{"id":13177,"date":"2019-03-08T20:26:25","date_gmt":"2019-03-09T04:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelophile.com\/?p=13177"},"modified":"2019-03-08T20:26:25","modified_gmt":"2019-03-09T04:26:25","slug":"she-inspires-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelophile.com\/?p=13177","title":{"rendered":"“She Inspires Me”"},"content":{"rendered":"
by Noella Noelophile\u00ae\"Hand<\/a><\/strong><\/h6>\n

Today, for International Women’s Day, the hashtag #SheInspiresMe has been trending.<\/p>\n

And we’ve all honored some pretty amazing women.\u00a0 Lady Gaga, Gloria Steinem, Melinda Gates, Michelle Obama…the list goes on.<\/p>\n

But the first woman who inspired me, in my lifetime, was my maternal grandmother, Viva Todd.<\/p>\n

Born in 1886, she had very few opportunities.\u00a0 Grandmom worked in a Maryland tapestry mill until her marriage, at the age of twenty.\u00a0 She had had a third-grade education–then, her ailing mother kept her home to help raise her siblings.<\/p>\n

And as a young married woman in 1906, she was disappointed to become pregnant with the first of her five children, within five months of her wedding.\u00a0 She’d already had her fill of taking care of younger children!<\/p>\n

None of the above, though, describes the grandmother I knew.<\/p>\n

\"Orange<\/a><\/p>\n

We’d come down on the train to visit her in Wilmington, Delaware every spring, summer and Christmas season.\u00a0 She’d always be waiting, smiling, with her homemade cake or cookies sitting in the pantry.\u00a0 A slight woman, she nevertheless had very definite ideas, a loving heart and seemingly boundless perseverance.<\/p>\n

Had she lived in another time, Grandmom could easily have been a designer.\u00a0\u00a0 My mother would tell stories of her going to Philadelphia for the day, seeing a dress in the window of a department store, coming home and stitching up that same dress for herself.\u00a0 As her children grew up in the Depression, she made everyone’s clothes. \u00a0 When the grandchildren came along, she dressed dolls for them, making full-length dresses with tiny perfect smocking stitches.<\/p>\n

Active and beloved in her church, she rarely missed Sunday school or the regular service.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Every morning, she said a prayer before breakfast, and read her Bible as the day started.\u00a0 Giving, before “giving back to the community” became a catchphrase, was her way of life.<\/p>\n

Most of us can either cook or bake–but not both.\u00a0 For Grandmom, both were her areas of expertise.<\/p>\n

\"Sugar<\/a><\/p>\n

At Christmas, she baked “Christmas bread” in wreath-shaped loaves, decorating them with candied cherries and frosty white icing.\u00a0 Then, we’d walk together to deliver them to neighbors and members of her church.<\/p>\n

Christmas, during my growing-up years, was synonymous with “going to Grandmom’s.”\u00a0 It occurs to me now that she must have worked for days, baking four or five different kinds of cookies and making fudge and peanut-butter fondant candy for company.\u00a0 On Christmas Day, the whole family would come over for dinner and a visit, and dishes of fudge, nuts, cookies and every imaginable sweet got passed around as everyone caught up.<\/p>\n

Grandmom Todd valued “looking nice” and was a lady, through and through.\u00a0 “Watch your language!” she once warned, when one grandchild used the words “belly button” around her.<\/p>\n

My mother would relate that Grandmom had always wanted more education, and would study along with her children when they came home from school.\u00a0\u00a0 “Always know the title of the book, and the author’s name,” she would direct, when she’d ask grandchildren what they were currently reading.<\/p>\n

\"Zinnias<\/a><\/p>\n

And she was a storyteller.\u00a0\u00a0 Weekly, she’d write a letter to my mother, filling her in on all the latest news.\u00a0 One of my absolute favorite stories, though, was one she shared of a time, as a young person in the youth group in her church in Elkton, she went with other young people on a hayride.\u00a0 One of the wagon wheels broke, necessitating the boys in the group to get out and do repairs.<\/p>\n

Grandmom said that one of the boys claimed he had a “toothache” and put his head down in her lap.<\/p>\n

“That was your grandfather,” she said.<\/p>\n

Repairs, she continued, took most of the night–and the young people got home around five in the morning.\u00a0 Ever after, our shared joke was that my proper, ladylike grandmother was “out all night on the town”!\"Yellow<\/a><\/p>\n

Although Grandpop had passed before I was old enough to remember him, her stories of their marriage depicted a partnership of respect and love.\u00a0 She related the story of a man in need, in the church, and the way she and Grandpop had sat down together to discuss his situation and determine whether they could lend him money.\u00a0 With five children during the Depression, there was very little to spare–but they did.<\/p>\n

And her stories of him reflected a man with a playful spirit, who called her “Bobbie” and liked to make gentle jokes.\u00a0\u00a0 “He leaned over and bit my ear once,” she commented.<\/p>\n

I was lucky enough to have Grandmom in my life until my early twenties.\u00a0 Seventy at the time of my birth, she lived long enough to see all four of her grandchildren graduate college–a proud accomplishment for her.\u00a0\u00a0 In the process, she made me question anyone who says they are “too old” to do something.<\/p>\n

\"Closeup<\/a><\/p>\n

A matter of months after my graduation, Grandmom Todd, age ninety-two, passed away.\u00a0 Today I have two of the quilts she made, and a small jelly glass.\u00a0 Every Easter, her yard was filled with wild violets, which I’d pick for her and put in that glass.<\/p>\n

When we bought our home, in California, I’d rarely seen wild violets out here.\u00a0 But somehow, finding the house after, literally, months of searching, it felt right.<\/p>\n

After we moved in, it felt even more so.<\/p>\n

In two spots in the yard were the heart-shaped leaves and deep purple flowers.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Grandmom.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Noella Noelophile\u00ae Today, for International Women’s Day, the hashtag #SheInspiresMe has been trending. And we’ve all honored some pretty amazing women.\u00a0 Lady Gaga, Gloria Steinem, Melinda Gates, Michelle Obama…the list goes on. But the first woman who inspired me, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1896,1895,1894],"class_list":["post-13177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meditations-and-observations","tag-sheinspiresme","tag-international-womens-day","tag-remembrance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelophile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelophile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelophile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelophile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelophile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13177"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/noelophile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13187,"href":"https:\/\/noelophile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13177\/revisions\/13187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelophile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelophile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelophile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}