The Beloved Matriarchs

Every year on the Saturday before Memorial Day, my mother and I find our way to a cemetery in Williamstown, Kentucky. We have made this trek for as long as I can remember. 

When I was very young, my grandmother and my great-grandmother came along as well, telling us the stories of those who had gone before. . . teaching us how to carry out this ritual of remembering that the women in my family have practiced for generations.

This year I realized that my mom and I now hold the spaces that my grandmother and great-grandmother once held. Our status of grandmother and great-grandmother, has caused us to move slower over the hills in the cemetery than we did just a few years ago. Yet somehow, as we place flowers on all the graves, we both feel young again as we remember bananas cut up in jello, lemon drops in the candy jar, and food coloring in angel food cakes -- all reminders of a sometimes odd, but always profound, expression our grandmothers' love for the granddaughters my mother and I used to be.

Buried in this cemetery along with countless other loved ones are my maternal grandmother, Mildred Dunn, her mother, Minnie Kinmon, her mother, Clara Mershon and her mother, Sophia Nuxal.

None in this long line of women were your warm, fuzzy types. (My grandfather's DNA served to add a little softness to the gene pool that produced my mother, resulting in a wonderful mix of strength and tenderness that my grandmothers never knew.)

This week I was able to watch the 103 year old woman proudly cast her state's votes for Hillary Clinton's nomination. The broadcaster reported that women were still being denied the right to vote when she was born and now her goal is to live until November to pull the lever for a woman.

As I continued watching until the official nomination, I couldn't help but think of the hootin' and hollerin' that was going on in my grandmothers section of the cemetery.

You see, these grandmothers of mine were not your typical women of the day. They were not Sunday School teachers. They did not serve as hostesses for Women's meetings. They were not interested  in talking about their feelings or collaborating with others, and winning a popularity contest was not on their to-do lists. (Those of you who know me, but didn't know them are starting to understand me a little more but I digress.)

My grandmothers did not "check with their husbands" when making a decision and while they did not hold jobs in businesses or factories, they most certainly worked outside of their homes as farmers. They were each driven to  prove their worth in the male-dominated world they inhabited.

These women not only bought and raised the chickens, but killed and fried the chickens, ate the chickens, then wiped out the skillet and put it away. Their intelligence and work-ethic were only surpassed by their confidence and strong-will.

They were strong mothers as well who expected more from their daughters than any of their sons. None of them were coddlers or enablers of their little girls. They did not dream of strong, handsome men to save their daughters. Their dream was for their daughters to be able to save themselves. Even a hundred years ago, my grandmothers simply wanted an equal world for their daughters.

Watching Hillary be nominated gave me hope that in the next generation those who have been marginalized will no longer have to work harder and smarter to prove themselves equal. They will just be equal.

I'm thankful for each of my grandmothers and the lessons they have left behind. In November, when I vote for Hillary, I won't be alone in the booth -- the cemetery in Williamstown will be empty of my grandmothers on that date because their spirits will be with their granddaughter.