Mukilteo Musings

In My Lifetime--Some shocking thoughts (And shocking pictures)

This portrait had been in my grandmother's cedar chest for 70 years. My mother gave it to me as a most precious gift. I had it framed and its home is now a wall in my living room. The colorized or tinted photograph was taken in 1933 and the image is the strong Montana women of my mother's family and my non-English side. The little girl is my mother at age 5; standing, her mother(my grandmother) Lillian at age 32; seated in the blue print dress, my great grandmother Lonie at age 56; and seated with the gray bun, my great great grandmother Dandi at age 74.



Shocking thoughts
1. I knew my Grandmother Lillian very well. I was with her when she died peacefully at age 92 in 1993. She had been an only child; my mother was an only child and Lonie was an only child. We are not sure about Dandi but we think she also may have been an only child. My mother broke the "only child" tradition by having two children. However, she only had one girl child--ME. Likewise, I only had two children with one girl child, Kaley. So we have six generations of women having only one female child.

2. My grandmother Lillian went to college at the University of Montana in the 1920's and received a four year college degree in business education--unusual in those days BUT when I looked at her college year book, there were many women there along with the men.

3. My mother also went to college at the University of Montana and became an accountant (though she finished her degree at Carroll College after my Dad died). This is also unusual for a now 76 year old woman.

4. Had the oldest woman in the photo born in 1859, Dandi, been an African-American, she would have been born a slave. In other words, African American women my age in this country have grandmothers whose mothers and grandmothers were born into slavery. They weren't able to go to college; they were not allowed to be taught to read.

5. Half of my mother's life, African American women and girls were not allowed to go to the same schools, swim in the same swimming pools, eat in the same restaurants, stay in hotels or motels, use the same bathrooms, drink out of the same drinking fountains or sit in the front of the bus with white girls and women.

6. In my lifetime, African American girls were not allowed to use the dressing rooms in the one department store in Helena, Montana to try on prom dresses.

7. My grandmother Lillian who died when I was 40, refused to fly on an airplane because there were no airplanes when she was a young girl. Also, there were no automobiles. There were bicycles and horses with buggies.

8. None of these women had ever watched TV as a child. I was the first and not until I was 6. There was no such thing as television.

9. In my lifetime, I remember wringer washers and ice boxes. There was no such thing as a dishwasher, refrigerator or washing machine as we know it.

10. And finally, most shocking of all, I just got my hair cut rather short and I look like my Grandmother Lillian--standing in the maroon dress. I couldn't believe it when I got home and passed by the "portrait" on my wall. It makes me feel good that my grandmother is 32 in this photo and I am 51 but I never realized I looked like her.



I am not sure what the future holds for my daughter. Computers have changed everything. Inevitably, when she is my age, she, too, will look back in complete awe at how life in America has changed dramatically in her lifetime.