August 16, 2022

I’ve been sucked down the rabbit hole that is Ancestry.com again. This time I was surprised with a 100 year-old picture that has whispers of my mother’s and my faces. Before today I had never seen what Grandma Sophie looked like as a young lady. I have an old photograph of her as a child, but I didn’t realize I inherited so many of my facial features from her. The photo I found appears to be a wedding portrait of her and her first husband, Charley, father to Mom’s two half-brothers. Neither are smiling, but that’s not unusual for the 1920s. I wonder if she was happy in that marriage or if she was just a miserable person all her life.

An Unhappy Marriage

From what I’ve found, Charley died in 1926, leaving 25 year-old Sophie with two young boys to raise and support. A new husband, one that would be willing to take on her two boys, would have been her best choice. Al Peterson (my grandpa) had a farm next to Wilson Lake in Deerwood and would have needed help working the acreage. I’m sure two young boys and the prospect of more would have been a tempting prospect to any farmer trying to make a living. I see how much my brother and his wife work to establish their farm and wonder at the industry and fortitude of farmers everywhere. 

From what little I was able to gather from my mom, Alfred and Sophie did not have a happy marriage. When you examine the birthdays of their children, you begin to see a sense of duty, not one of spontaneous romance. Their first child, a daughter, was likely conceived within a couple of months of their union and three of the four youngest have birthdays that align with a Valentine’s Day compromise. The final confirmation of her distaste was a brutal blow to my mom, their middle daughter. I remember Mom confiding in me that at some point her mother, Sophie, asked her which parent she felt she was most like. Mom wasn’t sure, and felt there could be no right answer, so she said she didn’t know. Grandma’s response was, “You always reminded me of your father, and I hated him.”

My heart still aches when I think of how that must have tortured Mom. To be told that one of the people you expect to love you unconditionally actually hates you, it’s no wonder Mom grew to feel she didn’t deserve to be happy and that any pain she suffered was warranted. But I also wonder what happened to create such an animosity.  

Bitter Brewing

Alana Stewart said “Bitterness and resentment only hurt one person – and it’s not the person we’re resenting, it’s us.” I would agree for the most part with that sentiment, but I think I would amend it to say it hurts primarily one person. I’ve seen how my mom and us kids were also hurt by the bitterness Grandma Sophie nurtured most of her life. 30 years of marriage did not seem to soften her heart toward my grandpa, only harden it. I wonder, did he treat her badly? I’m certain she was abusive to his children, was that because he was abusive to her? I never met Grandpa Peterson, he died the year before I was born, and Mom didn’t talk about most of her family, except on very rare occasions. 

Some that read this will wonder if Sophie could be all that bad, or if it was just the failings of a child’s memories. Others, relatives of mine, may be able to fill in more of the story and corroborate. Either way, thank you for coming along on the exploration of mine to better understand this woman that has influenced many even to this day, not always in a good way. What do you think, will I be able to find anything to redeem her?