likely got her love of flowers from her mother shown here with her flowers.
Henry and Dora Miller home 

She Was the Gardener: A Poem

 She was the gardener, the caretaker

Just one factor in an intricate equation

Of sun and soil

Of weeds and weather

Of temperature and time

And rain; received or withheld

And yet it must be said: she is essential 

For without the gardener there is no garden

See and select 

Examine and eliminate

Toil and travail

Prod what is into what can be

Still Nature has the upper hand

They’re the principal partner, the big boss 

Acquiesce and accept 

Embrace and endure 

Marvel and make do

And hope, realized or deferred 

Beautiful

In my earliest, hazy memories, just beyond my realized consciousness, there is a face. It is the most beautiful face in the world. It is my mother.

I suppose it wasn’t too many years later when I saw other faces and realized that perhaps hers wasn’t the most beautiful. With a mop of curly hair she never quite knew how to style and her constant struggle to maintain a healthy weight she had some challenges. And yet, when I think of beauty of soul and spirit, few exceed hers.

Lillian Schroeder Epp was born October 23, 1924. One hundred years ago. She died in 2000 and so there is a whole generation of her descendants that have no memories of her. I would like to remind those who remember of her beauty and enlighten those who never met her.

Beauty of Home

My childhood home and my mother seem almost synonymous. She was a constant presence. A home doesn’t have to be spotless or stylish to be beautiful; the beauty of a home has always been the people who inhabit the house. Mom made a beautiful home. It was a place of work, certainly. She who gardened and canned, cooked and cleaned, read stories and sewed clothing made a place that was peaceful and secure.

The home that she had grown up in was rich in a vibrant faith, but struggled economically.The Great Depression hit her large family especially hard. There were no safety nets for farmers in those days. She remembered lean times but never seemed especially scarred by the experience. True, she was not wasteful. She was one who could take what she had, make something wonderful and think of it as an adventure.

Beauty of Acceptance

There is great beauty in acceptance. It doesn’t demand but it does receive. We were blessed to receive her acceptance. “I never felt pressured to succeed. . . She gave us all a lot of liberty to pursue our own dreams, and she seemed content and happy with what we did,” wrote my brother Paul when looking back over our mother’s life. “She was more concerned with who we were than with what we did.” That was pretty much how she accepted life. Whether it was a move to a rustic farm house, a cancer diagnosis or a beautiful day, each thing was a gift from God.

Beauty of Faith

Much of her beauty came because she walked with Jesus. He was her companion and friend; her Savior. Her faith permeated our lives. It wasn’t just that we attended every church service or that we had daily devotions, but it was a part of everything she did,everything she was. It was lived out in her life in countless ways, mostly in her true goodness.


We who knew her best know her beauty. Over twenty years after her death we still “rise up and call her blessed.” (Proverbs 31:28) And we know we were blessed because she was our mother.

A 1952 Christmas

 This photo is from my mother’s Christmas in 1952. That’s her in the middle with the beautiful smile. She was so fond of her family and I can just tell from the photo that they are all really happy to be together. It was taken in the family home in Floodwood, Minnesota. It’s easy to imagine that their celebration included peppernuts and lots of cheerful chattering in the kitchen. Her parents, John and Eva Schroeder sit behind her. Older sisters, (Olivia is on the left and Wanda is on the right) surround her. Peeking from behind is her young brother, LeRoy. He would have been 22 and was likely a college student. The family was large and scattered. Missing from the photo is older sister Emma and her family who were missionaries in Ecuador and younger brother Loyd and his family who were also missionaries in Ecuador. Older brother Ed was married with young children and lived in Omaha. At the time Mom would have been visiting from her job at Grace Children’s Home in Henderson, Nebraska and Wanda would have been visiting from northern Montana. Olivia may have still lived in the area. Wanda (34) was newly married (her husband was there but not in the photo), but Grandma (Lillian, 28), Olivia (31) and LeRoy were not. 

Wanda with her new husband, Jake 

John and Eva Schroeder were both first generation Americans. Their parents were all children when they immigrated to the United States in the mid 1870s, likely from Mennonite communities in Prussia or Russia. They grew up speaking German and although at some point they learned English, I think they continued to speak German in their home even after they married in 1913.  Eventually they made the switch to English. The last and hardest thing to give up was praying in German. I think it was Grandma who said that that too needed to change.

I did not know my grandfather well. He was born November 21, 1890 exactly 97 years before our son Shawn was born and he died in 1961 when I was six. Because they lived so far from Kansas we didn’t see them often. And I was one of many grandchildren. Family members said that he was brilliant, an inventor of a musical instrument and a “rock picker”. But mostly, he was a struggling farmer and, in Minnesota, a lumberman. I think he preferred that to working in the employ of someone else but it did not give him the opportunity to pursue his inventions. A failed homestead in Montana and the Great Depression made things difficult economically but he was a very hard worker and devout Christian. They moved many times and always started a Sunday School or church wherever they went. I understand he was responsible for the very “unMennonite” names of their seven children - Emma Johana, Edward John, Wanda Evangeline, Olivia Marie, Lillian Rose, Loyd Oliver and LeRoy Donald.

