Reflections

Happy Birthday, Sis…

Today is my sister’s eightieth birthday. She is celebrating with the friends and family who are blessed to be there…I wish I could. Thankfully, I was able to spend time with her during my recent visit home to the South. We had a wonderful time as always. She gave Sharon and me another lesson on how to make her famous Southern cornbread, roast and gravy. Try as I might, mine will never taste as good.

I was almost three years old when she and her husband married. We were living in Memphis at the time, and the newlyweds were living in Mississippi. Her husband was working for the railroad at the time. They would travel by train every weekend so my sister “could come see her baby sister”.

She has always been there for me and for anyone who needed her. Her heart is made of gold.

Happy birthday, Sis. I love you.

Left to right: my sister, Gerry, a little friend, and my sister, Dorothy. The photo was made about 1935 in Pontotoc County, Mississippi. I love their dresses which Mama made. Notice the smocking on Gerry’s dress and the scalloped collar on Dot’s dress.

My sister, Gerry, at age eighteen.

Throughout the years, we’ve always had a photo of the “four sisters” made at every occasion. This one is one of my favorites and sits on my desk…

This photo was made during my visit home to the South last year. We were enjoying lunch on the square in Oxford, Mississippi.

Sweet tea and mysteries…

Family History/Genealogy, My Southern Heart, Reflections

My sisters, brothers-in-law, two of my nieces and I were sitting around the table after we finished lunch at my sister’s house in their small town in Mississippi. I was enjoying my second glass of sweet tea and the conversation that I would remember and miss when I returned home to Oregon. As I’ve shared with you before, I’m the youngest of four daughters…born when my parents were forty-one years old.

My parents bought a farm in the small village of Rena Lara, Mississippi, in 1935. I’ve always thought that I lived on that farm. I’ve heard the stories (I thought from my parents) that I had never been scared of the chickens and would march into the barn and tell them to “shoo”. I was told that I had wandered away from the farm and got stuck in the mud up to my little brown high tops at age two. It was my understanding that my big sisters had pulled me on the cotton sack as they “picked cotton”.

My sisters are 11 and 15 years older than I. My oldest sister passed away several years ago. SHE is the one who would have remembered all these little details. I sat down at the table with paper and pen and informed my family that we were going to do a “time-line” and to put their thinking caps on. An hour or so later, there was a very detailed timeline right there in front of me…a timeline that spelled out clearly that I had NEVER lived on that farm.

Evidently, all those stories really pertained to the sister who is eleven years older than I. Maybe my parents memories were a little fuzzy. Maybe they just didn’t want me to feel “left out”. I don’t know. They sold the farm in 1945 and moved to Clarksdale, MS., where I was born. My sister remembers pushing me in the stroller on the sidewalks of Clarksdale. There were no sidewalks on the farm. My niece Sharon was born in Clarksdale in September 1948. Not long after that, we moved to Memphis, Tennessee. I was almost three years old.

And so, for now, I have a bit of an identity crisis. For 64 years, I’ve thought that…at one time in my life…I was a farm girl. I rather enjoyed that picture. Me with the chickens, horses, cows and the big cotton fields. Evidently, it just didn’t happen.

Sweet moment in time…

Family, Reflections

I remember the day this picture was taken…just like it was yesterday. Actually it was late June, twelve years ago. Our family had rented a large oceanfront house in the village of Duck, North Carolina, on the Outer Banks. The house was perfect with an almost floor to ceiling bank of windows and a spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean. We were all there – Bill and I, our older son and his new bride, our daughter, her husband and their 5 month old son (our first grandchild) and our younger son…as well as two good family friends who were there for a few days of our vacation.

The weather was perfect…perfect for taking long walks on the beach and playing in the surf. We had spent the morning building sandcastles and playing in the ocean on the day this above moment in time was captured. After lunch, my daughter had tried to get my grandson to take a nap. In the end, they both fell asleep on the over-sized L-shaped sofa in the family room.

