My Grandmother’s Legacy

I can make it. Clara did. A woman ahead of her time, married at 17, mother of 7, of whom 4 died before age 21… a 3rd grade education. She knew to leave her dreamer, non farmer husband in the unforgiving Alberta prairie when her youngest was a year old. She settled her brood in Mayville, North Dakota, creating a boarding house and cleaning at day jobs to make ends meet. Things certainly must have been bad in Canada.

She moved the family to Minneapolis, working as a cook in a special school for the handicapped where the children stole her soul. She rented space for An ice cream shop on the main floor where the family could live upstairs. She bought and sold 4 houses in her lifetime. She took in family members to stay with her in her duplex. She mothered me while my mom was coping with depression. She loved babies. Clara never had a dime to her name but always had a dollar if you needed it.

One winter I was sick all season and she bought me my first shiny green bike to encourage me to get well by spring.

Clara was and is my hope. She survived a heart attack at 75 and pancreatic cancer in her 80’s. She gave comfort and cookies, was both soft and tough. She is my heroine……and I have her blood in me!