Forbears and Forbearance

My great-grandmother died before she reached the age of 30. Repeated childbirth did her in. She was a European transplant, the educated daughter of a wealthy merchant. She left a husband and three surviving children. All girls. My own sweet Gran was the youngest, not more than 2.

I don't know what she was like. No one that I know does either. She had a flamboyant sister that survived her, that much I heard; a published poet, a professor at a New York University; a madwoman who donned elaborate disguises to spy on her philandering husband. And the Poet had cats (oh, dear) that she simply doted on. She kept track of her three nieces, the widower, too, I suppose. And although she wasn't motherly, she made a lasting impression.

Deborah was my great-grandmother's name with the accent on the middle syllable. Deh-BOR-ahh. She looked a lot like me or visa versa. I have a photo of her, stiffly posed, swathed in Victorian silk, surrounded by her husband and 3 diminutive, beautifully dressed daughters. It must have been taken shortly before her death, right around 1900. Her eyes were large and wistful, perhaps she was in pain. Her nose and mouth and bone-white skin look just like mine. I suppose had I lived a hundred hears ago, I might have died from repeated births. Or like her sister, ran amok in 3-piece suits, writing odes to cats.

The turn of the 20th century, the Belle Époque, when women like Deborah routinely died in childbirth, leaving grief stricken families, robbing our collective memory. I wish my great grandmother had lived to a healthy old age, and I wish I knew more about her. Even so, it's obvious the code persists. Deborah is written on my face and, for all I know, my character.