Mary Sampson & Her Sisters

1 woman sits in a shopping cart while the other 2 push her in a parking lot.

Typical Foolishness

Mom was ridiculous, it was her default. Perhaps it was a side-effect of entertaining so many children over the years. Here she is, squashed in a shopping cart, with her sister, Edna and niece, Terri. I'd say they were racing, but they were really only racing themselves.

50s Girls

This photo was edited with the help of mom's version of photoshop - a knife. She was much younger than her sisters, who were born close together. So, she carved up a photo of herself as a toddler and stuck it in. Mom was big on scrap-booking and she did it old school. Pictured here: Edna, Mary, Joey, Marlene and Bernadette.

An old black and white photo from the 50s of 5 girls, sisters.
  • An elderly woman and her 5 grown daughters sit on and below a sofa in a living room.
    (B) Edna, Joey, Mama, (F) Marlene, Mom, Bernadette.
  • 4 middle-aged women sit around a table in a diner.
    Mom, Joey, Marlene + Edna at the Stephenville Chateau.
  • 2 older women stand in the middle of an old-fashioned replica kitchen, with a wood stove and antiques.
    Joey + Mom, at Winter Wheat in Ontario.
  • 4 women sit on a sofa with 2 little girls on their laps; 1970s photo scan.
    Mama, Mom, Marlene, Edna, little me + Deanna.
  • 5 women sit for a posed studio group portrait.
    (F) Joey, Mom, Marlene, (B) Edna + Bernadette.

Sisters at Grandma's Place

All but one of mom’s sisters lived outside of Newfoundland (for most of my life) and visits were a big deal. The oldest sister, Bernadette, would visit mom every time mom had a new baby - no easy feat considering mom had 7 kids and Bernadette was a single mother of 9 who lived in the US.

Sometimes mom travelled to visit her sisters, but most of the time family tended to congregate at my grandmother’s house in Stephenville, which was easy for us because we also lived in town. We called my grandmother "mama", pronounced kinda like "meh-meh".

Mama had a double-sized kitchen with 2 stoves, one of which was an ancient wood stove she used for heat during electrical knock-outs and occasionally for baking when the regular stove was full with a turkey.

Creativity

A typical get-together might see my grandmother baking in the kitchen (she never made less than 12 loaves of bread) while someone else might be sewing and another might be quilting. There might be fabric and patterns all over the floor and little me, cutting out the shapes others would sew or digging through a jar of buttons to find the right number of matching bits. This was where I first learned creativity.