4 X 4

I swiped this meme off another blog, my good friend Nancy at Anchors, Signposts & Wanderings. You're supposed to post the 4th photo in your 4th file and then share the story about it.

So this is the fourth file, fourth photo:



This is my mother as a toddler. It's one of the very few photos my mother had of herself as a young person. She was the youngest daughter in a family of 10 kids. Her mother was the second wife of Aaron Pierson. His first wife died of TB and left 5 small children.

My great-grandparents (Ane and Bernt) and their daughter(my grandmother, Anna) went to Aaron's church and helped him out with his five young children after his wife's death, and so, Aaron married my grandmother. Then, they had five children, making 10 kids! My mother was the fourth child born to Anna and Aaron(they had one more, a son,) so Anna asked the older kids what they wanted to name my mother. They picked their sister's name--Lillian Arlene--a child who was the sixth child in the first family who died as an infant. My mother said it was strange to see her own name on a tombstone in the family plots!

My mother didn't have her mother very long. Her mom, not long after having another child (the son mentioned above) had TB and died when my mother was almost 6. Her older sisters, who had gone through this experience, too, you think would've been more compassionate to this small girl who was only 5 when losing her mother, but they often were cruel and harsh to her. On the morning of her 6th birthday she came down the stairs, sat at the table, expecting the same birthday delights that my grandmother always did for all the children--fixed them whatever they wanted for breakfast and making them Queen or King of the day. No. The older girls (teens and young 20s) snapped, "You're a big girl now. Get your own breakfast. You don't have your mother anymore." Harsh reality.

They continued their harsh treatment of my mother even after I came along--I got to witness it and feel the brunt of their disdain, as well. Certainly when my mother also got TB you would have thought they would take care of me--but no, and thank God that my dad's parents took me and loved me as their own child.

But this little girl was obviously happy, and her mother, though managing as a farm wife with nine-soon-to-be-ten children of various ages, delighted in birthdays and her carrier pigeons pets and a husband who was older but funny, despite having a hard life of his own. I think my mother looks happy and cared for, don't you? She has no idea of what is to come, but I do think she adopted her own mother's attitudes, despite being so young when she lost her.

So, do you want to play? If you have a blog, you might try this--find the fourth file and fourth picture and tell about it. Leave your link if you do.