Easter Dinner - Family History - posted by Mom

Instead of turkey, it is ham that is the family Easter dinner, instituted by Grandma Tommie, along with her famous potato salad and green beans. I arose and cooked that meal today and thought about her. I had been thinking about her in church on Maundy Thursday when we sang "The Old Rugged Cross" - one of her favorite hymns. So I got up about 5:30 and had a ham in the oven by 6:30 and picked green beans and thought about family traditions. Today I wish more family could have been here, but Carla came after the glorious church service, and brought a friend, and me and Donald and Ashley ate that good meal! And I often think about the trouble that it is to cook, when you can go to the store and buy all things ready-made, but how cooking it with my own hands is an expression of love in my life.
It's not because I think I'm not always going to be here, but just because I want you all to have some perspective on your own lives that I want to tell the family story, even if it dribbles out in bits and pieces. Life is harsh. It's hard and gritty in some way not matter who you are or where you come from. It's just because we think we are privileged and have so many choices that we think it is possible to live a perfect life.
We can't. That's where grace enters your life. You look back at your family history and you know that perfection is not attainable. We just bumble along and do the best we can, cross ourselves and thank God when our mistakes produce consequences we can somehow live with and move on.
Where you come from: I grew up not really poor but nearly. My family grasped at money, maybe not nickels and dimes, but certainly quarters and dollars. Now my philosophy is : "If it's a problem only about money, it's not a real problem." Since I first wrote this I have experienced a real problem and now I know this to be the real truth.
Your ancestors: Just a couple of generations back, your ancestors did hard physical labor on hard scrabble farms that never really produced a good living. Each generation that could get out left it behind and chose a different form of hard grind.
On your mother's side: hillbillies from the hills of Tennessee and the South Carolina-Georgia border. Descendants of indentured servants from Europe? - England maybe? Indian blood mix was claimed. Your mother's grandfather, William Redmon Fowler, worked in the hosiery mills in Clinton, TN and then retired to Chattanooga. He was good with machines and invented things. He was a good gardener and canned homemade vegetable soup. He and Annie Mae Fowler lived in Clinton, where Tommie was the youngest child. She had an older sister, Marion, and an older brother, Raymond, whom she idolized. Tommie had polio when she was 2 years old.
That's all for today- Easter is a good time for just watching the sunset and that is what I plan to do!