My Grandmother's Hands

Marian Louise Shafer-Cline, my maternal grandmother, was born on this day in 1932, with her sun tightly conjunct her Chiron in Taurus, along with Mars and Black Moon Lilth bringing their intensity to her Taurus house. She was also a Virgo Moon with Ceres in Capricorn and Saturn at home in Aquarius. Marian was aggressively earthy.

Add Venus and Pluto in Cancer, and she was also the quintessential family matriarch-protective, nurturing, devoted, and always watchful.

Without her birth time, we can’t be sure of her angles, but knowing the placement of the planets in the signs is enough to understand the blueprint for her life, which she fulfilled brilliantly.

Marian was the kind of Taurean woman who could ride a horse bareback and was strong enough to draw water from the hand pump when she was ten. She was amused by and condescending toward the efforts of women around her to beautify themselves to appeal to the male gaze. Her appeal was immediate and radiated from her strength, centeredness, personal power, and condfidence in herself and her skills. She made a game of sabotaging her sisters’ efforts at securing romance and loved to tell stories about the silly, egoic, haughty efforts of women around her to appear sophisticated or attractive. She saw right through it all, and couldn’t be interested in participating, accept to capitalize on this in her work as an Avon Lady, ha!

She loved to share recipes or tell farm stories or share the local gossip, but was endlessly exasperated by folks who bragged or seemed arrogant or elitist or performative. When one such family member would call, she held the phone away from her ear and fanned her ear to cool it, a gesture she repeated hundreds of times over the years.

She was the sexton of the United Methodist Church she lived adjacent to and attended as a member most of her life. She changed the vestments seasonally, set the hymn boards, changed out the flowers, set the thermostat a few hours ahead of service on Sunday mornings so the sanctuary would be warm in the winter, opened windows in the summer, and cared for the church cemetery by mowing, string trimming, and keeping flowers and other offerings in order left behind by mourners. Her husband, my grandfather, rang the church bell every Sunday morning to awaken the village and draw the congregation to worship. She played the piano and organ, and my grandfather was an usher and sang in the choir. They devoted their lives to the church, and they never, ever preached. Never.

My grandparents lived by a moral and ethical standard that they emanated with their earthy, humble, devotional confidence (my grandfather was an Aries/Taurus cusp, but was definitely more Taurean) but I never heard them talk about God or Jesus, sin or damnation, hell or judgement. I only saw them take food to shut ins, visit folks in nursing homes, and provide a hot meal for our entire extended family every Sunday after church, complete with a freshly baked cake.

To them, faith was personal, individual, and private. It was between the individual and their God. To talk about it was akin to bragging or drawing attention, and this was antithetical to their values. The closest Marian ever came to sharing her faith with me was when she sharply criticized pastors or their sermons. She clearly had a strong opinion about how God should bre represented, and it was always about humility, service, love, and extending the table. A pastor who was grandiose or empowering of his own ego drew no respect from her.

Marian and Stanley (my grandfather) were both also wildly patriotic. They kept a pristine flag on the flagpole at home, and I remember the day they erected it. It was such a proud day for them. She planted a circular garden around the flagpole with hostas and marigolds. Stanley was a WWII veteran, and deeply held the values of liberty, equality, and national pride. In her later life, Marian organized a Memorial Day parade for her community that continues to this day. Many times over the years I participated by reciting the Gettysburg Address (the first time she had me do this was in second grade for our elementary talent show, fully outfitted with a beard and top hat in my impersonation of the great hero President Lincoln), and I recited the poem In Flanders Fields. Marian never loved to be the center of attention, but I always felt like the proximity of her birthday to Memorial Day helped her justify a big May celebration to gather together, feed, and inspire her community.

Born at the nadir of the Great Depression to farmer laborers, one generation removed from the Old Order Brethren plain community we descend from, Marian deeply understood self-reliance, scarcity, how to make do, the power of joy, and the great gift of community (even when they are a pain in the ass). She understood tradition as a container of belonging, and she tended that container fiercely and with great humility. As she began to experience dementia, the shadow and grief of insecurity became more and more apparent. Late night calls to make sure the “kids got home,” fears that the neighbors were looking in the windows, taking her purse to bed with her...but even as her diminished faculties created a crack for deeper insecurities to surface, she continued to watch out for her community with her trademark matriarchal vigilance. When I visited her in the assisted living facility, she asked me to keep an eye on a woman who was known to try and stand from her wheelchair, and would sometimes fall. Marian always knew who was vulnerable, and always kept close to them.

Marian has been gone almost three years now, but she hasn’t gone far. She continues to look after us, to tend the container, in ways I can only imagine from this limited human perspective I can see from. When her oldest daughter, my Aunt Diane, died three years ago on May 18, she stayed with us just long enough to make sure we had all made it through the acute grief, and then she suddenly departed this life to go and be with her child, and my grandfather, in the place that was promised to them by their faith.

The world Marian and Stanley believed in and devoted themselves to is no longer a reality here in this realm, but the principles that guided them remain as true and steadfast and reliable today as they did almost a hundred years ago when she was born to embody the energy of nurturing, fierce, mothering. We change the world by loving it. We protect our communities by feeding them with hot dogs at a summer picnic, and with inspiration and a communal vision to gather around. There must be people who will be the touchstone, the clockwork rhythm, the ones who always show up, often quietly in the background, to hold the whole great drama together. Marian and Stanely were those people, and I am proud to be their descendant.

I was born with my Chiron four degrees from Marian’s Chiron Cazimi. Like her, I hope to alchemize the wounds of a changing and uncertain world into the nectar of loving service and stability for my family and community. May the fear and betrayal I feel in these uncertain times become a bowl that holds sweet nectar, and may I skillfully learn to brew this elixir, with her help and towering example.

Happy Birthday Mammie, and please forgive me for writing all of this about you! <3