This is my mother at around age 2 in Switzerland. My grandmother appears to be smiling, an unusual expression for a very serious lady. You can already see that her daughter is heading for the same serious approach to life. Neither one looks worn out yet by the work-filled lives they ended up living.
My grandfather was a fundamentalist preacher. He felt that his ministry included inviting large numbers of people over to eat and stay as houseguests. This was so common, that at age four my mother went out into the street and invited strangers home for dinner. Luckily my grandmother supported her husband’s legendary hospitality with her own legendary ability to put dinner for fifteen on the table with just an hour’s notice.
My mother’s Chicago household continued this tradition of hospitality; there were always people over for dinner and, if I brought friends home it was simply expected that they join us at the table. The guest room and the basement were occupied more often than not. A handful of single women and men automatically came for Christmas, Thanksgiving or Easter since our family was their family.
It was an unquestioned and iron-clad principle that dinner could not happen until all were assembled. My father had no sense of time and could wander home from downtown anytime from 5 to 9 PM. If dinner happened very late and my mother grumbled, he would announce that we were “dining continental style.”
One household regular was Mr. Joe, an elderly Polish man from church. In his late eighties, he came a couple times a week to potter around the house, where he was given free rein to stash his alley-found treasures into all corners of our basement: rusty nails carefully hammered out for reuse, boxes of broken glass (for scraping paint), carefully washed milk cartons, beautifully tied bundles of sticks hung on the pipes. He absolutely could not be rushed. We tried summoning him to the table at least an hour early, but generally we had to wait on him a very long time to start the soft dinners prepared specially to accommodate his two remaining teeth.
My mother’s open door was an amazing gift to her children. We grew up with people from so many continents, so many religions, so many walks of life. Both my parents gave indiscriminate respect to everybody they encountered. Their slightly formal and perfect manners recognized everyone and made everyone important. And once you were my mother’s friend, well, that was a permanent link. If family travels went within 400 miles of where a friend or relative currently lived, the trip would be engineered so we could at least stop in to say hello since we were so close.
Funny. I’m clearly hearing my mother’s voice saying “we are not social butterflies.” She told me this often to explain any social difficulties I might have. As an adult, I belatedly figured out the opposite: I am quite extroverted, though tempered by Swiss formality and reserve. I’m thinking that perhaps my mother was more of a social butterfly than she was willing to admit.
Lovely to read through this, what a legacy your antecedents left. If only we all treated each other with respect, showed good manners and were generous hosts to all, what a better world this would be.
Wonderfully told Francoise! The kindness and respect from bygone days are often sadly missing in this "rushed ' society. I'm truly enjoying your history and photos :)
