Although I am still struggling with the current state of affairs in our country and the world, I would like to share the introduction to the second chapter of my proposed book, What Did I Tell You? So here goes…
Mother (Father) is the name for God on the lips and in the hearts of children. ~William Makepeace Thackeray
For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. ~William Ross Wallace
Standing at a scant five foot nothing, I was nearly as tall as my maternal grandmother by the time I was ten. Grandma’s height was a deceptive measure of her familial stature. As the eldest child and only daughter, she practically raised her passel of brothers, marrying one of their friends at the age of sixteen. When she wasn’t cooking, cleaning, sewing, mending, washing, ironing, soapmaking, gardening, canning, milking, churning, and tending the sundry livestock, she was toiling in the corn and tobacco fields alongside my grandfather. No stranger to hardship and loss, Mary Baker Webb gave birth, at home, to six children including twins, the younger of which was stillborn, the older twin dying after contracting pneumonia just before turning one. To her four surviving children, Mary was the magnetic pole that drew them back home, no matter how far away they wandered.
Despite the harsh conditions of her life, I knew Grandma Webb as a kind, gentle, patient, seemingly tireless woman of few words. She made the best stewed squirrel, fried chicken, rabbit, and fish I have ever eaten, not to mention the biscuits and cornbread. And her coconut cake was divine. She always had a pack of Juicy Fruit gum waiting in the wardrobe. She let me collect the eggs even though I occasionally dropped one. When her rooster chased me around the yard, threatening to cause bodily harm, she came to my rescue, catching him bare handed. Years later, I learned she wrung his neck. He was the guest of honor at our chicken and dumplings dinner that day. Grandma taught me all the basic embroidery stitches as well as the importance of making the backside of my work look as neat as the front. I don’t recall her ever saying the words, “I love you,” but I saw the message clearly in her sparkling eyes when we walked through the door and felt it in her welcoming embrace.
Just days following my eleventh birthday, Grandma died, having withered away only months after a cancer diagnosis. A few days after receiving the news, I sat on my mother’s bed watching as she readied herself for the funeral. Suddenly her composure crumpled. The image of my strong, capable mother dissolving into tears, her face buried in her hands muffling the words, “My mother is gone. I don’t have a mother anymore,” is as vivid today as it was over fifty years ago.
Prior to that occasion, I had never considered Grandma as my mother’s mother. She was just Grandma. Actually, I had never thought of my parents as having once been children with parents of their own. They were grown-ups, the stable hub around which my world revolved. They were my parents. They had always been my parents. But they had not always been parents.
