Happy Pioneer Day

Today is Pioneer Day.  I sort of idolize my pioneer ancestors, especially the mothers.  They were amazing or as Wallace Stegner famously said, "[those] women were incredible."  I want to meet all of them -- Polly Barber Child who took the dying David Patten in the back of her wagon so he could say his farewells to his family;  She had a gift of caring for the sick and would ride over to anyone who needed help even in a storm on their only horse (the mobs stole the other half of their team.)  I want to meet Caroline Smith who climbed in and out of the second story window of her employer's home to sneak away and be baptized in the middle of the night, only to be caught wet-haired upon reentry.  I want to meet Hannah Maria Child who never lost a mother or child in all of her years of midwifery sometimes guided by dreams about complicated procedures.  I'm fascinated by the heart of the Englishwoman, Elizabeth Gaskell Romney who supposedly never ventured beyond the gate of the old house after her Miles died.  Seven years later, her final words: "Thee's been a long time coming."   I feel for Catherine Petty who buried four of their little ones along the way:  Lydia and Eliza in Far West and Mary Ann and John Ralph at Winter Quarters.  Mariah Edwards also perished in Winter Quarters, and at the loss of his wife, Elisha didn't have the heart to continue on the valley just yet. He reportedly lent his team to Brigham Young's vanguard company and made the trek just a few years later.  I know they weren't all perfect.  I know that beyond the grave, they may be shaking their heads at all the superlatives we attach to them.  My Great Aunt Beth told me that rumor had it, Emma Crofts Criddle often grumbled and complained about her husband being sent away on his mission while she stayed home tending all the children.  Which is worse -- that she did that, or that the other women repeated that about her after she and her baby tragically drowned before her husband's return? Yes, they were all human. But that just serves to inspire me all the more by their grit, usual optimism, and ingenuity.  They made do with very little.  They maintained grace with the gleanings of civilization.  Caroline Anderson always kept a vase of artistically arranged wildflowers, grasses, and grain stalks on top of her chest of drawers.  Anna Williams made hats for her children from jettisoned wheat stalks.  She soaked them and braided them over a tin bucket. Both women were weavers and wove beautiful fabrics for carpets and curtains and clothes.  Mary Bommeli Eyring was also a weaver and the earnings from her work on her loom bought her way to America and helped support her young family in the early years. She made it independantly and despite obstacles such as spending a night in jail for bearing her testimony of The Book of Mormon when that was against the law in Germany.  These are my Utah mormon pioneers.  They didn't all stay in Utah -- they heeded calls to Old Mexico and the Canadian prairies.  They were medicine women and midwives and gleaners and weavers and writers and artists and scriptorians but most of all mothers.  They cared for more than their own, and because they cared so effectively, I have the gospel in my life -- which not only supports me in caring for my spouse and children, but gives us all something to care about more than life itself.