Seeing My Grandmother with Green Colored Glasses

Welcome to the March Carnival of Natural Parenting: Vintage green!
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month we're writing about being green — both how green we were when we were young and how green our kids are today. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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Secondhand, third hand, even fourth hand was the theme of my childhood, not by design but by necessity.  I was raised by my elderly grandmother whose intention might not have been to live green, but the outcome of her choices was environmentally friendly.
 
Though my grandmother had little resources and education, in some ways she practiced a sustainable living lifestyle that mirrored the trends of the young crunchy moms living in my home town of Northampton, Massachusetts in the 70's.  She did not use the word recycle to describe her actions but essentially this is what she was saying and doing when she explained to me that everything should be used again and again by us or by someone else in need.  We can reuse it or someone else can use it.  Clothes would arrive from my cousins, who may have received them from older cousins--boys clothes, girls clothes, they were clothes and were to be used with gratitude without discrimination.  Once I was done with them, and sometimes even before then, my grandmother would take notice of a child at my school, in need of a coat or shoes or summer clothes, and have me tote along a paper bag full of these items the next morning.  Each time she'd enclose a note, For your use as long as you and your family need them.  When you're done, you can give them back or send them along to others.  But DO NOT throw them out.  

     

The thought of these clothes winding up in the trash drove her insane.  Nearly every day she told me and showed me how an item could be given new life through repair or refashioning.  When the clothing was no longer fit for wear, she'd remove the buttons and zippers and lay out the fabric and cut them into pieces.  If she could reshape the pieces into clothing or costumes or scraps for quilts then this is what she would do.  If they were so worn that they could no longer create something new, she'd use them as rags and hand towels instead of paper.  I don't remember ever having paper napkins or paper towels in our house.  Every dish towel or cleaning rag was a remnant who had lived out its glory then retired as a chore companion.  

    
My grandmother walked the streets looking through the trash people left out and brought home a weekly assortment of goods that she could repair or take apart and reassemble into something else.  She'd proudly display her wares and as proudly give them away as gifts to people who often didn't appreciate that she might choose to wash a doll she'd found and outfit it in a scrap dress she'd made herself.  I know that I often didn't love her attempts especially because she named every doll Maggie Heron, who was a raggedy character from Eastern European lore. This was also my nickname.  Poor little Maggie Heron.  No one wants her.  There was a little too much symbolism in this for me as a child and I tended to want the new dolls I'd seen in the windows of the toy stores in town.  


But new was a rare thing.  My rocking chair was discovered three streets away from my own, left out on the curb because the wood had faded.  Puzzles, books, doll furniture, toys were found each year in bulk, and with a little glue, tape, and time, my grandmother had possessions she'd keep for years of use or gift to whoever wanted a sparkly treasure.  Nothing should be wasted.  What do you think we're rich? she'd ask when I argued that some item had seen better days.  Let me take a look.     

   

I was cloth diapered because this is what my grandmother knew and understood from her own children and she could not understand why anyone would want to spend so much money on something that was inevitably going to be thrown out ten times a day.  When I was a little older and out of diapers, I'd often hear her lecture my friends' moms as they diapered the younger siblings.  She tried to reason with them about how it was nothing to wash out a poopy diaper by hand and then hang it on the line.  She could do a day's worth in just a few minutes and right there in the kitchen sink.  There was nothing to it.  She tried the same logic with me when I began to menstruate and she handed me a pile of old sheet rags. This is how I always did it, kid.  Who knows what's in those boxed pads.  As a teenager, I remember being so frustrated and ashamed by what I deemed her backward ways, and refused to consider the old sheets.  I found her to be old fashioned and at times just crazy.    

    
She was frightened by all things electrical and so she tried to minimize every electrical appliance or gadget.  If it could be done without power, all the better.  If it had to be plugged in to work, then as many of the things that could be unplugged when you weren't using them, should be.  If you'd enter a room, you had to plug in the lights, the TV, the radio each time you wanted to use them, and if you forgot to disconnect them, then watch out.  She was furious.  Without any education on the matter, she understood that items will continue to power if plugged in even if you weren't operating them.  But she wasn't insisting on this practice to save energy, she was afraid of the effects of power and the expense. But whatever her motivation, she taught me not to have lights on if you weren't in the room or to have things running if you weren't using them. 


When my grandfather died, we no longer had a car.  My grandmother never had any use for learning to drive.  I've got two legs. This is a small place.  I can get wherever I need.  She encouraged me to walk and ride my bike and if I needed to get into the next town, she marveled at the wonders of the buses in our five college environment.  They take you wherever you need to go.  And all the time.  Who needs a car?    

    

Resources were valuable.  During her childhood, all of her siblings used the same bath water.  She didn't see anything unusual about this. When I was small enough to fit into the kitchen sink, this is where I was bathed.  I don't know if she used the same water she'd used for the dishes, but I wouldn't be surprised.  When I was able to go into the bath tub, she'd heat up the water and either get in with me or we'd bathe one after the other.  When I hit junior high school and wanted her to install a shower, she could not believe I'd ask for such a thing.  But the water just runs right out.  What's the point of that?  She reluctantly agreed to install a shower faucet to the old claw foot tub on the condition that I shower only at night and that I plug up the tub and catch the water so that she could later bathe.  By the end of the shower, the water would be up to my thighs and she'd quickly usher me out so it wouldn't get cold.   

