Seven Generations, six grew up on farms, six were were farmwives

Seven generations, six grew up on farms (Doris did not), were farmwives. I decided I didn’t want to marry a farmer when my mother sewed up a baby piglet in the “mudroom” after the mother sow had stepped on it.

I came close, but my Favorite Guy didn’t want his kids worried about the aroma they carried to school after having to milk the cows like he did.

Seven Generations

According to Native American tradition,
the consequences of choices
made by ancestors in one generation
reverberate for seven generations.

Make those decisions with utmost care, 
they say, to guarantee good lives
for those who come after.

Seven generations of a motherline,
all seven lived on farms,
six lived in Iowa,
five in Guthrie County, five widowed,
four were oldest daughters, had ten or more children,

three lived into their nineties,
two earned high school diplomas,
only one was born in a hospital 
and she became the keeper 
of the stories of her motherline.

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