Elizabeth and Edgar met and married within 6 months. Edgar spent the first year of their marriage without the intrusion of a job because Elizabeth’s father had generously provided financial resources for them to travel and live together to get to know each other. He’d wanted to provide a good foundation for a strong marriage.

Elizabeth’s father didn’t have that luxury when he was young as he found his fortune when Elizabeth and her sisters were young. He was one of the most wealthy people in the town having devised a system to funnel shipping materials up the coast where they lived in Canada.

When their year of travel was over they settled into a home 3 blocks away from Elizabeth’s parents. Her parents had helped them purchase the house because as her father used to say, “We want to be close to our many future grandchildren!” Then always adding, “Where are all those babies?”

He didn’t know that Elizabeth and Edgar had been trying to have a child since the night of their wedding. Heartbroken she was not with child before the second year of marriage, each time she heard her father utter the word “grandchildren” her heart broke a little more. She knew Edger would be the most fabulously proud and engaged father and she longed to experience parenthood with her beloved.

Years of doctors and theories about why her body wouldn’t produce offspring had taken their toll. She’d included a good fair amount of following old wives tales to induce pregnancy too. The most humorous one was the tale about the moon being in a certain position, with sprigs of fresh herbs above the bed at the same time her legs had to remain in their air for just the right amount of time “after” their attempt. None of it worked.

To make his wife feel better 4 years into their journey Edgar decided to surprise the woman he loved with an afternoon visit from a hairdresser. She didn’t feel in the mood, but was touched by his gesture so she agreed. She did fancy the look the hairdresser had created. Later that evening she noticed that her new hairstyle looked familiar. She’d been staring at it for the better part of 5 1/2 years of her life.

Feeling pretty and thus romantic, Elizabeth planned a special evening for her husband who’d always accepted her and her non-child producing body. It was a good night by all standards held for those married for over 4 years.

Nine months later Elizabeth gave birth to a beautiful girl they named Clarissa. Edgar proudly posed for the picture that his father-in-law would arrange, always declaring that Clarissa was the world’s most cherished, love and wanted baby. Clarissa and her grandfather had a special bond, having grown out of his close proximity to her and his daily walks to see her and play.

On the day this photo was taken Vanessa’s mother had to get out of the house. It had been an unusually bad day. She’d spent the week in turmoil neglecting her children while caring for her ailing mother. She’d decided to take Nessy for a treat because it seemed when she was busy Nessy suffered most.

Caring for her mother while simultaneously raising her children, without the proper help of a nanny, was exhausting. Her husband’s business was not as profitable as it was back in the day and so she was forced to care for the house and the children by herself. With her mother now ill, there were no generational safety nets.

Each day brought new challenges yet on this day it all came into focus when she fought mightily with her husband. She walked out of the house in a huff with little Nessy on her right hip. She and Nessy walked for the 10 blocks and played games and talked and sauntered their way to the ice cream shop, where their favorite ice cream was sold in little cones.

Normally Nessy’s mother was uncomfortable with the children eating ice cream because of the mess it made but not this day. This day she’d realized how much she missed the undivided attention she’d been able to spend with the children and especially her youngest that she threw all caution (of clean clothing) to the wind.

They giggled together on the bench next to the ice cream shop about the drips of ice cream on little Nessy’s white dress and the unusually bad day turned around.

Nickle cones in 1935 and chocolate if you must know.

Written by Julia Roberts, Kidneys and Eyes

Meet Elijah and Lillian with their father, John. It was a sunny day in the Midwest and the kids’ Grandmother, Alice, asked to take this picture. Truth is that she forced it to be taken.

Alice loved to see those children and she didn’t care that little Lillian was crying in this photo; she treasured it. She carried it around so often to show her friends the bottom of it was bent and torn. When she watched her son-in-law tenderly talk to Lillian as she snapped this photo she felt like an intruder prying into a private moment. Back in the day it wasn’t often that men were considered the gentle caregiver, especially when forced.

Alice didn’t see her grandchildren very often and while she hoped that would change some day soon she could never be sure, especially now that her daughter was gone. She was after all, just the mother of the mother who had died as she gave birth to her second child, a beautiful and much wanted baby girl.

Alice lived more than half a day’s trip away and was scared that the distance meant that she would see less of them, not more. Her son-in-law had preferred to handle the situation on his own, insisting that he and the children get back to a normal routine as soon as possible. That plan had served him well.

The women from John’s church had stepped in to help care for the children but he was very hands on insisting to eat dinner with them and put them to bed himself each evening. Young mothers from the church and community had nursed baby Lillian almost around the clock in those first months so that she could feel the touch of a mother during that early pain of separation, missing the mother she would never know.

