How My Grandparents Inspired the Flower Farm

A couple of weeks ago, my first cousin once removed, Titus, sent me a quilt in the mail. Embroidered by an unknown family friend in 1953, the quilt bears the names of my grandmother and her nine siblings and their dates of birth. After the passing of my great uncle Urbane earlier this year, no siblings remain, and it’s quite a thing to sit back and imagine their lives and all the changes they encountered. The oldest sibling, Mark, was born in 1916, and the youngest sibling, Jane, was born in 1938. What a generation!

My mom came over and I showed her the quilt. I told her I thought it would be an important touchstone for future generations. She wasn’t so sure. “But what will these people mean to them?” she asked. “They will never have known any of them.”

My answer: So much! I am often thinking of my grandparents and great grandparents and their incredible, improbable lives. We inherit genes, habits, circumstances and so much more from the people who came before us! Grandparents are so important.

My mom’s family were Mennonites going back for many generations, and her nonchalance about her ancestry is, ironically, part of her family predisposition. Mennonites think of themselves as unremarkable.

Farmers, preachers, teachers, plant lovers, a soldier or two, eccentrics of all kinds — the generations before me explain who I am. My grandfather, Harry, grew up on our family’s flower farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. His father, Harry Sr., and his brothers, Elvin and Paul, grew Philadelphia’s best carnations.

Plants are in my blood on my dad’s side of the family too. My grandmother, Anne, cultivated every inch of her yard in Dunwoody, Georgia, and created a massive garden that included coffee, bananas, key limes, strawberries, tomatoes tied up with nylon stockings, a bamboo fortress, a greenhouse with an interior goldfish habitat, a mulch pile that steamed  at the summit and a perennially leaky fish pond. Forgive me, these are the memories of a child. I would see so much more in that yard if it still existed today. Reserved in her habits, but expressive in her garden, Anne was more then met the eye. My mom told me recently, “If you are smart, it’s because she was smart.”

My father’s grandfather, Pat Daddy, walked pigs across the state of Georgia to Overstreet, Florida, where the family ran a general store. If I have a penchant for commerce and an absurd work ethic, I came by it honestly.

Of course, the grandparents had negative baggage too, and it’s good to consider that stuff. There were tempers. There were betrayals. From some grandparents, there was an emphasis on work and sacrifice that probably emotionally stunted subsequent generations. So it goes. What I’m saying is, it’s important to know these humans in order to know myself.

Reverence for previous generations seems to me to create a kind of self-compassion and understanding that’s important. I am lucky because it’s easy for me to love my grandparents and all the greats going back, warts and all. I know it’s not that way for everyone. The Buddhist monk Tich Nhat Hanh has an interesting reflection about how compassion for your ancestors is an act of self liberation if you are so inclined.

You can go there! You can go deep! You can also just send flowers to the grandparents to celebrate them.