Today I took my uncle and mother to Western Sizzlin for the Thanksgiving buffet. It was a task; no handicapped parking available, had to let them out and seek a parking space. Mama is 92 and arthritic, somtimes unsteady on her feet. Uncle Reuben is almost 85 and carries himself on crutches as he has for over 80 years, since crippled by polio.
I finally got them inside and settled at a table next to a wall to accommodate my uncle's crutches. Mama, of course, was about to take her purse through the buffet line (sort of like Queen Elizabeth), when I placed my own purse in the center of the table and turned to the couple across from us in a booth. They said they would be there for a while and would keep an eye on our purses. After following Mama back, steadying her, from the buffet with my own plate, I then returned to carry my uncle's since that's difficult to do with crutches.
Shortly after the couple, who by the way were averagely dressed in jeans, sweatshirts and jackets, rose to leave. The husband stopped and said something to me that I didn't quite understand over the din, then said "Happy Thanksgiving". I replied in kind. A few minutes later the wife returned, handed me a receipt, and said "Your dinners are paid for. Happy Thanksgiving!" And then disappeared while I sat there with my mouth open in shock.
I had been thinking of other Thanksgivings. gone forever now. Thanksgivings with my Gran's mincemeat pie, my Mama's turkey, Aunt Rena's green beans, Granny Morris' fried Silver Queen corn, and my Aunt Pearl's "wet" dressing. I'd been thinking how my family would never again gather around one or two big tables with everyone's favorite dish on the table. All of them but two are now gone. Big dinners exist only in my memories now.This year I am grateful that those memories are mine to keep.
And I'm grateful also to the anonymous couple, whose random act of kindness, showed me that while the warmth of an old-fashioned Thanksgiving may be denied me, the warmth of caring strangers offers new traditions with the family of man. It spurred me to leave a larger than usual tip. Maybe when we realize that human beings are a family of a kind, we can broaden our outlook. Maybe random acts of kindness are the beginnings. Maybe it will be the thing that keeps us going....
Thanksgiving 2010
Monday, April 25, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Easters Past
Sitting here in silence on Easter afternoon...so different from the Easters in my past. There is no family gathering because we no longer number enough to gather. I am reminded that even though I wouldn't be seeing my father today, this is the first Easter when he has not been here on earth with us.
It wasn't always this way. In my childhood days there would have been a houseful who would be getting around to thinking of leaving about this time. I would have gone to several egg hunts---at First Methodist on Saturday and maybe another at a friend's home also. Then on Sunday after a lunch of turkey and dressing or ham with garden vegetables and Mama's graham cracker crumb cake, all the older relatives would take turns hiding my eggs over and over again til the afternoon waned. Being an only child, grandchild and niece on both sides of the family, I never even had a first cousin, although I do have some great cousins still. It was part of the reason the parents, aunts, and grandparents indulged me, since I was always the only child at gatherings. I could never have envisioned then that one day these people would begin to fall one by one, leaving me in a house full of memories, alone.
Mama, God bless her, went to church with me this morning and we shared the Easter meal she prepared yesterday. It takes us several days to finish all the leftovers, since we both, from habit, cook for several. Usually we go out, but with all the crowds today, she wouldn't have been able to stand as long as it takes to get a table or walk from an out-of-the-way parking spot.
Mama would have dyed my eggs on Friday, the kitchen smelling of vinegar, while I ooohed and ahhhed over the colors of the eggs. I remember hosting an egg hunt at my house one Saturday before Easter. It was the only time I found the prize egg in my whole life, but Mama made me put it back, explaining that the hostess shouldn't claim the prize. It was a gold plastic egg from Bill Sumner's shoe store. I think it was a promotion for Red Goose Shoes, which he sold as well as Buster Brown's.
My dress would have been a work of art from my Gran Miller. She made all my clothes til I was in high school. I thought everyone knew I had homemade clothes, when I just wanted a Sears dress or a plain old Orlon sweater from Penney's. How stupid can you be? My Gran wasn't a good seamstress, she was a gifted, artistic seamstress who you could take into a department store to see a dress you loved. She would examine it carefully, turning it wrong side out, seeing exactly how it was made. Then she could go home and make it without a pattern. I always had new patent leather shoes, nylon anklets, white gloves, a hat and an Easter corsage. Most of these have gone by the wayside with today's fashions. Looking back at a picture collage in my hall, my Uncle Reuben, an amateur photographer, captured every Easter with me, my mama and daddy all dressed to the nines, standing on our front porch. God bless you, Uncle Reuben, for capturing those Easters so now I can look back and remember.
I would have received marshmallow chicks, chocolate bunnies, and always, an Easter basket. Plastic grass would litter the house, and each summer I'd always find an unfound egg, overlooked and rotten.
