I believe in the kind of light which magnifies itself, which gives off a radiance in excess of what we might expect, then stays a victory in a world of loss. —Don Welch, journal entry, 2003

If I were to give a Valentine to the world, I’d give just this: a “light which magnifies itself” and “stays a victory in a world of loss.” This would certainly trump all the Valentine cards I painstakingly taped candy onto and inserted into construction paper boxes we decorated in elementary school. Even the most expensive greeting card and the most decadent box of chocolates would quail in the presence of such light. This would be a Valentine that would keep on giving through whatever darkness and loss life throws at us. Each day, I think about my dad’s words and his steadfast belief in a light that buoys and urges us onward.

And I think about the light in two remarkable women: my dad’s grandmother, Vallie Welch, and my mom’s grandmother, Minnie Zorn. Despite significant loss and scarcity, these women not only persevered but triumphed. When my dad spoke of his grandmother, Vallie, he always noted her “indomitable spirit”:

My grandmother lived her adult life on the edge of the Nebraska Sandhills, weathering widowhood and the Great Depression among other adversities. By our standards her life was not only meager, it was terribly poor. Having no car, no horse, nor ride-giving neighbors, she walked everywhere she went, including to towns 8 miles away. Yet she was rich in spirit, and her indomitable spirit was as tough as it was sensitive.

As she walked to town, Vallie sang, “You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road; and I’ll be in Scotland before ye.” My dad described her soprano voice floating “over the wheatless fields of the Great Depression until the dust assumed her voice, and even the clods assumed they had been sung to.” In circumstances that defied song, Vallie raised her voice above the hard-scraped earth in a triumph of will and heart. In the face of scarcity, she gave “off a radiance in excess of what we might expect.” As grasshoppers, drought, suffering, and death took her life by storm, she walked on.

Although I never met my great-grandmother, Vallie, I feel as though I know her through my dad’s stories and poetry. In the following poems, my dad memorializes the uncommon beauty and heroism of his grandmother.

When Memory Gives Dust a Face

When dust like flour sifted the road,
and weeds were skeletal corsages;
when horses broke their hooves unshod
with careless grass their only forage,

she sang high songs. And we listened
as we walked to town. No voice
was more enriched by pain. Her tongue
cleaved to love to make it new.

In loss the dust assumed her songs.
And clods assumed they had been sung to. 
          Don Welch (2008)


Funeral at Ansley

I write of a cemetery,
of the perpetual care of buffalo grass,
of kingbirds and catbirds
and cottonwoods;

of wild roses around headstones,
with their high thin stems
and their tight tines
and their blooms pursed
in the morning.

I write of old faces,
of cotton hose and flowered dresses
and mouths which have grown up
on the weather.

And I write of one woman
who lies a last time in the long sun
of August, uncramped by the wind
which autumns each one of us

under catbirds and kingbirds
and cottonwoods, and the grey-green
leaves of the buffalo grass. 
          Don Welch (1975)

Like Vallie, my great-grandmother, Minnie, was a remarkable woman. A German immigrant whose husband and eldest son abandoned her, she settled in Falls City, Nebraska to raise my grandfather, her youngest son. For years, working as a housekeeper for a family there, she spent her days and nights cooking, cleaning, and helping to raise their two children. After she’d retired, she lived for years in an apartment building with a series of blue parakeets. When one Billie Boy died, she replaced him with another. In one letter to my mom, she reported that her most recent Billie Boy was “touched in the head,” unable to learn to talk. Still, she kept busy with other things, she said, like running errands for the “old folks” in her building. The fact that, at 90, she was considerably older and less able than her 60-70-year-old neighbors was entirely lost on her.

Recently, as I stood at the kitchen sink, I heard the familiar thump of my 10-year-old parakeet Billie Boy and turned to see that he had once again fallen from his perch, plummeting to the floor of his cage. Stunned, he looked up and began to climb up the sides, pulling himself up with his beak, rung by rung, until he reached his perch again. Two years ago, he lost the ability to fly, his wings reduced to balancing agents he uses now to right himself when he crashes to the cage floor several times a day. Every day, I expect to find him lifeless under his food bowl, for ten parakeet years is probably the equivalent of 100 human years. Billie Boy, like Great Grandma Minnie, is older than the “old folks.” And yet, he greets each morning with song.

Minnie often concluded her letters with unique postscripts. One that I’ll never forget went something like this: Well, as the old woman who peed in the river said, “Every little bit helps.” I’ll never be exactly sure what this meant to her, but I like to think it was just another way of encouraging us, coaxing us forward with small acts of kindness. For her life was a testament to her claim that “every little bit helps.” As she moved through her life in cotton house dresses and aprons, she glowed with such small acts, an ambient light that stayed “a victory in a world of loss.”

This is the provenance that Minne and Vallie leave us, a legacy of light which “magnifies itself,” defying the darkness. And this provenance seems a fitting Valentine for this day and the days to come.

Provenance

Why do you do this?
my daughter asks.

I’m wiping clean a piece of used aluminum foil,
then folding it into a neat square 
to be stacked with others in the drawer near the stove.
My hands know the way
and make quick work of it.
My heart, too, knows the way
as I remember the words of my mother 

who saves foil still—
as if this is a lesson all must learn,
as if the economy of the world rests on this.

Why do you do this?
As a girl, I asked my mother 
when she patted shiny squares of foil where they sat—
as they always had—
beside assorted pencils and pens, a box of sandwich bags 
and a new roll of aluminum foil,
round and royal, nestled on a throne 
of hot pads.

To make do, she says.

And she tells me of the years 
her mother and grandmother suffered 
though the Depression and both World Wars. 

So, today, I tell my daughter:
We do this because your grandmother and great grandmother
and great great grandmother did this,
because in a world of throw-aways, 
we remember a world of want,
because to make do
is to honor the women we love.

She looks out the window to the yard
as if the lean years wait there, 
crouched and urgent, in feed sack aprons.
       Shannon Vesely (2023)