Pine Leaves on a Stem and My Own Family History, featuring My Great Grandma Rose

(I asked my mom if she had any photos of my great grandma to send me whose birthday is featured in the post. And she sent me this photo. ✔️ My Great Grandma Rose you can see now! She was very shy and rarely wanted to be in a photo so this is special, but she was very pleasant and would smile in photos. I thought her eyes were brown; they could be, or blue.)

(from my nature book, just started it last week, and so much happier with this new simpler style I started this morning, so I repost this Feb. 23, 2023.)

“Some remnants of older cones may be visible in springtime when the first tiny, bright pink pollen cones begin to emerge, announcing that the new cycle of life is beginning.” —(An article on pine leaves)

(March 3, 2023: Here is another pine leaf I found another day after the first, looks like a fan)

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I found again this pressed pine leaf today Feb. 22, I found and noticed it outside on Feb. 2nd coming home, the books I gave away that day were all good condition just felt to give them to someone who might find them just the ones. Coming inside, I pressed this leaf a couple of weeks, the bead in the center looking like a very tiny three-petaled flower or clover in my living room, found just a little bit ago, this morning.

The book I’d pressed it in has glossy pages, easy to slip out of book while walking into another room. I press my new ones in a book I’d already used often, with regular pages. Today begins Lent in the Catholic tradition, my practices have been more my own within a grander love and also more tied to love than ever before this time.

I just found out from my mom that it is my Great Grandma Rose’s birthday today! (b. Feb. 22, 1904), my Grandma Jean’s mom. She passed away when I was 3. The rose crocheted circle in my home decor my Great Grandma Rose made herself.

(photoed warm evening light, my Grandma crocheted this circle and red rose, this cross was most likely hers, and the little book of love I’d found at a local antique shop.)

My Grandma Jean (born April 4, 1924), her daughter, was the eldest of five children, she passed away a few yrs ago, she was a wife and mother of six, when she was younger she wanted to be a teacher, but was not customary at the time. She helped care for her younger siblings, and outlived them all.

As for books and TV, my grandma loved crime fiction and murder mysteries and westerns too—straightforward, very generous, incredibly smart, often comically honest, I think she would’ve been a great lawyer, or judge. She loved involved murder mysteries for the books and movies. And she would also guess who did it at the beginning and be right.

Then again, more comfortably peaceable, she could’ve been a teacher as she first thought, and would be greatly funny in the lessons, and also as she was excellent at math and loved it, the great accountant she was and head accountant of a fabric company. Her houseplants were thriving and she’d notice new sprouts.

She was often the spoil you even when you were a little wrong as a kid with mom kind of Grandma (mostly my sister; I was a little too good😂 a child overall), and also gave money to charities even if they’d send more and more mail and phone-calls and maybe not always feel so perfectly genuine. 😊

My Grandma Jean wasn’t that much into music but I remember in the 90s she was greatly impressed with Ricky Martin and would love when he came on the radio like “Oh that guy is just great!” 😂

My grandfather, my grandma Jean’s husband Sal (same name as her father) was a WWII veteran, an entrepreneur, sang as a hobby, loved nature, and he painted nature scenes on canvas like the lake in the summer home in Long Island, NY. Born in Brooklyn, NY like my Grandma, he preferred the country setting, and my grandma preferred the city, and as he’d owned a liquor store he drank a lot and passed away young from a heart attack.

My Grandma never learned to drive (she had tried lessons but was unable); she walked everywhere with her six children around Brooklyn on buses and on trains and to the World’s Fair in 1964 in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens. When she was older and became a bookkeeper, a colleague would drive her to work.

My grandfather died just around the time my Great Grandma Rose did, maybe the same year; he died around Christmastime, and my Grandma stopped putting up a tree as was customary. I think I was around 3 yrs when Grandma Rose passed away, and it was warmer weather.

This is something my Great Grandma Rose would give me, the pine leaf shown as featured photo. My Grandma Rose was quiet, sweet, shy, and she crocheted beautifully.

She had nice personalized decorations in her apartment just below my grandma’s house in Brooklyn, and thought so myself, interiorly around age 3 even before I could speak fully. She was a generous person, drank black tea (probably loose leaf) with a silver mesh tea strainer I remember, and she prayed the rosary and didn’t attend church as she mostly kept to herself and didn’t want to go away from home.

She was not the Italian Grandma personality type who would grab you and squeeze you and tell you you need to eat and get fat! ‘Though both kinds are great.

My Grandma Roses’s mom I believe died when my Grandma Rose was young too, maybe a teenager. I am unsure about her Dad.

My grandfather’s parents were the squeeze and pinch your cheeks type as my Mom would tell, her paternal grandparents.

My Grandma Rose’s husband, my grandma’s father, also named Salvatore died young too at age 50 from a heart attack. He painted houses.

My Grandma Rose went to work in a factory sewing in the city, Queens or Brooklyn, NY ‘til she retired. She was very upset about that, and she would later tell my Grandma, “We could not stop; we could not look up.”

She would later on make very special crocheted things for her apartment (including the crocheted rose-decor in the photo) and a light sense of gratitude was there.

She liked to bake, especially raisin bread and the little pastries made with honey and sprinkles, did not go out really, and would want to give me and my sister little cookies and crackers in little tiny packets when we came over to take back home, to give us something. First just one, then she would slowly hand more as was desired, “have more,” and would glance at my mom to be sure it was okay with her. She would also not let my Grandma (who was her daughter) pay her back money for things; they’d press the money back into each other’s hands, and Grandma Rose (the elder one) would win that one.

I got this pine leaf ready for my nature book, and then afterwards I wrote a new poetic passage in this new journal on the table (I think the design on it is a celtic cross), a poem which was coming up slowly in my mind and heart all morning, and was written with a few soft tears…

a picture of this morning, sometimes there are many things going on at around the same time…😊—Jade

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A funny story in this one from my Grandma’s earlier years:

Happy Birthday, Grandma and Happy Easter

Also today: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Birthday