John had mentioned to Alice more than once he’d be interested in moving closer to her and his parents, because let’s face it, a man raising two young children on his own? It’s unusual and John needed the support of people who knew and loved him, the children and most certainly his late wife.

Alice wouldn’t know for another year that John had devised a plan. He would work months towards planning the move that would bring him near the people that that loved the woman he did with the same energy. Alice would learn that John’s wish was to be near her with his children so they would grow up knowing their mother through the stories of the people that could tell them with veracity.

Written by Julia Roberts, Kidneys and Eyes

Meet Rose. Born late in the year in 1900 she was the 7th child in a long line of kids. Ten. This stroller had been around the acre a few times by the time it got to Rose. In fact Rose’s eldest brother had fashioned it with with an arm on the front so she could be pulled by the animals on the farm. Kept her content for hours.

Rose didn’t smile a lot. It wasn’t because she wasn’t happy. It was because she needed to concentrate on eating food when it was in front of her and that house was very loud and staying upright around the hustle and bustle of a family of twelve took a lot of thinking and effort. If you add in a grandparent or two and an old aunt who lived in the house too at any given time, well, then, there was a lot hustle and bustle.

A typical day for Rose would be playing with one or 6 of her siblings. When she was older she attended school, but only until 8th grade when most of her siblings finished, especially the boys, so they could run the family farm. It was a good life on the farm. When you are 7th in the family you get used to being carried or rolled around unless someone in the family decided to drag you around, which turned out to be quite frequently.

Rose went on to marry a fine young man from the town next to hers and have a few kids of her own, but 10 was never a goal. Early in her marriage she’d heard about counting days in an effort to not become with child and she was able to encourage her husband have a few sips of the alcohol on those nights, helping him lull to sleep without touching her. Those months, confirmed not pregnant, made her glad she paid attention to the math lessons and the nurse that was explaining the counting method to her sister.

When Rose was older she found this picture and she thought to herself that she wished she hadn’t been wearing a sheet dress, or sleepwear on the day this picture was taken. But she didn’t think that anymore. Rose appreciated her mother like she never had since she became a mother. With just three kids, she came to completely understand why her mother might dress her that way. Actually, she was impressed she had on any clothes as all.

Written by Julia Roberts, Kidneys and Eyes

When Rachel was 12 she found this picture in a box of old photos in a closest. Rachel learned through her Great Aunt Mary that the baby’s name was Eleanor. Eleanor’s mother had been surprised when she realized she was pregnant 10 years after her youngest was born, and she joined the family of 4 boys. Eleanor was Rachel’s Great, Great, Great Grandmother.  “She was a Triple G.” Rachel used to say, also realizing that the women in her family had babies compulsively young.

Baby Eleanor, named for her grandmother (“Too many Es to count!” said Rachel) but called Baby E., Ella or just “Be” for short – much to the dismay of her mother – by one of her brothers, was a well-loved and much wanted baby.

Rachel learned from her Aunt Mary that for years the family joked about Eleanor being born on January 16, 1919 – the day Prohibition went into effect. The men folk often raised a glass of something alcoholic in her honor every birthday and many more days throughout the year. Something that was made on their land, illegally, which supported the family for many years.

When Eleanor was just 3 weeks old her Grandmother Eleanor knitted a beautiful baby sweater that she wore throughout the spring and summer in the cool evenings, then cool days as the year progressed. The sweater had been handed down the in the family and Aunt Mary had remembered the color as beautiful as the lilac blooms in the garden of her childhood home in the since long lost sweater.

Rachel was captivated by the baby and the beautifully knit sweater, especially how it hugged that little round face of “Be.” Rachel longed to knit like that one day. She longed to make something beautiful that would be handed down a generation or three.

Delighted to share her knitting skilled she hadn’t used in years, Aunt Mary started to teach Rachel how to knit. Hours working together, Aunt as teacher, they created a pot holder, then a scarf, then a blanket and years later, an itty bitty sweater much like the one that baby Eleanor wore in 1919. A gift for her much loved, much wanted niece.

What began as a fascination from that sweater on baby Eleanor grew into great knitting skill, one that provided comfort during sad times (boyfriend breakups) and joy from gift-giving. The more valuable gift to Rachel was the special, irreplaceable bond with her Great Aunt.

Years after she learned to knit, Rachel entered college as her Aunt entered a nursing home. With every return trip home during that first year of college Rachel always made it a point to visit her aunt and proudly show her latest knitting project. A sweater she made for herself and shoulder wraps for girlfriends for chilly nights out on dates and a beautiful lavender blanket for her Aunt that keep her warm for the rest of her days. By Rachel’s senior year in college Aunt Mary had passed away. She was buried with the lavender blanket wrapped around her, the color of lilac blooms from the garden of a childhood home from long-ago.

Written by Julia Roberts, Kidneys and Eyes