   

My grandmother did not like waste and she was enraged by litter.  My grandmother picked up trash wherever she saw it.  Who would do this?  It's nice here.  This isn't right.  Why just throw your things anywhere?  Who do these people think they are?  She fed our dogs the same food that we ate.  What's in that dog food?  And didn't believe in so many vaccinations for the pets.  Every year?  That's just nuts.  You get one shot and you're set.  Our dogs lived long healthy lives.  She taught me to appreciate our dogs and even when I was bitten, which I was several times and seriously, she made me understand and appreciate an animal's instincts.  When I nearly lost my eye to an ex-military dog owned by a developmentally delayed woman, my grandmother told me that when I'd stepped on his tail, he'd just reacted by grabbing me.  She reasoned that he'd been trained for hair trigger reactions but that he didn't mean it.  She said now we knew that he wasn't good to be around kids but that he was Marcie's companion and deserved a second chance.  She didn't afford this same grace to people.  Animals were her thing-- and land.

   
We had very small amounts of soil around our apartment but whatever she could cultivate she did.  Each year, she'd plant and tend and fuss over her little flower garden. She composted her scraps next to our back porch and used this along with dog poop to fertilize her flowers.  We didn't have enough room for vegetables and how my grandmother loved her fresh produce.  She taught me to slip under the fences of our neighbors and steal the vegetables and fruits they left "rotting" on the vine.  Her definition of rotting was very loose.  They're just leaving them there kid. Can you believe it?  Look at all those pears on the ground.  Grab as many as you can and we'll eat them all.  She showed me where to find mulberries growing wild and crab apples and that we could eat weeds from people's yards.  She made me appreciate that what is native is essential and often what we most need.  


I grew up in a town that had co-ops way back before they were so common.  One sprang up next door to me when the neighborhood grocery went out of business.  My grandmother had never seen half of the fruits and vegetables they offered but in volunteering herself a few hours a week, she came home with a bag of nutrition each week.  She loved the idea that she could contribute in some way, sweeping, unpacking things, and be given food as a barter.  That's the best way, she'd exclaim.  We get just what we need.  

   

My grandmother was a tough woman and not much of a mother to me.  She was so caught up in tending to my dying mother that she did not have the time, energy or inclination to nurture me.  I often look back on my childhood and examine the lack of mothering and positive loving experiences and how this has shaped the woman and mother I am today.  In this process, I have distanced myself from most aspects of what I understood about mothering from being raised by my grandmother.  


My grandmother was often physically and emotionally abusive.  She smoked and drank and offered little in the way of supportive guidance as I navigated the world.  I tend to think of myself mothering without example, forging ahead with what I instinctively believe and understand about how children need to be valued and cared for, and with what I am able to learn day by day as a mother and as a woman.    

   

Looking at my childhood today through these green colored lenses, I see that while there are many elements of mothering that I have had to learn without a model, and many patterns I would never want to repeat, that there is something positive and definitive in what my grandmother instilled in me that has translated into how I now live my life with my son, Sasha.  The choices I have made for Sasha, are intentional and revolve less around the lack of resources I experienced as a child, and more around health and the environment; and yet they are in line with my grandmother's philosophy of wasting as little as possible.  


My husband, Aaron, and I have been organic for years.  Eating organic and local, trying to use environmentally friendly products, not using pesticides in our yards has been our method since college.  When he was diagnosed with leukemia a few years back, I was stunned.  Somehow I imagined that all of our actions would keep us safe from the ills of the world. Instead of giving up, we decided to become more vigilant with our behavior.  

When I was pregnant with our son, I wanted everything in his nursery to be organic and sustainable.  In this day, it is not as simple a decision to accept hand-me-downs with constant recalls and the knowledge we have of VOC's and toxic paints.  I made a choice that everything I purchased would be organic, non-toxic and safe.  I asked the same of everyone who wanted to buy us a gift.  


My mother-in-law complained that all of her children had turned out just fine without so much fuss. I reminded her that Aaron had asthma and eczema and a whole host of immune issues before he contracted leukemia and while she has agreed in theory, she has never bought Sasha anything organic. My sister-in-law Elana has given us organic routinely and has graciously passed down clothes that have been used by her children and often by her sister's children as well.  While they are not all organic, they have been used by children I love and are not to be wasted.  I have just passed them along to another sister-in-law and I imagine this circle of reusing will continue.  If they end up back in my home, I will one day take off their buttons and cut them into scraps for later use in quilts and blankets and hopefully costumes if this is something Sasha appreciates.  It's something I routinely do with clothes that are no longer wearable in the same way my grandmother did.  


I wanted only wooden toys with non-toxic paints but this is not all that my son has in his possession.  Neighbors have given us their toys and we have been gifted toys that Sasha seems to love.  Despite the fact that I said no plastic, there are toys here that I had never imagined keeping. I find that I need to make day-to-day choices and continue to mold our life to be as natural as we can while realizing that I may not be able to control everything.   

