Family

Brand New

Mammo and Athena finally meet!

When I was 30 I received the official diagnosis of IgA Nephropathy. I was at work when my doctor called with the results of the biopsy I'd had the week before. He was sympathetic, kind, gentle even in his delivery of the bad news, and even though I didn't understand the full implications of what he was saying to me, I knew enough to understand that the softness of his delivery meant bad things for my future.  I left the room and walked down the hall at work in a daze.  My boss asked me to go pick up some food from an Italian restaurant for one of the residents and without even blinking I agreed to go.  What I really wanted to do was to go home and hug my girls. I wanted to cry. I wanted to talk to someone who would tell me that everything was going to be okay, but there was no one to turn to. In that moment, no one on Earth could honestly tell me that everything would be fine.

I eventually went home to my girls. I gave them the hugs and took comfort in having them in my presence. Later that evening, after the were asleep I  went online and looked up my prognosis.  It was scary. I wrote my worries in my journal. I remember wondering if I would live to see them graduate from high school? Would I get to see them get married? Would I even make it to see them become teenagers? I sat and imagined all the things in life I was going to miss and my heart broke into a million pieces as I thought about my daughters experiencing all of life's "firsts" without me.  I ached for them and for myself and I suppose in a way, I started grieving the life I'd never get to live.

I never imagined I'd have another child just 6 years later.  Even after I found out I was pregnant, I couldn't believe it was true.  I was told I'd never survive pregnancy and it was difficult, but I did it and I have my awesome little boy now.  Sure, I still sometimes get locked into the cycle of anxiety about whether or not I'll get to see HIM grow up, but now that I've made it this far, I can actually imagine making it to see him become a young man.  

Last Saturday when I walked into a delivery room and had a nurse hand me this beautiful little chubby-cheeked baby I was in complete awe. I was pretty much speechless as I took her in my arms and looked into her tiny face.  My daughter sat in the bed looking tired but glowing with the beauty of those early moments of motherhood and I honestly couldn't believe I had made it to see my own granddaughter.  It seems funny to me even typing the word.  Granddaughter.  I have a granddaughter!  I know it sounds like a horrible thought, but when you live on borrowed time, it seems like things need to happen sooner rather than later; otherwise they may never happen at all.

All I can say now is, thanks.  Thanks to God or the Universe or whomever decided to let me make to this milestone.  Thanks for the huge roller coaster ride of a life I've had so far, and thanks for the hope and joy that a new generation breathes into the world.  Thanks for making my daughter a mommy, thanks for making me a Mammo, and thanks for whatever happens tomorrow.

Nothing gives a family more hope than a brand new little person who shares the same dimples, the same little curl of the lips, the same chubby cheeks and funny-shaped toes.  Nothing makes life seem more worth the journey than looking into that sweet little face and seeing it all start anew.  It has been a long time since something made me so happy, so full of hope, and so ready to take on whatever struggle presents itself next.

The Hummingbird

He bought it with his first paycheck from his first real job.  It had ivory turn keys, and on the face-guard, white engraved morning glories and hummingbirds.  It was a beautiful guitar.  When he bought it, he had no idea that someday it would be worth a lot of money if kept in mint condition.  I'm not sure he would have cared, even if he had known. 

It became part of who he was to me.  The guitar in his hand, humming a tune too high for him, mumbling through the words he didn't know with a red face and a far off look in his eyes, he became an amazement to me. He was never afraid to cry, and often the songs he sang would bring tears to his eyes.  They were never tears of sorrow, but tears of humility and gratefulness, for he always sang of God's grace.  

I watched him be unashamed to cry and yet, I've never learned the humility of those tears.

I watched his fingers form the chords, watched him pick out the notes of a tune ever so precisely.  The music was infectious to me.  I wanted to be a part of it. 

So when I was 11, I asked for an autoharp.  Knowing full-well, that asking for such an expensive item was risky, I didn't really expect to get one for my birthday but he searched and searched until he found a second hand one that he bought for me.  That autoharp made me belong, in some way, to a part of my father's life that no one else besides his brothers had belonged to. 

We played songs together, me watching his hands finger the chords as I clumsily found the chords on my autoharp.  He taught me the foundations of music, the way certain chords go together, the way a minor chord can chage the ressonance or the way a sharp can liven up a melody.  He taught me to harmonize, to listen to the key and find it with my voice.  He taught me more about life during those Sunday afternoons on the front porch than either of us realized at the time.

