FOR MEMORIAL DAY IN MAY

Filling Her Shoes. Photo Montage. 9x12"                                             © by Ruth Zachary

Decoration Day 1910

            ...every death diminishes us a little,

            we grieve  - not so much for the death

            as for ourselves. Lynn Caine 

           

Sometimes it was very cold in late May,

when everyone went to Evergreen cemetery

for Decoration Day.

You had to stand around all afternoon waiting

for the town orchestra to tune up to play

marches and dirges and hymns, out of tune.

Then the old ministers and soldiers

would give long speeches.

Ava hated standing still.

She would go look at the graves

of the people in her family;

the Starrs, her mother’s grave, and Grace’s.

She would wonder what it would be like

if her mother had not died, but it was hard

to imagine any life but the one she had.

She would think of Grace

and wonder what dying was like

before and during her passage to heaven.

As she would stand listening to

the out-of-tune band music

she would get itches under her stockings.

In her bloomers where she couldn’t scratch.

Ava hated the itch between her shoulder blades

more than any of the others.

Her nice spring coat was too thick

to scratch through.

Ava thought about the itches.

They had different feels... some were light,

some soft, some bright, some dark and deep.

Some were red, and screamed or roared. 

Itches had pitches.

She tried to make a tune from the itches,

but the music of the band drowned them out.  

Everyone sang hymns together,

even the Baptists who were sinners

and others who didn’t go to church at all.

Catholics were buried in another cemetery

west of Kingsley in Hannah.

They would all go to hell when they died

because they did not follow the Bible

as the Free Methodists did.

Ava thought about hellfire

when she was at church listening

to the preacher and when she was

at the cemetery or when someone died.

She knew people went to heaven

if they were saved. Her own mother Ruth

had visited her after she died,

and so she knew there was a heaven.

She wouldn’t want to go to hell.

But she was still safe.

She was still only a little girl.

She was too innocent to go to hell, Mamma

said, and she had until she was twelve or so.

By the time the services were over,

Ava was glad to go home. The smell of lilacs

was best when they were in your own yard,

or picked in big bouquets

and greeting you from the upstairs

where her summer bedroom would be.

Ava hoped the next time they papered

her room that they could find lilac wallpaper

and scent it with lilac water.

                                   

Stories told by Ava Babcock, and words recalled from conversations between relatives,as well as my own experiences there. Decoration Day was the name used by many people,  for Memorial Day.

Images and Poems on this site are the Copyright of Ruth Zachary. The above poem was published in 2012, in a book Theories of Relativity, by the author of this blog. This book is available on Amazon.

WRITING ABOUT FAMILY IN A HISTORIC CONTEXT

Somewhere They Are Smiling, Seven Generations of Women descended from Starrs. Photo Montage by Ruth Zachary

The Photography Effect

            Photographs furnish evidence.

            Something we hear about, but doubt,

             seems proven when we're shown

             a photograph of it. Susan Sontag.

Was it the invention of photography

that affirmed that women existed?

Or was there a shift in thought,

because women were educated

to read and write, and now could

record their maternal connections?

Was this a small act of subversion,

or was it a Dutch tradition for women

to stay in touch with relatives no matter

how far removed by patrilocation

or resettlement in a new nation?

Whatever the reasons, a shift occurred.

sisters, aunts, cousins, nieces, grands -

grandmothers, grand daughters, greats -

All kept abreast of each other’s lives,

remembered their family names and

proudly passed down their traditions.

Eliza and Laura Starr may have

valued the Starr name enough

to make sure their lineage was recorded.

Ancestors came from other countries,

and in the 1800s descendants were

already migrating  west.

Newly invented, photographs were

collected by those who could. Eliza

had pictures taken of her first daughter.

Laura tried to pass this tradition

on to her daughters and grand daughters.

Laura's daughter Lillian did her share,

and Ava, Laura's grand daughter,

attempted to as well,

as if historic preservation was their charge,

and by inheritance, it is now mine.

Photography is a means of capturing time.

We all owned and recorded a lineage

in a treasury of photographs,

All perhaps were motivated as well by

seeing the future end of their family line.

Pictures also mean almost nothing if names

are not recorded, so temporary is the flesh.

Pictures also mean little without

the recorded stories of real lives.

Even the old photographs and tintypes fade,

obliterating the details of those serial

ancestral lives as they pass into yesterday.

Interestingly, and sadly, the common

access to cameras and digital photography

has made saving photographs

seem less important.

Once lost, a likeness cannot be recovered.


This writing was stimulated by questions about family history. I wrote a book about my mother's lineage, to pass on to my grandchildren, but it is a book mostly about my parents, whose life experiences are recorded in the era of the Great Depression. Many people could relate to the things they lived through and survived.

Images and Writing on this post are the Copyright © of Ruth Zachary


This poem was published in Theories of Relativity, written in 2012 , Published by Xlibris and is  Available on Amazon.

TIME TRAVEL

From Another Time. Vintage Photo Montage, 12x18.                            © by Ruth Zachary

Time Traveler I -2012

            Time does not become sacred to us until we

             have lived it, until it has passed over us and

             taken with it a part of ourselves. John Burroughs.

I am drawn back into history, almost as a voyeur,

trying to peer through time into earlier centuries.

I try to see those ancestors clearly, as I read

their private notes, letters, papers, and poems;

I remember I am the one they have trusted

with these delicate details of their personal lives.

I can never be fully present with them no matter how

they seem to materialize in a view backward through time. 

I am not able to see all the details they saw.

I see myself as a wraith, a transparent spirit, a shade,

intruding into their concrete space of yesterday.

What I see is colored through the glass of my era.

As I view them, I attempt to express realities

as they saw them. It is not mine to judge them,

but to allow them to speak of their experience

on their own terms, as completely as is possible.

I know as well, that I may see more of their world,

than they actually saw themselves, while they lived.

I try to be true to the persons that they were,

while I add the perspective of this present, that might,

if anything, magnify the clarity of their lives.

And if I add my observations, I wish I could also

announce my visit there, dated in this new millennium,

but I am limited by this dimension to record it only here.

This Poem is published in Theories of Relativity  Copyrighted by Ruth Zachary © 2012, Zachary, published by Xlibris, and available through Amazon. Stories, letters and poems about family. 350 pages, with 20 photo montage illustrations. 

The  montage shown above is not included in this book. To see other Vintage Montages click on the link  R.Z Montage

FOR MOTHER'S DAY

Lilacs in the Snow. Mother's day, May 2014. Afraid the blooms would freeze, I brought a large lilac bouquet inside.

 

Mother Rite 2010

                 For my Mother

For a good while, I ignored my

mother’s stories, but she whispered them

over and again from her spirited

lips to my sleeping ears in dreams,

reminding me of ways that in life,

she stitched the Mother rite into my body, 

threaded it through my brain, 

embroidered me with stories of

women’s lives, struggles, victories.

She clothed me in a patchwork,

cut from the cloth of their aprons

and wove me into the tapestry of

our mingled family heritage until

I understood I was one of them.

This poem is Copyrighted by Ruth Zachary © 2012, From Theories of Relativity, by Ruth Zachary, published by Xlibris, and available through Amazon. Stories, letters and poems about family. 350 pages, with 20 photo montage illustrations.