Creativeness In My Blood

It started with my Grandmother, Dorothy Pfalzgraf, an Irish woman who was very involved with her culture. She was a woman of strength, will power, and courage. She held my family together like the quilts she sewed, the precise stitching and patchwork.

Around the age of nine, I got heavily involved with her passions as they were too in my blood. We spent time in her garden, clipping away weeds that surrounded the flowers, vegetables, and herbs with her favorite sheers. We often stayed outside in the sunshine for hours on end, picking tulips and planting orchids along the backyard.

She was also a baker, she knew exactly how to win you over with her delicious cakes, pastries-- you name it, and she probably has made it.

I learned a deep amount of life lessons of nature and Earth when it came to my grandmother. I watched her in amazement as she spent her precious time creating the most extravagant and extraordinary quilts, sweaters, blouses, table cloths.

It inspired me; but not only I-- it also led my mother to follow closely in her footsteps. My grandmother was a healthy woman, full of energy and life. However, she became quickly ill in 2013. Doctors could not figure out what was wrong with her; her body started to reject itself. A small cut could turn into an open wound, that would then need stiches and not be able to heal on its own. After months of testing, she was finally diagnosed, but too late.. Terminal bone marrow cancer. Despite her sickness, she still was the sunshine in every room she walked into. No matter how ill she was, she continued to sew, garden, and when she could, she would bake.

She passed away the day she was supposed to come home for hospice in October 2014.

I feel as if a part of her lives within my mother. As if a part of her soul had imbedded itself in my mothers skin. I watched her grow in the years to come, watching her fall back in love with the same things my grandmother did. Grief can make people push away, neglect the things they once loved because it is such a deep loss. Losing a mother.

However, one summer morning of 2015, I watched her run outside in the rain. A rainbow kissing the horizon and tears of joy streaming from her cheeks. I watched her scream and yell into the endless sky. My little sister and I quickly joined her, hugging, embracing, and crying. From that moment on, I watched my mother rekindle her love for baking, for gardening, sewing, and creating beautiful pieces of artwork with her hands. My grandmother gave my mother her favorite sheers and scissors she used for sewing and gardening.

She went back to my grandmothers favorite quilting store, she bought her favorite piece of fabric, she invested in cooking classes about Kombucha and using pure ingredients from her garden.

I watched my mother blossom, the same way that I would watch my Nani, so focused and Intune with her hands, and body.

Come 2017, I am a freshman in high school. It's November, the winter in Wisconsin is cold, harsh and bitter. I am on my way home from gymnastics practice and my mother is oddly silent, I could feel the energy change and I could not put my finger on what was wrong. As we are nearing our house, she begins to cry.

"Mom, what's wrong?" my younger sister and I say.

"You girls need to stay calm okay? I have cancer."

My heart had dropped, tears streaming down my face and doing my absolute best to stay calm for my mother. The same sickness that had taken my grandma, and my aunt was nearing the end of her fight with liver cancer, was now in my mothers body.

"You will be okay, Mom. We will fight."

That is exactly what my mother did. She fought, she did the surgery, the radiation, the hospital check-ups every week, the medication that made her so sick she could barely get herself to eat; nonetheless, she kept going. She insisted on working from home, keeping herself busy by making warm meals from my grandmothers cook book.

I stayed by her bedside, often watching comfort movies and knitting each other little sweaters and socks, the same way my mother did with my grandmother. I was terrified. My mom was so strong, but that did not take away the fact that she was fighting off a disease that could infect her entire body and take her away from me.

After my mother's double meniscectomy, after getting her ovaries removed, after all the surgeries had come to an end and the radiation was nearing its final destination; the snow was melted, spring was coming around. We would leave my moms windows open, putting birdseed on the roof so she could watch and study them, the same thing my family did for my grandmother.

When she was too weak to get out of bed, she would give us a notepad of instructions to do in her garden. Water the plants, rotate the pots so they could get an even amount of sunshine, change out the plants that had outgrown their space and replant in a new one.

My little sister and I started to fall in love with the same thing my grandmother had taught to my mother, and my mother had taught to us. We had a routine, every day after school we would open my Nana's cook book and try our hardest to make my mother something she would enjoy. We would make sure to take care of her Scobie (the "mother" in Kombucha).

My mother got the call she was cancer free, May of 2018. She has been cancer free since. My little sister and I now garden, cook, and sew with my mother, using the same scissors and sheers as my grandmother.. It runs through my veins. I will someday teach my children about my passions, and I shall give them what my grandmother gave my mother, and what my mother gave to me.