She gave up our subscription to the family pew at church, and we found cheaper seats in the back. “God will hear our praise and prayers,” Mumma told us, “no matter where we sit.” If there was no money for tickets to attend an uplifting lecture, she went to the library for a book and read it aloud in the evening. If there was not much for supper, she would pop corn for us; it was a whole grain and filling. She raised chickens and collies, sold eggs and puppies for extra income. She gardened and canned the produce. She sewed uniforms for students at the Cleveland Training School for Nurses, and used the blue-and-white-striped scraps for the patchwork quilts that kept her children warm at night. She was so thin, so weary, on her feet from dawn to dusk. It seemed to me that she was all alone and yet so brave! What if something happened to her? Something awful?

I wanted to keep Mumma safe. Young and useless as I was, I tried to help but succeeded only in wearing out her threadbare patience. “Oh, Agnes,” she’d sigh. “It’s easier for me to do it myself than to take the time to teach you.”

Looking back, I am sad to realize that I never thought about keeping Papa safe; it never occurred to me to worry about that benign but absent figure. When at last he had worked himself into an early grave, the business was out of debt. Mumma took over, bereaved but eager to put her own ideas into play. “Your father was not a fool,” she told us children on the way home from the funeral, “but he had no head for business.” And Mumma certainly did.

Her first move was to renegotiate arrangements with suppliers. “Thank you for your consideration,” she’d tell them in her small, sweet voice. “There are those who’d be happy to take advantage of a poor widow with three children to support.” Once she’d struck a bargain, her brother, John, wrote ironclad contracts to enforce the deal. “No more handshakes,” Mumma told us grimly. “Those weasels will cheat you every chance they get.”