At nearly one year of age, Sasha is too young to know that his nursery is organic and sustainable, that he eats organic, that our dogs eat organic human food, that our house and our bodies are cleaned with natural products, or that our yard and flower and vegetable gardens are free of chemicals.  Though he has walked in the woods around our home, and been carried through my gardens, he does not understand how important the environment is.  He loves our dogs and the animals in his books but does not yet have an appreciation for animal life.  He has not yet attended my yearly women's herbal conference and seen how much the natural world offers us or how much we can do to protect it.  He has not sorted through the bundles of clothes and supplies Elana regularly sends us or helped me to select what we are done with and should be passed along to someone else.  He does not see me unplug equipment or shut off lights each time I leave a room nor hear neighbors complain that our house is often so dark it looks like no one lives here when we aren't at home.  He does not realize how devoted his father and I are to providing him with a loving and supportive and natural upbringing in harmony with who he is as an individual and the world around him.  But he will.  

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Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!
Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants.
(This list will be updated March 9 with all the carnival links.)

• My Momma Was a Hippie — Jessica at This is Worthwhile is continuing her Earth Momma mother's way of honoring nature by taking her child outside every day. (@tisworthwhile)
• Mom Did Know Best, About Diapers at Least — Guavalicious at They Are So Cute When They Are Sleeping has a dirty secret about cloth diapers: They're easy. (@guavalicious)
• The Force that Drives the Water Through the Rocks — Shana at Tales of Minor Interest remembers her first spiritual connection with nature, granted to her through her father's care for the spirits of the earth.
• Confessions of a Cabbage Patch Kid — Joni Rae at Tales of a Kitchen Witch Momma learned about landfills and recycling through gardening. (@kitchenwitch)
• Seeing My Grandmother Through Green Colored Lenses — Michelle at Seeking Mother was raised by a grandmother who wouldn't let anyone throw out used clothing — ever — and who believed baths were water enough for two or more people at least. (@seekingmother)
• Through Green Tinted Glasses — Thomasin at Propson Palingenesis realized her family didn't so much choose green as it chose them, since not being green would have cost a lot more.
• Green or Die! — NavelgazingBajan at Navelgazing remembers berating her family for not turning off the faucets — and notes that her efforts to save the planet for another 20 years must have worked.
• Natural Parenting Carnival: Green Living — Sarah at Natural Parenting is doing more to make her children's generation green than what she had as a child.
• Natural Parenting Carnival: Vintage Green — pchanner at A Mom's Fresh Start used to fill her own water bottles from a spring — before doing so was cool. (@pchanner)
• Getting Dirty — Molly at Molly's Place is inspired by her mother's camaraderie with nature. She's going to get back in touch with the real food cycle, as opposed to the "shrink-wrapped nutrition" you can buy. (@KPMolly)
• My Vintage Green Raincoat — Mama at Maman A Droit is wearing her brother's bright green raincoat — 16 years later! (@MamanADroit)
• Vintage Green — Darcel at Mahogany Way hasn't realized it yet, but she is slowly turning into her parents. ;) (@MahoganyWayMama)
• Vintage Green — mrs green at littlegreenblog reminds us that children can be green simply by being kids. (@myzerowaste)
• March Carnival of Natural Parenting: Vintage Green — Lauren at Hobo Mama was eco-chic before it was en vogue. (@Hobo_Mama)
• Growing Up Green — Chrystal at Happy Mothering honed her green instinct from an early age. (@HappyMothering)
• greener pastures — The Grumbles at Grumbles and Grunts has a list of ways she's transitioning from green living as a novelty to green living as a lifestyle. (@thegrumbles)
• Vintage Green: The Hot Water Tank Is Not Sexy — Zoey at Good Goog had to go green when moss started growing around her feet. (@zoeyspeak)
• We Walked Softly — Starr at Earth Mama wrote a beautiful post about how her parents instilled a love of and respect for Earth and nature in her, and how she is passing that gift on to her own children.
• Save the Mermaids! — CurlyMonkey is learning from her daughter how to keep the mermaids happy. (@curlymonkey_)
• March Carnival of Natural Parenting: Vintage Green — Dionna at Code Name: Mama sees glimpses of her mother's greenness frugality in her own life - but she draws the line at pantyhose soap. (@CodeNameMama)
• I Thought I Made Them Green, But Really They Made Me — Melodie at Breastfeeding Moms Unite! thought she made her parents green — until she took a closer look. (@bfmom)
• A Culture of Less — Alison at BluebirdMama explained why homebirth is the green childbirth choice. I love this thought! (@childbearing)
• 5 Ways to Embarrass Your Children While Going Green — Acacia at Be Present Mama shares some of the embarrassing things her parents did to her in the name of being eco-conscious.
• Ending Is Better than Mending? — Paige at Baby Dust Diaries is teaching us how to darn socks armed only with a light bulb. (@babydust)
• There and Back Again: A Green Girl's Tale — Lactating Girl offers a gentle reminder that certain eco-conscious practices shouldn't be "ideals," but realities. (@LactatingGirl)