Sow Some Hospitality

My great-grandmother, Mary, was a woman of strength and integrity.  I had the privilege of knowing her and even though she lived in Canada I got to make memories with her while she was alive.  Those memories are warm and loving but they don’t compare to the oral history of this woman.  A thread of love and kindness that should never be broken.

One such story takes place as a consistent threading of events.  It was post Great Depression.  She was living close to the border of Canada and the United States.  The house was a farmhouse and her family was still growing.  It would eventually reach a total of 13 children and that is not including a baby born with spina-bifida who survived for only one year.  She delivered every child at home and was almost always pregnant.  I can attest to being constantly pregnant, but she beats my high score of five.  What made her great was not the amount of children or the supportive husband that she had and not her struggles in her early life, although we can agree that circumstances do hone us into who we are; no, my great-grandmother, Mary, was great because she always loved. 

My grandmother told me the story of how financially tight things were when they were growing up, and sometimes, the older children would have to go to work and hand their wages to Mary.  Yet even with the financial struggles of having a large family, my great-grandmother would still feed the neighbors...She fed the neighbors!  They would knock on the back door and she would hand them food in bags.  This hospitality was witnessed by her children and it didn’t happen once.  It was a common occurrence, a habit, a way of life.   

When the Quebec Province started to become a French State it dispersed a lot of English speaking people to the other side of Canada so Mary and many of her children eventually moved to Alberta and settled.  It made visits quite a bit harder, but we did make the trip a few more times before she passed in 1998 at 91 years old.  One of these visits was a trip across the country that took days, many stinky days riding in a van, but on the last day of travel we had arrived over the border of Canada at the base of Alberta and we didn’t stop there even though it was getting late.  Hours later we knocked on this 85 year old woman’s door and she welcomed us and started pulling food out for us to eat.  She fed us and housed us, and yes we were family, but we were coming in grimy from travel, tired and grumpy, and hungry…just a floor with a blanket was enough. But enough was not enough for Mary.  She wanted us full and happy and she wanted our stories into the middle of the night.  We could figure out the details later, because we had traveled very far.  

Hospitality is a beautiful gift we can give others whether they are family, or neighbor, friend or stranger. Boundaries are important too, because it is unfortunately in our nature to take advantage of hospitality and kindness.  But when we travel we should be met with food and warmth and love.  Nothing compares to the love you feel when you see in an elderly woman hobbling around her kitchen pulling out leftovers and sandwich fixings just to welcome you.   We were travelers on the road and she was a refuge.  We only stayed a few weeks and would eventually have to travel back but we brought so much more back than fun times and visits, we brought back the thread of goodness from a woman who fed strangers and the traveler her entire life.  May I continue to weave this thread of this goodness to my children.