Just Folks Gettin By Part 6

The next day, Lucille got a letter and read it to Jenny over lunch. “Oh listen to this.  It’s from Cousin Sally, Aunt Lucy’s daughter.  Remember I told you Aunt Lucy had her widowed daughter and grandchildren livin’ with her.  Well, this is the one.  I sure was crazy about her.  Me and Velma run around with her a lot while I stayed there.  Anyway, listen to this:

 

Dear Lucille,

I hope this finds you well.  I made you a copy of that dishtowel embroidery pattern of Mama’s you wanted.  Remember how she done it up in yellow and blue to match them dishes she got down at the Five and Dime with her birthday money that time?   I done some for a wedding gift for Maybelline’s  daughter, Jessie’s wedding shower.  She acted like she really liked them.  I done two pair, one in blue and green and one pair in yellow and orange.  They didn’t look as good as Mama’s but the girl seemed like she liked them.  She said that’s the first bit of needlework anybody give her yet.  Used to didn’t nobody have no money to buy nothing, so I never got the habit of buying gifts I could make.  Bless her heart, if I was the gossiping type, I’d say that that gal’s going to need a baby shower soon, but that ain’t Christian, so I won’t. 

My garden is doing real good.  I already put up two hundred jars of tomato vegetable soup and fifty quarts of peas.  That soup will be real good this winter when we ain’t had nothing fresh in a while.  I can add a little meat when I get tired of it plain, but I never got the habit of needing meat every meal.  I know you remember we had meat it was just on Sunday, and then it was probably just an old hen that had quit laying Mama didn’t want to feed no more.  Boy, I was scared to death of them chickens after Mama cut their head off.   Lots of times they’d run in circles till they just dropped over.  I never thought much of something it didn’t need a head, especially after that one run me up under the porch.  I had nightmares about that for years.  You and Velma laughed like that was the funniest thing you ever seen.  I hid every time Mama killed a chicken after that.

Mavis (“That’s her daughter, Jenny”) is expecting in the next couple of weeks.  I am supposed go stay a few weeks after the baby comes to help out.  Soon as she found out she was thataway she made me promise to come.  She sent me a ticket last week.  I’m all packed just waiting to hear the baby is here.  I made arrangements with Myrtis down bus stop to git the mailman to let me know.  He always runs by nine and that would give me time to get to the noon bus.  It’ll get me to Bonneville by four and they can have somebody pick me up.  I sure hope they have a girl this time.  Them four boys is cute but Mavis is sure wanting another girl after she lost that baby girl last year that was a blue baby.  She ain’t got over it yet.  She says she’s carrying this one high like she did Brenda.  I’m hoping she’ll be too busy to keep on mourning.  It sure was a blessing when she found out she was thataway about two weeks after Brenda died. They would have been about sixteen months apart.  I’m worried about her, but I believe she’ll be okay.  Don’t forget to keep praying for her.

I better close.  You can write back to me at Mavis’s house at the same address you used last time.  I’ll let you know how things go.  Keep in touch.

                                                                                                               Love,

                                                                                                                Sally

Well, ain’t that nice she’s gittin’ to go stay with Mavis.  She was real worried about her after she lost her baby.  She wouldn’t git out of the bed for about three weeks till her husband told her she had to.  Sally said she walked around like a ghost till she found out this new baby was coming.  Sally was real worried about her.  I thought I wanted to die after your daddy got in trouble and Jimmy died, but I knew I had to scrap around and figure out some way to take care of you.  After that, I was workin’ so hard I just felt numb.  I do believe Uncle Marsh helping me git that dishwashing job saved me.  When I wasn’t workin’ I was so tired I staggered to the bed and passed out, then got up and did it again.  My best days was Monday’s when the café was closed.  I just lived to go see you on Mondays.”  Lucille mused.  

Jenny broke in, “Oh Mama, you’ll never know how I looked forward to your visits.  I was about the only kid who ever had a regular visitor.  It made me feel so special.  Sometimes we’d all be in the to the classroom and a couple would come in.  We weren’t supposed to know, but they were looking for a child.  All the kids would be looking at each other, real excited, hoping to get a chance to shine.  Later they’d whisper, wondering if they’d be chosen.  Once in a while, a kid would be called to meet folks, and we’d be buzzing, wondering if they’d be adopted.  I felt so happy, knowing I had you.  It put me in a special class all to myself.  Once in a great while another kid would be lucky enough to have a visitor, but no one else had a mama who came every Monday. You always reminded me we’d be together again with Daddy.  I didn’t much remember him, but I always held onto the idea of going home.

 

 

 

Heartbreaking Story of the Red-Headed Baby

According to gossip, Redheaded Connie and Callie were reputed to have been left on their Pentecostal aunt’s doorstep at birth. This fascinating tidbit guaranteed my interest.  I imagined them lying in a basket, long waist-length braids dangling from a basket, dusting the ground. They were high-school girls when I was in first grade, so I never gave them much thought beyond that.

Time to Come Together

Like the rest of America, I am devastated by the hatred incarnate that erupted to take the lives of these nine wonderful people in the church in the historic old Charleston church.  To think a man could spend an hour in prayer with people who’d embraced him, before turning on them, later saying, he almost backed out several times, but knew if he didn’t do this no one else would.  Would to God his heart had been more touched by their goodness and acceptance than the hatred he’d learned.  It’s time we all realized we are one.

Goodbye, Randy

A dear friend died this weekend.  He’d suffered for years, rarely complaining.  He was the best father I’ve ever known, even doing little girl hairdos with matching bows to socks and dresses.   His cardiac illness was first diagnosed twenty-three years ago, when his girls were tiny.  Thankfully, he recovered some cardiac function, enabling him to guide his daughters into warm, lovely adults.  Though it has to break their hearts to lose him, what a blessing it is his family had that twenty-three years.  The girls knew a great father instead of always hearing what a wonderful father he would have been.

What a blessing to be whole again after so many years of pain and struggle.  We’ll miss you, Randy.  Our tears are only for ourselves.