When I was fifteen, I had a burning desire to learn to play piano.  I knew that getting an autoharp was a stretch, so I dared not ask for a piano.  I knew it was unreasonable, but my daddy knew I had music in my soul and it needed to escape, so while I was out Christmas carolling with my youth group, he was picking up a second-hand piano and moving it into my room.  When I came home, it was there with a big red bow on top.  I was so excited, I didn't even know how to say thank you, so I just sat down and started playing the only little melody I knew.  It wasn't long before I had taught myself how to play a couple of hymns, and then I started taking lessons that my father paid for. 

I played so much my wrists were sore.  I drove my mother crazy--so much so that she would go for a walk around the neighborhood to escape the sound. I drowned out my father's Sunday football games, but he never complained.  They never once discouraged me.  They were proud of me for learning, and proud of me for finding something that I loved. 

Before he retired, my dad lost part of his middle finger on his left hand at the plant where he worked.  The most devastating part of that, was that he couldn't play his Hummingbird anymore.  Since then, I have learned to play guitar a little but I have only played the Hummingbird once or twice.  It sounds so rich and sweet, and even the smell of it reminds me of my father's love.  It still rests in its original case--the case he let me carry it in when I was  barely old enough to lift it off the ground.  I remember being surprised at how light it was to carry as I got older. 

My nephew has it now.  He plays the music of my father--the music of faith.  I suppose that somewhere along the way, I've lost some of my faith.  It got lost in all the dissapointments I've had in man-kind and in myself.  I hope that somehow, that guitar will live on and be a shining testament to the man my father was to me.  Loving, faithful and encouraging.  I hope it is used in hands that will lift up souls and make them soar on wings of peace and understanding that only the music of faith can bring.  It lives in me still, somewhere, and on certain days it  comes back to me sweetly as a melody in the breeze as I'm walking down a street or sitting on my back deck. 

    

Even after all these years, all these disappointments and failures of mine, I still find  a kind of peace that is inexplicable when I remember that Hummingbird in my Father's hands.

Sweet 'Taters

The other day, I saw an old man in a big white hat, leaning on a cane as he walked from his garden.  He was tall and slumped over, walking with much effort to bring his left leg along with him as he struggled back towards the house.  I sat and watched for a moment, since I knew he didn’t see me, and I gasped a little when I saw him stumble.  His look of frustration is so easy to read--lips pressed hard together, face reddening as he gives an almost imperceptible grunt.  I recognized it well, though in that moment I struggled to believe the old man I was watching was my father.

I got out of my car and said “What are you up to?” as he turned his back.  He didn’t hear me, so I tried again.  “What have you been doing?” I asked.

“Aw, my corn fell over and I had to go stand it back up.  That storm we had last night knocked it all on the ground.”

My dad, sowing seeds

I remember well how important the garden is to him.  As a large family growing up, our gardens were our sustenance.  We practically had no yard, with both sides bearing fruit from the early garden and the late garden.  He worked hard in the sun all morning, then worked hard in the plant every evening to make sure we had all we needed and then some.   He always made sure our freezer was full of the vegetables that were grown with his sweat and hard labor.  If he only knew that finally, after all these years, I am realizing how priceless that food was because of his toil.

My Dad says he got his education behind a plow.  The red soil of South Carolina certainly was his medium for illuminating my perception of the world, both as a child and now.  

He taught me to work hard and enjoy the fruits of my labor.  Beating back the kudzu, tending to the corn, one stalk at a time after a storm crushed it to the ground and pulling out the weeds that tried to choke out his tender plants, he taught me tenacity in the face of obstacles that are beyond my control.  He thanked God earnestly for the food he worked so hard to provide us, and asked each time for strength as God blessed that food for our bodies--“our bodies, for His service.”

He teaches me still, through his stagger and in the sweat of his brow as he wrestles with his earthly shell of humanity just to walk from the garden to the house.  His hands are worn and sore; not nearly as useful to him as they once were, yet he uses them still, to the extent that he is able.  He wears glasses to read and uses a recliner with a lift feature.  He has fallen twice in the last week, “working” outside.  The second time he was in the garden.  No one knew he had gone there until it started to rain and he didn’t return to the house.  My mother went looking for him and found him lying on the ground in the rain covered in red mud, frustrated and soaked to the core.  My Daddy, who for so many years mastered the earth, had fallen victim to it.

