On this day in 1917

Tena Elizabeth Fuchs Hollis (L) and Mary Hollis Todd (R), celebrating their September birthdays in 2004.

“I can wade grief,
Whole pools of it, --
I'm used to that.
But the least push of joy
Breaks up my feet,
And I tip -- drunken.
Let no pebble smile,
'Twas the new liquor, --
That was all!”

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Today is the anniversary of our mother’s birth, September 9, 1917. Ninety-five years—how long ago and how very different a time, 1917. From a glance at Wikipedia, that wealth of information on the internet, nothing of great importance happened on September 9th. No one of celebrity status was either born or died on that date. Something of consequence did happen on that date, however—in our great grandmother Louisa Benfer Fuchs’s homestead in rural Harris County, Texas, her daughter Lizzie gave birth to Tena Elizabeth, our mother. Louisa is buried in the historic Perry Cemetery just across the road from where that house stood—a Fuchs family homestead and vast acres of land lost to progress many years ago. Mother loved family, and she gave me a sense of family and of our family’s history in Texas, which makes its way deeper into my heart as I grow older. I am old, hah—only a year from passing my seventh decade. Mother also taught me compassion and a sense of fairness. She taught me this by living her own life with compassion and fairness. For this too, I give thanks. Happy Birthday, Tena Elizabeth Fuchs Hollis (September 9, 1917 - February 1, 2007).