Oblations and obligations

I ask my father what his mom was like. I'm curious because a childhood friend of his who hadn't seen me for a good decade once burst into a big grin to say, "Susan, you remind me so much of your Grandma Frieda!" Thinking the resemblance might be deeper than skin, I wonder what else I inherited from our clan's Swiss matriarch.

I have her obituary, a yellowed clipping from a country paper of the day. She was a church woman, she helped people and organized other people to do the same.

Mrs. Weber, having raised three sons of her own, was particularly interested in the religious welfare of young people and many times would go out of her way to see that some boy or girl had a ride to church or Sunday School. One of the last things she did was help to organize the Singing Club of the Dingman’s Ferry Methodist Church. Without her help, and that of her devoted friend, Mrs. Paul Schuepp, this Club would never have been started, since almost half the young people relied upon these two kind ladies for transportation.

Dad has told many a story about their early days in a New Jersey enclave of Swiss immigrants. His mother learned English, put up with cockroaches and kerosene lights after leaving a bug free, electricity emancipated life in Europe, raised three sons and buried her husband before he came to old age. Spinster sisters Lisa and Liny joined her at the homestead in PA adjoining Child's Park, a place of magic for the grandkids. The Swiss inflected voices of my grandmother and her sisters laced their plum and apple pies with a certain old world flavor.

As far as I know, Grandma Frieda published no words (her husband Theo and his father were the poets). She left us no recording, she never formed a band or went on tour. So what had she passed to me besides a strong chin and earnest eyes? What was she like?

My Dad, just rebounding from his own health imbroglio, spares few words about his mother. "People said she was serious. But she was friendly. And she was happy."

And if she left me these ingredients for my own swiss-english pie, I smell a rite of passage baking.