Helen - the original blogger

Grandma E is the gal sitting on the swing.

My grandmother, Helen Ellis, was a home-ec teacher; she knew how to do a lot of home-ec things really well. She made a lot of casseroles heavy with celery and béchamel. She used a lot of wax paper in her kitchen, kept a tidy little home, wore galoshes. She and my grandfather Harry tended a meticulous backyard garden, canned tomatoes and beets, maintained a compost pile.

She was an obsessive organizer, everything labeled and in its place. She crocheted, she sewed. She took hundreds of family photos which were later, of course, organized into a very orderly photo album library. For fun she would cross stitch. Play rummy cube. Put together those puzzles with no less than 5000 pieces. 

I loved her dearly, but as a child I definitely did not find her to be fun or silly, not in the way that Harry was. I appreciated her but did not relate to her.

Now, 36, I not only find that I relate to her, but that I have become her. Wife. Mother of three girls. Crafter and cataloger of all things domestic. And I dwell sweetly on my memories of her - my mother's mother. Who could have guessed we would have so much in common?

I have inherited her love of making things. It's not simply a desire to acquire new skills, add new hobbies to the list, but a real intense attraction to the process of making something by hand. The satisfaction you draw from that, employing your skill, your time, your bits of creativity. I can only imagine she felt the same attraction.

I have inherited her desire to label. If Chris would let me, I would arrange and label every linen closet, basement shelf, and pantry cupboard. If real life allowed, everything in my home would have a place where it belonged, and those belongings would be sparse and never out of order.

I have inherited her love of documentation. As a kid we spent a lot of time rolling our eyes at the constant clicking of Helen's camera; the cutesy little captions she would put in her photo albums; the stories she would write about us. But now it occurs to me: Helen was the original blogger in our family.

Ruth, Hazel, Helen

As I flip through the pages of the little story she wrote - "Life with Katie", a small accounting of a week I spent at her house when I was 2 - as I look through her photos, fold up the afghan she crocheted me for my high school graduation, process another batch of canned tomatoes, gel another batch of jam... I find myself feeling awfully sentimental. I find myself getting carried away with thoughts of motherhood, homemaking, family, mortality.

We certainly don't need Mother's Day to appreciate the role that mothers play in our families. Whether they are ours or not. We certainly don't need an invitation to look back and appreciate with humor and a little irony the paths our lives take, the people who influence those paths, and, ultimately, the women (and men) we become.

So here's to you, Helen. The original blogger. The cataloger of all things domestic. Crafter extraordinaire. I love you. I miss you. And I'm so glad I knew you.

 mom, Aunt Joan, Aunt Nancy - looks like Gil and gma lou have a lot in common too. chubb-a chubb-a.