Growing up, I had the privilege of knowing my two grandmothers and one great-grandmother. When my great-grandmother passed, I felt as though some powerful secret of life passed along with her that I would never learn. The secret of what made her the woman she was and information I could use to someday be that marvelous. I vowed then and there to spend more time with my grandmothers, learning what shaped them into the women they had become. It took very little time to learn that it was their experiences that had done so. It was disheartening for me because their generation had experiences that could never be relived in the present. These two matriarchs were truly the last of their kind in our family.
My life has been so different from the lives of those ladies I so admire. I always seem to make the wrong choices and for me, life has been downright cruel, at times. Entering into adulthood, I often questioned what it was all for. Why have I been given this horrible, ugly life? Now that I’ve grown older, all of those experiences have started coming together for me like an assortment of squares in a patchwork quilt. The ugly and the beautiful bound together providing strength and security. With each experience, my quilt grows larger and I’m better able to share its comfort with others. Looking at my life now, I don’t see it as the waste I once saw it to be, it is the making of a matriarch.
I would be flattering myself to think that one day my grandchildren will be wondering what it was that shaped me into the woman they admire, so I’ll settle for a simpler purpose to this journal. It will be my little reflecting pool for times that I can’t remember what has made me the person I am.
