52 Ancestors Week 19: Mother's Day

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Sunday was Mother's Day in the US. This week, let's take a look at the mothers you're researching. (They do make up half of your family tree, after all!)

All tied up in a neat little free to use bow.

   

     Mister T put it best. Without mothers you wouldn't be here and then he proceeded to sing a song about mothers. Seriously. Check it out here. Bless the Internet. There is nothing you can't find. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I guess it depends on what you're looking for.

    For me Mother's Day was always a chance to get genealogical information, a picture or two and of course a really good meal. When I was little, my brother and I would give our mom her usual presents and cards in the morning and by midday we would pick up grandma Ollie and head out to dinner with her sisters and the cousins along with their significant others. We would all meet up at a nearby restaurant and have a great time catching up on what's been going on in the family and various other bits of news.

The Carrabs sisters!

    The quality of the food didn't really matter to me because we were spending time with family and for us that usually meant finding out what aunt Louise was doing that week or some other random thing. It was really just a chance to get together and have a good time. 

    However, if you ever go to a place in Kingston, New Hampshire called "The Pond View", turn around and GO HOME! That was probably the worst dining experience of my life because the food was HORRIBLE! It was just about the only time the food actually did matter. I forget what I had. I can only remember how disgusting it was. It's currently got two stars on Yelp. Gee. I wonder why. My mother says I put the curse on the joint. If only Gordon Ramsay visited. And I hear it's even closed down. Oh, well. Yeah, I wasn't a fan of "The Pond View". The 1686 House I liked.

    Regardless of the venue, one of the cousins would bring up their grandparents, Giuseppe and Clementina, and I would instantly perk up and listen. They would tell stories and I'd hear about Rocco or Pasquale's grandchildren or great-grandchildren from my grandmother and her sisters. I would just listen and ask questions at appropriate times. 

   I remember one dinner at my dad's cousin Carol's house some time after all the sisters had passed away very vividly. She mentioned that she had found some old home movies. At that point "Mother's Day" had become "Cousins Day" because we still wanted to get together and have a good time like we used to when the sisters were around. Naturally, the prospect of there being home movies piqued my interest and those of everyone at the table. 

   We all got comfortable in the basement and warmed up the old film projector. In no time at all, I saw my dad as a kid playing with the cousins at their house in Haverhill in the 1950s to 1960s and yes the Wonder Years theme popped up in my head while I was watching. How could it not? Yeah, pop culture ruined me. If you've been reading the blog for a long time, I think you probably figured that out by now!

Giuseppe and Clementina

    What was great about the films was that every now and then Giuseppe and Clementina would appear. It was fantastic seeing them in not just picture form. They were moving around and they seemed so real to me. It was so magical and not nearly as creepy as MyHeritage's "Deep Nostalgia" gimmick.  I liked seeing them in action and I could easily have spent hours looking at the reels. My only hope is that the films will be converted to DVDs at some point. I think my dad's cousin Joe is on that task. They need to be preserved and burnt onto DVD/BluRay/4K and digitally remastered. 

   Some background: Carol was the oldest of the cousins as her parents were Ugo and Josephine Messa. Josie wasn't the oldest Carrabs sister, though. That was Jennie. Jennie and her husband, Joseph, did not have children. So, as the oldest she would have hosting duties and we'd have "Cousins Day" at her house in the place of the "Mother's Day" festivities.

 

    During one of the last "Cousins Day" celebrations, Carol let me look through a bunch of old photographs and the one on the left literally fell on my lap. It's a picture of Giuseppe, Clementina and their daughters. Sadly, a part of my grandmother's head was out of the shot. It's okay. At least we got a great pic of Jennie, Giuseppe, Clementina and Louise on the couch. 

    I didn't expect to find such a fantastic photo. We took a picture of it along with a few others I found and of course I thanked Carol for letting me see the photo and others. She said it was a thank you for getting a tree for her on WikiTree. I had made trees for her and the other cousins. It was a lot of fun to do!

    Little did I know, that  visit was going to be one of the last "Cousins Day" feasts. COVID happened and naturally we couldn't see each other unless it was on a Zoom call. Carol had spent years fighting cancer and in the summer of 2020 it came back with a vengeance. There was nothing anyone could do for her other than make her comfortable. She passed away in June of last year and we have not had a "Cousins Day" visit since.

    Hopefully, we get together soon. Mother's Day to me will always be a time where we all celebrated not just the mothers (and grandmothers) in our lives. It was a time to be with family and learn something about the family's history. I'm lucky that I learned so much during the Mother's Day/Cousins Day feasts. I said it before and I'll say it again. You learn so much by just listening to your family members just sitting around the table. Facts and stories will present themselves with time and patience. I just hope Joe has put those film strips to DVD. That's a gold mine right there. GOLD!

See ya next time!