Boring ain’t so bad

~ MaryG

Is a little chaos actually good for us?

I’m not sure chaos is good for us but it is unavoidable. Everyone, no matter how privileged, will experience some chaos.

My grandmother, who came from a very poor immigrant family and lost her husband suddenly in her late thirties with four children to feed, used to say “be grateful for boring days.”

Rare photo of my grandmother (at the sink) at some point after her husband died of complications from what should have been a routine surgery. The family thinks he was simply neglected by hospital staff who treated him as a second-class person because he was an immigrant. My grandmother was born on Christmas Day 1902 and was a widow for over 50 years.

7 thoughts on “Boring ain’t so bad”

  1. Is that really your gran? What a wonderful snapshot of a bygone era. I enlarged it and had to chuckle because my husband has that exact table (on the left) in our basement. He was thrilled to find it at a yard sale.

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    1. It is! I’m thinking it’s the late 1940s but not sure. A cousin found it and sent it recently. I think it was a slide originally. I vaguely remember that table being in someone’s house when I was a kid.

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  2. Yes, what a wonderful picture. That sink and that table! And the clothes she is wearing. My gosh, she must have struggled. Hats off to your grandmother and the courage it must have taken to keep the family afloat.

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    1. Thank you Laurie! She did a great job keeping the family farm afloat until she lost all her farmhands who went to fight in WW2. She ended up doing factory work and then helping raise her grandkids (my cousins).

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    1. Thanks for commenting Kari! Yes, it was a huge loss, but my father and his siblings did just fine because the American Dream was accessible to them—great public schools, free college (from the GI Bill), low cost healthcare, affordable housing, and a bunch of other things that have all but disappeared.

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