Can be hard to do – as one of granddaughters just pointed out . . . especially when one parent often has to work away from home.
In an article that she recently posted online, she mentions that mothers living in some countries often receive assistance in caring for a new baby from “other people;” people like other family members, friends, and neighbors who volunteer to help “mom” care for her new child 24/7. They were often referred to as “hunters and gatherers” as they regularly helped to provide food for the mother and child. This information caused me to look back on my own upbringing since my maternal grandmother and grandfather cared for me during the 1st 10 years of my life. My grandmother was a wonderful, caring, talented and religious woman, but she was very sickly and often remained bedridden for days at a time. My grandfather, a very generous man but poorly educated, built the house that we lived in. However, he worked as a carpenter at a nearby Naval Air Station and he commuted back and forth on a daily basis 5 or 6 days a week.
The house that my grandfather built
Fortunately, my grandfather had 4 wonderful sisters that lived within walking distance of our home: Great Aunts Agnes, Mary, Mildred & Rosie. They not only helped my grandmother to care for me, they helped to feed us – AND EVEN TAUGHT ME HOW TO COOK so that I could make my grandmother’s breakfast!
Great Aunts Mary, Millie & Agnes
Great Aunt Rosie, Looking after Me(Aunt Rosie was crippled due to an accident and walked with a cane most of her life)
My grandfather was a hunter and gatherer and he eventually taught me how to fish and hunt (although I was not allowed to touch his old double-barreled 12-gauge Shotgun)!
Grand Pop John and Me returning from a hunt. If we had any game it was tucked into the back of his long pocket in the back of his jacket!
Grand Pop John took me fishing and crabbing at an early age!
My great aunts were farmers and providers, too (even old Great Aunt Mary loved to fish and she once loaded up her old 410 Shotgun, climbed a pear tree, and tried to shoot a deer. Unfortunately (fortunately for the deer), the shotgun’s shells were old and blew up when fired knocking Aunt Mary out of the tree! (i.e., they both survived)!
Great Aunt “Millie” cultivating with the old Red Farmall Tractor
Great Aunt Mary at the family hog slaughtering
Many, many years later, Great Aunt Mary Fishing on Crystal River in Florida!
SADLY, my grandmother passed away when I was 10 ½ years old and my grandfather and his sisters had no choice but to send me to live with my mother and the man who would become my stepfather. After a 24 hour train ride from NJ to Miami, they met me at the Seaboard Railway Station and drove me to my new home (it did not take me long to realize why the neighborhood was known as “TRASH ALLEY!)”
The “cottages” were close together and in poor repair; the streets (if you could call them that) were filled with garbage cans spilling over (mostly with empty beer bottles) and my stepfather proved to be a drunken racist member of the KKK who hated blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, Yankees – AND ME!
My stepfather taught my mother how to shoot his rifle and his German Luger!
I won’t go into details of that part of my life here other than to say we moved 4 times during the next 6 years and that my stepfather was arrested by the FBI in 1951 for having participated in the dynamiting of a black housing project called Carver Village in Liberty City with dynamite stolen from his employers, the FP&L. He went to jail; my mother moved us back to my grandfather’s home in NJ, and my life got a lot, lot BETTER!
My great aunts, Mary, Millie, Agnes & Rosie, all still lived in the same homes that they lived in when I was growing up in NJ, and my mother and I moved in with my grandfather. Mom got a job at the Naval Air Station where Grand Pop worked and I rode the school bus to school during the winter and worked at the family market (the Fennell Family Farm Market) during the summer. LIFE WAS GOOD (AGAIN)!
The Fennell Family Farm Market (The original family home built in the 1800’s is in the back left)
The End (for now)
thesumofme2 
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