CHAPTER TWO
Great – Grandparents
“How great are His signs, how mighty His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His sovereignty is from generation to generation” Daniel 4:3.
Through retrospection, I realize my faith formation started as a very young child at the farm in Indiana before I ever stepped foot in St. Ann Catholic School or participated in religion classes.
As I think back to the summers of my childhood on the farm, a wash of fragrances and sounds envelope me, including the sound of silence. The most memorable fragrance is that of new-mown hay. It was a different time and a different place, and yet in many ways, it seems like yesterday. I treasure those exceptional times and those very extraordinary people. My great-grandparents wouldn’t recognize today’s world.
I had more contact with my great-grandma because great-grandpa was rarely in the house during the day. I feel inadequate to accurately describe the events, people, and culture of that day. I’m so thankful to have lived in a time when we, as a people, were much kinder and gentler, and a time when life was simple and strong Christian values were the fabric of our society.
If I had a time machine I would bring them all together on the farm so as to blend the two worlds. They might even find a commonality regarding their shared but different struggles, joys, and sorrows. They span two centuries separated only by time. The blood bond that unites them is ever present and continues. The spiritual bond that brings them into unity is forever. As I consider the life style of the first generation to that of the seventh, there’s a disparaging difference.
This memoir was originally intended only for my family. I want my descendants to see their ancestor’s work ethic, their values, their faith in God, their sense of family, their loyalty, to hear their voices which spoke broken English, to listen to their laughter, to eat food grown in a garden next to the kitchen and cooked on a wood-burning stove. But I’d tell them to leave their devices at home because there’s no electricity on the farm. But there is the soft, warm glow of a kerosene lamp and its accompanying pungent odor. I recall the gentle beckoning of a time when life was lived by the sun’s position in the sky rather than by hands on a clock.
In the 1940s, my great-grandparents were in their mid to late eighties. As a child, their age was of no concern to me. I’m surpr
