Grandmother Mary’s Hill

My great-grandmother Mary was born on a small hill farm outside Burlington in 1903.

She grew up with cold floors, oil lamps, and chores that started before breakfast. Later she raised six children in a house where nothing was wasted — not bread, not cloth, not daylight.

She kept a garden even when her hands hurt and wrote birthdays on a calendar from the feed store. Most of what I know about patience came from watching her do ordinary things carefully.

This Vermont hex is for Mary, and for the kind of strength that does not announce itself.