December 18, 2008

• Yesterday was my Mama’s birthday. She would’ve
  turned 75 if she were still living on this side of the River. Now she’s
  living in a place where life is not measured in years, but is ladled
  out in big dollops of joy.
  I wish you could’ve known her, because
  you would’ve loved her. And she would’ve loved getting to come up here
  to see us in our new hometown in the Ozarks and getting to know some of
  you.
  How can I describe Mama to you?
  Well, I can tell you what
  she looked like ... In her last years, wizened from osteoporosis and
  lung disease, she didn’t weigh 90 pounds soaking wet. But when I was a
  little girl, she was a true beauty, tall and very slender, with
  light-brown hair and green eyes and skin like silk — and the most
  perfect nose I’ve ever seen.
  When I was young and living in an old
  family home in our little Mississippi town, a man I’d never met knocked
  on my back door one morning. He turned out to be a native of the town,
  a relative of my in-laws who was at that time a well-known neurosurgeon
  in Memphis. While we were visiting, he  realized who my mother was.
  “Lucile Adams was the most beautiful girl who ever grew up in Macon,”
  he assured me very solemnly.
  I don’t know about that, but I do know
  she was voted “Most Beautiful” all four years at Macon High School.
  When I found the old annuals at her mother’s house and asked her about
  it, she just grinned and said, “Honey, this is a little town — there
  wasn’t much competition.”

  
  

  As beautiful as she was, Mama wasn’t the
  least bit vain. I can just see her, putting on her makeup as she walked
  through the house, slathering drugstore foundation over her cheeks and
  dabbing on a little lipstick without even looking in the mirror.
  She
  loved pretty clothes, but hated to shop, so she might have on something
  pretty and stylish, or she was just as liable to have on a pair of
  faded denim “pedal-pushers” and some beat-up white Keds.
  I can tell
  you what she collected. Santa Clauses. White china angels.
  Christmas-tree ornaments. R. S. Prussian china. Cranberry glass.
  Letters and cards from her children. Pictures of her family.
  I can
  tell you what she was good at. Telling funny stories, usually making
  fun of herself. Writing letters full of colorful details about our
  family’s lives, brimming with love and encouragement. Growing things.
  Perfectly folding an unwieldy fitted sheet. Matting and framing
  pictures. Decorating for Christmas. Making pecan pie and cornbread
  dressing and potato salad and the best fried chicken in the world.
  I
  can tell you what she didn’t like. Going very far away from home,
  wherever that happened to be at the time. Mushrooms. People who hurt
  her children.
  I can tell you a few things that will give you an idea of what kind of person she was.
  She
  took stray kids into her heart and into her home. When my younger
  brother and sisters were still at home, my folks were living in the DC
  suburbs. Mama took in a succession of their friends, kids whose parents
  had moved away before graduation, or who weren’t getting along with
  their families. They all adored Mama, and never forgot her. They knew
  she loved them.
  One of her special kids was a black boy named
  Curtis, who had been a friend of my brother’s in junior high school.
  Curtis, who lived with his grandmother, had a hard life. Mama took up
  time listening to him, and he knew he was always welcome at her house.
  Curtis went down the wrong road, and ended up in prison for selling
  drugs, but he stayed in touch with her. He would call Mama collect from
  prison when he needed encouragement, because he knew she loved him and
  was praying for him. He would send her cards on Mother’s Day.
  I
  can tell you what she loved ... She loved to laugh. She loved pie. She
  loved birds, especially redbirds. She loved flowers. She loved pretty
  antique china. She loved the old comedian, Jonathan Winters. She adored
  babies, and could get a fussing little one to settle down with a magic
  touch that I’m thankful to have inherited. She loved Christmastime. She
  loved her children and grandchildren, her family and her friends. And
  even though they were divorced after 30 years, and he married twice
  more before his death, she never stopped loving my Daddy.
  I can tell you a few of the memories of my mother I treasure most.
  Mama
  trying to teach us how to “Beat the Hambone,” a syncopated, rhythmic
  clapping, foot-tapping game she had learned from her black friends on
  the Mississippi farm when she was a little girl. Mama sitting at the
  breakfast table in about 1963, teaching me how to play jacks, scooping
  up the little metal stars so quickly you almost couldn’t see her
  slender hand. Mama holding my babies, looking into their eyes like they
  were windows into Heaven. Mama listening to me on the phone, laughing
  her wonderful, infectious laugh. Mama reading “The Three Billy Goats
  Gruff” to my little nephew Ben. Mama in her hospital bed, patting my
  hand, opening her green eyes to look at me and give me her sweet smile
  and tell me she loved me one more time.
  Mama’s unconditional love
  was something we could always count on. No matter what mistakes we
  made, or how we might have disappointed her, we always knew we could
  count on her to believe in us, to be on our side, to pray for us, and
  to never stop loving us.
  I believe Mama’s still doing all those things for her children.
  -----
  By Celia DeWoody
  Copyright 2008 Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times
  Published Dec. 17, 2008
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  • 9:53 pm
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