One cousin wrote,
"I was utterly fascinated watching Nina make a bracelet of beads that looked like a string of flowers, one right next to the other! I would have been six and sadly didn't learn how to do that myself. "When I read those words "a bracelet of beads that looked like a string of flowers," a memory came flooding back! I went to my sewing box, where I have a jar of old beads from Rovilla's house and found the scrappy little daisy chain pictured above. It must have been a full bracelet at one time, but all I can remember is what you see now, the four little blue daisies. Maybe Nina and Rovilla made the "string of flower" bracelets as girls together!
Here are the other contents of the jar: a pile of loose mixed beads, a few more still in their glass tubes, a red and green Christmas project that we did on a small loom (that I still have but never did learn how to use on my own). Rovilla told me that the larger white beads were from her childhood, and she helped me come up with these patterns -- one with pastels, one with primary colors.
I can't recall the story behind the blue, gold, and crystal bracelet -- but looks like Rovilla's style! And then, of course, the tiny daisies! So glad to be reminded me of these!
Going even further back, I have this note from Rovilla, written in explanation of her vintage embroidery hoops. She recounts being taught to embroider by her Aunt Katie Hammond (her father's youngest sister). The note is from the early 1960s, but the wooden hoops and Rovilla's memory from age "8 or 9 yrs" would have been from 1900:
"Even in her later years she kept a plastic container on her dresser with a hole in the lid, for stuffing hair from her hairbrush, to create the "Rats" needed to create that look. (I loved to snoop in Grandma's bedroom! She never complained, that I can remember!)"
Lately I have been thinking about how much time -- or perhaps how little -- that I actually got to see Rovilla before she died. For the first three years of my life, we lived in Caney, Kansas, just a few blocks from Paul and Rovilla. My mom Mary Beth worked full-time, so my twin Bruce and I spent nearly every day with Paul and Rovilla and their youngest son, my Uncle Earl (my mother's youngest brother) who had Down Syndrome and lived at home. Of course, I can't truly remember those earliest years, but by the time I started being able to remember things, it was all about Grandma & Grandpa & Earl. We loved it there.
When I started school, we moved about two hours away, to Neosho, Missouri, and would visit Caney every other weekend. The summers after kindergarten (1963), 1st grade (1964), and 2nd grade (1965), I spent many weeks with them; and then Rovilla died of breast cancer right at the end of my 3rd grade year (June 1966), so I didn't get to go that summer. In fact, there were no more extended visits after that, though we did go see Grandpa and Earl a few times each year until they died (Earl in December 1982 and Paul shortly after in June 1983).
Looking back, it seems that most of the magic that I can recall had to take place in those three summers when I was 6, 7, 8 -- so young -- yet Rovilla managed to give me so much undivided attention that it has lasted a lifetime. She made dresses for me (that I still have), as well as some for my big dolls -- which were really my mom's leftover dolls, and some for my Barbie.
She showed me all of her brother Harry's photographs and negatives; and her mom Anna Mary's hand-written genealogical records and list of cousins back in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We went to church meetings and took walks in the Caney Cemetery. We drove over to Coffeyville (less than an hour from Caney) to see her brother Melville (her other brother Harry had already died before I was born). She taught me all about the Birkinbines and the Millers and the Heidemans.
I could go on, but for now that captures the essence.
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