THIS IS NOT a political rant, just a stroll down memory lane in perhaps a kinder world. I took the liberty of encroaching on some family memories and at the same time protecting the early privacy of our brood. So, know that the events are true but the names are not:

DAILY CHORES

Papa was always an early riser. Winter and summer he got up at 5 o’clock. Long before light we would hear him shaving off a few splinters of lightwood to kindle a fire in our bedroom heater. From there he went to grandpa’s room, made a fire in the fireplace, then carried a shovel of coals to the old kitchen in the yard. He brought two buckets from the spring, whistling as he went. This was only the beginning of Papa’s morning chores. He fed the horses and and hogs and milked and fed the cows before returning to the house for breakfast.

In the meantime the women had their chores. Aunt Sallie cooked breakfast. There were hot biscuits with bacon, sausage or other meat or eggs, fried apples, coffee, the last brought to the dining room table in china pitchers, one for buttermilk and one for sweet milk. In our early childhood the coffee was roasted in our oven and ground fresh for each meal.

Mother made a fire in the sitting room stove and set the table for breakfast, making sure that there was plenty of butter, honey, preserves and sorghum molasses in the center of the table. She also made the beds and helped us children get ready for school. Alice’s hair was sometimes short and had a little curl, but mine was very long and straight and had to be combed and braided by Mother.

Aunt Pokie helped prepare grandma and grandpa for breakfast. Grandma was an invalid and was served her meals in her room from the time she broke her hip when I was seven years old. Grandpa was very deaf, but usually had good health until the last year or two of his life.

After breakfast everybody had other duties. Papa began whatever farm work was in season, overseeing hired help, caring for farm animals, tools, machinery, harness, etc. Mother raised chickens, cared for the milk and butter with help from Aunt Sallie, Alice and me, helped with the house work with caring for Grandma and Grandpa, supervised the garden and did much of the tending and gathering of vegetables. She sold surplus chickens, eggs, butter and milk and, occasionally vegetables to help with family expenses and to put away savings to send her children to high school and college.

Aunt Pokie took the responsibility of caring for Grandma and Grandpa, but was helped by Mother and other members of the family as needed. She also supervised the house-cleaning downstairs and raised beautiful flowers. I remember, especially, her violets, roses, August lilies and chrysanthemums. Aunt Sallie did most of the cooking. This was done in the old kitchen in the back yard until 1918. Food was brought hot to the table for breakfast and dinner….Too-dry cake was served with a sauce. Many ways were found to use left-overs….

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Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more From Every Trans Suicide Is A Murder By Those In Power: News came this week that transgender athlete and student Lia Smith took her life at just 21 years of age.

” to call her death merely a suicide misses the larger truth—no suicide happens in a vacuum. ”The policies that targeted Lia make life harder—and shorter—for transgender people. In a time when we can’t predict what fresh cruelty might come next, as the president signs one anti-trans order after another, as elite universities quietly comply with his demands to discriminate even in blue states, and as the movement against us widens its sights to target transgender people of every age, we have to name what’s happening plainly. These policies carry blood on their hands. Transgender advocates have warned for years that the relentless criminalization and isolation of our community would lead to deaths. Policies designed to make life unlivable for transgender people bear responsibility too; every trans suicide is a murder by those in power.”

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