There’s something about seeing your baby with her baby, that tugs at your heartstrings and brings back memories. My grandson in the picture above is now twelve years old. He now has two younger sisters and a baby brother. My daughter was telling me just recently about how children grow up too fast. I know. Oh, how I know.

Mama and the violets…

Family, My Southern Heart, Reflections

African violets will always remind me of Mama. She loved them. She loved growing them…along with her peonies, daylilies, daisies, roses, their large vegetable garden and several varieties of fruit trees. She loved taking a “cutting” (a leaf at the steam) and creating a whole new plant – or propagating them. Mama never took a botany class or a horticulture class, but she grew up on a farm in Mississippi. Maybe that explains her amazing touch and love of all growing things.

The first time Mama started growing african violets, that I recall, was after Daddy retired and she and Daddy moved to Mississippi. There, they built a new house in the country, next door to my sister’s house on the hill. There was a large laundry room with a nice sunny window and that’s where the african violets lived. All colors and varieties lived happily side by side and thrived. Mama would mix up the special blue food for the violets, which she kept in a gallon milk container beneath the cabinet, and would feed the beautiful african violets regularly with it. I don’t know how she knew what to do, but she did.

Years ago, I grew these two small african violets. They were potted in the tiniest little green plastic pots and were beautiful. Totally different but each one exquisite. One had dark purple blooms and the other one white lacy blooms edged in purple. I sighed and shuddered at my next thought – I was afraid I’d kill them.

I tried to remember just what Mama had done and then I googled african violets. Come to find out, even without Google, Mama had been right all along. African violets need to repotted right away in a special soil mixture just for african violets. I purchased the special soil and two larger pots made of a lovely green glazed pottery.

African violets don’t like to be too hot or too cold. Basically, they like the same temperatures that people do. They don’t like to be too dry to too wet. They don’t like water on their leaves! They need enough indirect light but not too much. Come to think of it, they’re just downright finicky, but they reward you for your effort with the most beautiful blossoms.

I’m beginning to wonder if maybe, just maybe, I have inherited a tiny speck of Mama’s african violet gene…

Reflections…

Family History/Genealogy, My Southern Heart, Reflections

One afternoon during my granddaughters’ recent visit, I was sitting at the dining room table with them. The table was covered with fabric, thread, patterns and my portable Singer sewing machine. I was teaching my eight and almost ten year old granddaughters the basics of sewing – how to find the grain of the fabric, the selvages, laying out and cutting a pattern and safely operating the sewing machine.

In the midst of all of this, I mentioned that I wish I’d had a grandmother to teach me to sew and bake as I love to teach my grandchildren. It surprised them to learn that I had not known my grandparents. My father’s parents died before I was born. My mother’s mother passed away on June 10, 1951 and her father on June 15, 1952. I was five and six years old at the time of their respective deaths. I don’t remember them. I don’t remember what I called them. As I was growing up, my three older sisters talked about them…about how truly kind and good they were. Sadly, I don’t have those memories. Consequently, all my life, I’ve been drawn to old people…kind, old people. Perhaps that’s one reason I love being a grandmother so much…I know that I’m making memories for MY grandchildren.

Perhaps this is also why I’m so interested in my family’s history. There are volumes of information and geneological history that I have collected thus far…my late sister Dorothy and I. I’ve loved finding nuggets of information during the course of searching through census records, ordering birth and death certificates and traveling to courthouses in several states.

I remember finding great++ grandparents…and realizing that had I been researching my family’s history earlier in my life, my children might have had different names! I loved many of the family names I found. Some, not so much. There was a “John Benjamin”, “Mahalley”, “Matilda Caroline”, “Octavia Caldonia” (with Caldonia, I knew her ancestors were from Scotland), “Silas”, “Samuel Edward” and “Emmarella” to name a few.

I love the above photo of Mama. She was about eighteen here I believe.

My maternal grandmother, Mama’s Mama…Modena Emmarella Seals Haney (1872-1951). She was most likely in her early twenties here.

I wonder what my sons would have thought about being named Benjamin and Samuel? And my daughter could have been Emma Caroline. Hmmm….