I've decided to relish the past; not to cry because it's over, but to smile because I had it. Some children have no memories like this at all. So it's best to treasure them and cherish them because tomorrow is promised to no one. If only I had known that all those years ago.
It wasn't always this way. In my childhood days there would have been a houseful who would be getting around to thinking of leaving about this time. I would have gone to several egg hunts---at First Methodist on Saturday and maybe another at a friend's home also. Then on Sunday after a lunch of turkey and dressing or ham with garden vegetables and Mama's graham cracker crumb cake, all the older relatives would take turns hiding my eggs over and over again til the afternoon waned. Being an only child, grandchild and niece on both sides of the family, I never even had a first cousin, although I do have some great cousins still. It was part of the reason the parents, aunts, and grandparents indulged me, since I was always the only child at gatherings. I could never have envisioned then that one day these people would begin to fall one by one, leaving me in a house full of memories, alone.
Mama, God bless her, went to church with me this morning and we shared the Easter meal she prepared yesterday. It takes us several days to finish all the leftovers, since we both, from habit, cook for several. Usually we go out, but with all the crowds today, she wouldn't have been able to stand as long as it takes to get a table or walk from an out-of-the-way parking spot.
Mama would have dyed my eggs on Friday, the kitchen smelling of vinegar, while I ooohed and ahhhed over the colors of the eggs. I remember hosting an egg hunt at my house one Saturday before Easter. It was the only time I found the prize egg in my whole life, but Mama made me put it back, explaining that the hostess shouldn't claim the prize. It was a gold plastic egg from Bill Sumner's shoe store. I think it was a promotion for Red Goose Shoes, which he sold as well as Buster Brown's.
My dress would have been a work of art from my Gran Miller. She made all my clothes til I was in high school. I thought everyone knew I had homemade clothes, when I just wanted a Sears dress or a plain old Orlon sweater from Penney's. How stupid can you be? My Gran wasn't a good seamstress, she was a gifted, artistic seamstress who you could take into a department store to see a dress you loved. She would examine it carefully, turning it wrong side out, seeing exactly how it was made. Then she could go home and make it without a pattern. I always had new patent leather shoes, nylon anklets, white gloves, a hat and an Easter corsage. Most of these have gone by the wayside with today's fashions. Looking back at a picture collage in my hall, my Uncle Reuben, an amateur photographer, captured every Easter with me, my mama and daddy all dressed to the nines, standing on our front porch. God bless you, Uncle Reuben, for capturing those Easters so now I can look back and remember.
I would have received marshmallow chicks, chocolate bunnies, and always, an Easter basket. Plastic grass would litter the house, and each summer I'd always find an unfound egg, overlooked and rotten.
I've decided to relish the past; not to cry because it's over, but to smile because I had it. Some children have no memories like this at all. So it's best to treasure them and cherish them because tomorrow is promised to no one. If only I had known that all those years ago.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
The Only Limestone House on Cedar Hill Drive
The only limestone house on Cedar Hill Drive stands empty and useless now. It was built over 70 years ago, with limestone rocks hauled from the Larkinsville area, crafted by my Uncle Dick Wallace. It belonged to my Aunt Rena and Uncle Raymond Ward when they were newlyweds. Aunt Rena, the daughter of Jefferson Davis Wallace and Sallie Parks Sumner Wallace, grew up directly across the street in the old Wallace homeplace. After building the house, they lived with her parents and rented the new one for a year to pay for it. She then made her only move---across the street, some sixty feet. She would stay there until her death in October of 2009, the last nineteen years without her husband.
It was the undisputed gathering place for all the Wallace kin. You saw your out-of-town cousins on Sunday afternoons at Aunt Rena's. She was the glue which held us all together. Over and over I'd heard her say, "I love my people!" And we all loved her. When the cousins were young we'd ride with Larry, her only child, in his go-cart or in his burro-drawn cart. My mother's generation congregated there for fish frys, barbecues, and Rook parties.
It was the kind of house where you were free to help yourself to a Coke (Aunt Rena had a weakness for Coca Cola, too), or candy or leftover dessert. Wherever Aunt Rena was, there was laughter, and she laughed louder at herself than anyone else. Going to her house was the only Sunday visitation we looked forward to, for in those days that was what you did on Sunday---visited the kinfolk.
What else? She loved her only child, my cousin Larry, better than life itself. He remains the most caring and thoughtful of sons that could ever have been. In her failing years he saw she was supplied with anything her heart desired and delighted in spoiling her. He never forgot how hard his parents had worked to put him through college and law school. And he never stopped giving back. He remained her pride and her joy til she drew her last breath, and he was by her side when that occurred.
She was a rabid Alabama fan. In later years it became customary to gather at her home for all televised Bama games since she had a big-screen television, provided by Larry. My mama, Sally Morris, my Aunt Pearl Berry, Dr. and Mrs. Fred Sanders, and occasionally Margaret Proctor all congregated for food and football in the 80s and the 90s for every game. Aunt Rena's blood pressure would shoot way up, and finally the doctor told her to stop watching the games. After that she'd call my mama two or three times every quarter for updates!