Our sons remember Grandma Schroeder fondly. She was old for such a long time, passing away at the ripe old age of 102 in 1996. She too was a hard worker and Mom, who was her caregiver for many years, scrambled to find things to keep her hands occupied. Her spirit was sweet; she was quiet and never intrusive. Steadfast would be a good word to describe her. For the rest of her life she looked pretty much the same as you see in the photo. 

The children - Olivia, LeRoy, Wanda, Lillian, Jake

It is interesting to me that mom and her two sisters pictured were all in their thirties when they married. I think that was quite unusual for that time. And they married younger men. Wonderful families were established. Wanda had six children (one died in infancy), Olivia had four daughters and of course, there are four Epp siblings. Since we lived so far apart we cousins only saw each other on rare occasions but there is something about being raised by these sisters that gives us a common bond and understanding. Dear Aunt Olivia is the last remaining family member. She celebrated her 102nd birthday in October. 

It always seemed to me from my mother’s stories that LeRoy was the shining star of the family. He excelled with a variety of talents. He was a skilled musician and must have been very bright academically. At the time of his death (the result of a car accident) at the way too young age of 31 he was already a college professor and left a wife and two young sons. An unusual ability that he had was to sleep a precise amount of time. He would say, “I’m going to nap for 20 minutes (or any other amount of time)” and exactly 20 minutes later (or any other amount of time) he would wake up. 

This photograph captures a moment in time. None of them could anticipate the joys or the sorrows to follow. It is unlikely that this group reunited for another Christmas celebration together. By the next Christmas Wanda was a mother and Olivia was planning a June wedding. In two years the Schroeder parents were stuffing their car with pine branches to take down to Nebraska for my parent’s wedding. 

The Land Remains

The sandhills in winter are shades of brown. Tawny tufts of dry grass studded with spikes of rust surround a grassy path wandering through this pasture. One side follows a barbed wire fence with a hayfield stretching beyond. In the other direction the prairie spreads wild and free. Shrubs are stark sticks devoid of leaves. Further down the trail tall trees bravely lift their bare branches toward a sky of brilliant blue. For a late December day the temperature is chilly but not bitter. Beautiful? Perhaps you wouldn’t think so. But this is the land that my father loves. He grew up on this land, working cattle and baling hay and when his parents grew old and moved to town he returned and worked cattle and baled hay. He has grown old but he has not moved to town. We are walking, my father and I, down this path that he has walked a thousand times.


My father has not been himself lately. He is just a few days out of a hospital stay where he received IVs and was not a particularly good patient. This morning I took him to the clinic for a follow-up appointment and labs. He is not eating or drinking well. At lunch I scooped up a few bites of cottage cheese into a spoon and fed him. My slight father is now gaunt and thin. Here on this path walking he is more himself. His walk is steady and firm. We talk little. “I don’t want to go to the nursing home,” he says. I know. But I can’t promise. Our path winds around a tall cottonwood tree with a rugged trunk. Nearby a fallen limb melds into the soil. We have entered a hidden meadow surrounded by trees.There are remnants here of happy times, of picnics and bonfires. At the far end of the clearing we come to the spot where we often turn around. Surely he is tired. We are a long way from the house. My father acts as if he is going to continue on. But when I ask him he turns and returns to the house with me.


At the house the light on the answering machine is blinking. Just as I am trying to listen, the phone rings. It is the clinic. Lab tests showed that he needs another IV but they are closing soon. Can we come right away? We hustle to the car and return to the clinic. Lying on the bed receiving the IV he seems so small and weak. His PA, a pleasant, compassionate young woman comes by to check on him. “He’s always been so strong,” I murmur. She pauses and her voice catches a bit, “Ninety sucks.” 


There’s an errand I need to do before we go home. We stop at the store and Dad stays in the car. At the checkout I notice some grape pop in the cooler. The bottle looks frosty and cold. Good. So I grab a couple of bottles and purchase them. My father is a child of the Depression. He is not given to self-indulgence. Ever. His current condition has highlighted this propensity with cloudy thinking. Just today as we were preparing for our walk he said, “We mustn't waste our coats.” So when I show him the pop, he shakes his head. But I remove the lid and place the bottle in his hand.


Driving home I watch him out of the corner of my eye. He shifts the bottle in his hands. Then lifts it to his mouth. “Um, tangy,” he says. He takes another sip. By the time we return home almost half is gone. A bit of encouragement. 


_________________________


On that day, my father had less than a month to live. We had always told each other that our healthy, active father would live to be a hundred. I was only beginning to understand and I was certainly not ready to accept that he would not recover.