Happy Mother's Day and a story about a remarkable woman
Guest blog by Bonnie Long
Guest Post by Bonnie Long, May 9, 2021
Bonnie writes about an amazing woman, her Great-Grandmother, Idabelle.
My great-grandmother Idabelle Riley Monahan Haines was a Montana rancher, midwife, and supplier of organic free-range Thanksgiving turkeys to her neighbors and other customers. She grew lavender, pennyroyal, calendula, and peppermint. . . all of which I suspect she put to use in her midwifery work. Mom maintained she was pretty much a teetotaler, so her annual batch of dandelion wine was a puzzling thing to me until I learned of dandelion’s amazing antioxidant, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. She didn’t know those terms, of course, but she must’ve understood the common weed’s medicinal value in practical application.
Idabelle embraced life without hesitation.
Rhubarb Cake. Photo by Julia Topp.
Her strong work ethic didn’t get in the way of her appreciation for fun and good food. Her Rhubarb Cake is one of my favorites—and the only recipe I have that’s written in her hand. She didn’t have much time for partying, in general, but she was quick to lend her Baldwin upright to community gatherings, just for the price of picking it up and delivering it back home in one piece.
If it had not been for this strong, smart, capable woman, my own mother may not have survived into adulthood. When Mom was about five, she went to live on the ranch with her grandmother—for reasons perhaps too sad and sordid to delve into here. Idabelle provided my mother the functional, values-steeped, caregiving and love that her own mother was unable to provide.
Montana winter. Photo Dave Sicilia.
When, for weeks at a time each winter, it was too cold and snowy for her granddaughter to travel the ten miles to school (over, of course, the proverbial uphill-both-ways route), my great-grandmother Idabelle schooled my mother at home. It was no coincidence that Mom graduated from high school two years ahead of her class, with honors.
I never met Idabelle.
She died young—just 72, from a tick bite—a few years before I was born. But I DO know her. . . in the mysterious way that women, despite hardship and setbacks, manage to weave their more resilient threads across generations. We share the same birthday, and—from what I can gather— she and I have more traits in common than those I’ve gleaned from her daughter or granddaughter.
As I’ve approached and surpassed the age she died, I understand she has infused me with her spirit. And as I continue my work on the novel that’s been waiting to be written with her in mind, I hope I’m giving her new life in return.