She loved the Democratic Party and the First Methodist Church. She loved growing vegetables just to give away. And her flowers! The huge round brick planter in the south yard was ablaze every spring with crimson and white tulips. There were azaleas, snowballs, peonies, hibiscus, caladiums, impatiens and camellias. It was a veritable outdoor hothouse, which people detoured to see.
If she was famous for anything, it was her fried pies. As a longtime election official, she made them for the other pollworkers, for friends and family, and all church functions. But that is also what she was known for---her generosity.
As she began her decline, she became less able to go out. When confined to bed, we went and sat with her and she would clutch Mama's hand in understanding after it became hard for her to converse. They were only two years apart in age and had a lifetime history of shared memories.
I pass the house every day going to work and on Sundays on my way to church. How many years will it take before I can look at that wonderful house and not get a tear in my eye or a lump in my throat? Probably never.
She was in the hospital when the end came. She suffered so much those last months, that those who loved her best smiled through their tears and thanked God that she was well at last. The funeral was everything a devoted Methodist would want, complete with every pink rose in northeast Alabama. When we left the church we turned down Cedar Hill Drive, as she passed her home for the last time. We carried her down to a little red clay knoll in the cemetery, where she had once picked cotton on her father's farm, and put her next to the only man in her life, Raymond Ward, who has been gone twenty years last month.
And so the limestone house stands alone, unable to share all the memories it holds. It sheltered not only a man, his wife and their child, but played host to a myriad of family. But the memories made there will live on, and will as long as we remember to "tell the stories", as were told to us so long ago.
It was the undisputed gathering place for all the Wallace kin. You saw your out-of-town cousins on Sunday afternoons at Aunt Rena's. She was the glue which held us all together. Over and over I'd heard her say, "I love my people!" And we all loved her. When the cousins were young we'd ride with Larry, her only child, in his go-cart or in his burro-drawn cart. My mother's generation congregated there for fish frys, barbecues, and Rook parties.
It was the kind of house where you were free to help yourself to a Coke (Aunt Rena had a weakness for Coca Cola, too), or candy or leftover dessert. Wherever Aunt Rena was, there was laughter, and she laughed louder at herself than anyone else. Going to her house was the only Sunday visitation we looked forward to, for in those days that was what you did on Sunday---visited the kinfolk.
What else? She loved her only child, my cousin Larry, better than life itself. He remains the most caring and thoughtful of sons that could ever have been. In her failing years he saw she was supplied with anything her heart desired and delighted in spoiling her. He never forgot how hard his parents had worked to put him through college and law school. And he never stopped giving back. He remained her pride and her joy til she drew her last breath, and he was by her side when that occurred.
She was a rabid Alabama fan. In later years it became customary to gather at her home for all televised Bama games since she had a big-screen television, provided by Larry. My mama, Sally Morris, my Aunt Pearl Berry, Dr. and Mrs. Fred Sanders, and occasionally Margaret Proctor all congregated for food and football in the 80s and the 90s for every game. Aunt Rena's blood pressure would shoot way up, and finally the doctor told her to stop watching the games. After that she'd call my mama two or three times every quarter for updates!
She loved the Democratic Party and the First Methodist Church. She loved growing vegetables just to give away. And her flowers! The huge round brick planter in the south yard was ablaze every spring with crimson and white tulips. There were azaleas, snowballs, peonies, hibiscus, caladiums, impatiens and camellias. It was a veritable outdoor hothouse, which people detoured to see.
If she was famous for anything, it was her fried pies. As a longtime election official, she made them for the other pollworkers, for friends and family, and all church functions. But that is also what she was known for---her generosity.
As she began her decline, she became less able to go out. When confined to bed, we went and sat with her and she would clutch Mama's hand in understanding after it became hard for her to converse. They were only two years apart in age and had a lifetime history of shared memories.
I pass the house every day going to work and on Sundays on my way to church. How many years will it take before I can look at that wonderful house and not get a tear in my eye or a lump in my throat? Probably never.
She was in the hospital when the end came. She suffered so much those last months, that those who loved her best smiled through their tears and thanked God that she was well at last. The funeral was everything a devoted Methodist would want, complete with every pink rose in northeast Alabama. When we left the church we turned down Cedar Hill Drive, as she passed her home for the last time. We carried her down to a little red clay knoll in the cemetery, where she had once picked cotton on her father's farm, and put her next to the only man in her life, Raymond Ward, who has been gone twenty years last month.
And so the limestone house stands alone, unable to share all the memories it holds. It sheltered not only a man, his wife and their child, but played host to a myriad of family. But the memories made there will live on, and will as long as we remember to "tell the stories", as were told to us so long ago.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)