The Ties That Bind

Growing up I discovered little things that my great grandmother had stashed away. Little mementos of her children and grandchildren, a boxful of red baby curls that belonged to my mother, a bullet removed from her husband’s hip when he was shot at Vicksburg during the Civil War, a penny with the lead melted into it like a tiny bowl memorializing the coin that saved her youngest son’s life when his wife tried to protect him by taking his gun away and it went off and hit the penny. I still have one of the dolls she played with, now wearing clothes that my mother, her granddaughter made for it. And I have one of the Ojibwa moccasins my great, great, great grandmother made for my grandfather when he was a baby.

Families are like pieces of well made cloth, interwoven and folded again and again, touching each other through the creases of a time that does not understand minutes and months and years, but only love.

I am sure my Ojibwa grandmother learned to make moccasins from her mother and poured all the love and skill she had into the moccasin she made for my grandfather, her great grandson. When I hold it in my hand, I am holding over 220 years of love.

I don’t know what she looked like. I wouldn’t recognize her voice if I heard it, but the love we share for our children is a bridge that spans eternity.