After work on Tuesday I went by.  He was heading to the garden with a bunch of “sweet tater slips”.  It was starting to rain, and he decided that he should get them in the ground so they’d get a good soaking.  This became a team effort, Papa punching holes in the row with the handle of a hoe, Daniel and I dropping in the tater slips and Charlene covering them up.  Charlie was there with us, with a long stick, pretending to do as Papa did.  I experienced a few moments of euphoric nostalgia as I bent over the rows in my skirt and heels with my family around me.  The smell of soil, the sticky clay on my hands, and the big warm drops of rain on my back took me on my own journey through the past.  A journey where all I had to do was listen to Daddy’s instructions and do as he said,  because I was sure he knew best.  The sound of his voice telling Daniel to plant the slips deeper, make sure the row was straight, don’t step on the okra, was like a balm to my spirit.  It was sweet assurance that although time takes its toll on our bodies, the strength of the soul remains intact and bids us still, to press on.

RF

6/15/09

Ready for The Storm

On Saturdays, for  as long as I can remember, she has rolled her hair up tight in curlers and worn them around the house, even sleeping in them until Sunday morning.  It never made much sense to me, that she would go out to the store on Saturdays with her hair in curlers.  After all, does not a person put her hair in curlers so she can then style her hair so she will be presentable in public? 

Many of the things my mother did and said made little sense when I was growing up, but somehow, her idiosyncrasies seemed as normal as clouds in the sky or green grass beneath my feet.  I was reminded of one of her odd habits today, when as I was visiting my sister, a thunderstorm started brewing. 

"Y'all sit down!  It's comin' up a cloud!"  She'd say, as if our sitting down and being quiet would somehow quell the storm.  She always got really nervous during storms, telling us time and time again, the story of her aunt's house having been picked up by a tornado, spun around in the sky, and then dropped back down into place--kerplunk!  I'm not sure if that really evcn happened, but I still think about it to this day when I see news coverage of tornado damage.  It's odd to me, how the urgency in her voice when she told us to "sit down and  be-have" because a storm was coming, seemed completely normal.  I guess I thought that if I were up running around, not "being 'hayve" the storm would somehow seek me out and get me.  She told us the story of someone else she knew who was "struck buh lightnin'" when she foolishly dared to stir a pot on the stove during a storm with a metal spoon.

My mother's fears were many.  She was afraid of water--well, swimming particularly, but she always just said she was "Skeerd of water."  We have tons of family photos of our two-week summer vacations at the lake, our mother in the water only up to her knees with a dress on.  I never once saw her in a swimsuit.  Two weeks every summer, and she never got in the boat or went for a swim.  You know what she did with her time?  She cooked.  She worried.  She hung out clothes on a clothesline, and she swept dirt.  Yes, she swept dirt.

My mother never had a drivers license until I (the youngest child) grew up and left home. It was then that my father worked a second shift job, and without a daughter at home to chauffeur her around, Mama decided she was brave enough to get a license and drive herself.  She was apparently afraid to drive a car, especially after the episode (at the lake) where she backed the VW van into a tree just trying to move it back a few feet out of the way.

She was afraid of dogs.  In fact, her fear of dogs was so deeply seeded, that as a child, I was also very afraid of dogs.  There was a dog at my grandmother's house named Blackie and every time we drove up in Grandma's driveway, the warnings about Blackie would commence.  I became afraid of every dog--even our own dog to a certain degree. I was well into adulthood before I finally realized that dogs are not all rabid beasts, waiting to bite a chunk out of my leg.

She was afraid to let us ride our bikes in the road. "You'll get hit by a car!"    She was afraid to let us go skating, "You'll break your leg!"  She was afraid to let us get in the water without a life jacket, even after we could swim.  "You'll drownd!"  We weren't allowed in the barn, "You'll git snake-bit!"  We couldn't sleep in our room alone when Daddy wasn't home because she was afraid someone would come in and steal us and she wouldn't hear, so she slept in the room with us for years when my dad worked third shift.

Yes, my mother was a very fearful and protective woman--maybe even a little crazy at times.  Now that I'm an adult, I can better understand the restrictions she placed on us as children, even though at the time, we felt like we were missing out on things other kids got to enjoy.  I realize now, that she just loved us and wanted us to be safe.  Something in her life must have put her fear response in overdrive, but who knows what?  Maybe she grew up listening to horror stories of things that happened to other people, or maybe she really did see some pretty horrific stuff herself?  Either way, I grew up safe and sound, without getting blown away by any storms, run over by any cars, or drowning in lake Thurmond.  So, for all the insanity of growing up with an ever-phobic mother, I suppose I have something for which to be thankful.

If nothing else, sitting down in quiet reverence to the awesome wonder of a thunderstorm taught me to have respect for the power of God in nature--once I learned to quit worrying that the lightening was seeking me out for certain destruction if I moved a muscle before the storm was over.