Category: Jeanne’s Barefoot Heart (Page 14 of 99)

There are several milestones in a girl’s life, like leaving the little whiter-than-white frilly lacy fold-down socks behind and donning stockings. One spring, everybody in my 12-year-old Baptist Sunday School class – Dianna, Ginger, Elender, Pam, Jean, Jane, Joan, Susan, Linda, MaryLynn, Mary – fell all over themselves telling me that their mothers were letting them wear stockings on Easter Sunday.

“Are y’all telling me the truth?” I asked them through narrowed eyes. I’d known every one of them since the cradle.

“Yeah, really. Mama said I could wear stockings on Easter Sunday, and I didn’t even have to ask her,” they assured me, each in turn. Ginger added “Is your mama gonna’ let you wear hose or do you still have to wear those little girl socks?” and stuck her tongue out at me for good measure.

I relayed the information to Mother, and because she (a) heard it 15 times an hour for three weeks straight, (b) knew each of the other girls and mothers involved, and (c) could not bear the thought of her daughter being ostracized she eventually said “Okay, Jeanne. Since you’re my favorite daughter, You can wear hose to Sunday School and church on Easter.”

We went to Alford’s (the groceries/furniture/toys/clothes/lawn mower/everything store in town) to buy my garter belt and stockings, then Mother and I did a little bonding as she gave me a lesson in how to slide the little rubber plug into the hook to hold the top of the hose in place gave me a little pamphlet that told me in words and diagrams how to use the garter belt and she went outside to work in her flowers. Every morning, I opened that box with the shiny pink paper on top to eye the folded-up stockings, and every night before I went to bed, I took the lid off that box with the shiny pink paper on top and eyed those stockings.

Easter morning dawned crisp and sunny, and I sang all the favorite Easter hymns – Christ Arose!, He Lives!, Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade! – as I rolled those stockings down, pulled them over my toes, then unrolled them all the way up to my thighs and the waiting garter belt. I put on my white patent leather shoes, and as a bonus, Mother said since I was old enough to wear hose, I could put the strap behind the heel instead of wearing it over my arch. Two things ticked off of my Milestone Bucket List on the same day. Life was good.

Mother pulled that aircraft carrier sized Oldsmobile into a parking place, and since that was the year she taught the 14-year old girls Sunday School class, we walked into the Ingram house then into the Sunday School assembly together. I could feel all eyes on me as I strutted strolled walked down the aisle to take my seat with my classmates . . . and this time all eyes really were on me.

On my legs and feet, to be more specific.

It all happened so fast.

Feeling a little giddy with the enormity of becoming a young woman right alongside my friends, I took my seat then bent down to look at their stockinged legs, and saw 22 feet, all wearing whiter-than-white frilly lacy fold-down socks. When my eyes made their way up to the faces of my former friends, not a one of them was looking at me. Except Ginger who wanted to be sure I saw it when she stuck her tongue out at me.

My mother took it all in, too, and instead of taking her seat on the pew with her class, she turned herself right around and marched – yeah, I’d definitely call it a march – right back down to the Oldsmobile, backed out of the parking space, drove home, retrieved my whiter-than-white frilly lacy fold-down socks, drove back to the church, parked the Oldsmobile, knocked on my Sunday School class door, thrust the socks in my hand and told me by way of her body language, to go to the bathroom and make the change. Pronto. Faster than pronto. Quicker than faster than pronto. And she was not smiling. Not one little bit.

As it turned out, my friends weren’t ganging up on me (except for possibly Ginger), they were simply indulging in a strength-in-numbers positive-thinking-can-make-anything-happen campaign that went bad.

It was a long time before Mother rolled the stone away from the cave where she buried those stockings and let me put them on again. In fact, the next time a pair of hose touched my legs was the day I walked down the aisle to say “You betcha” to The Engineer.

We had just asked for the check when a young man spotted Mother and scooted onto the booth beside her. “Is that your golf cart with a for sale sign on it?” he asked, pointing out the window.

“Un huh,” Mother said.

“Why are you selling it?”

“I want a new one.”

“A new one? Do you need a new one? What’s wrong with that one?” he asked.

“Nothing’s wrong with it. I just want a new golf cart.”

“Must be nice to be able to get a new golf cart just because you want one,” he said.

“Do you want a new golf cart?” Mother asked him.

“I’d love to have a new golf cart. Maybe if I had married well, I could get a new golf cart just because I want one. Or if I was blessed or if I had inherited a lot of money. Or if my spouse made big bucks, then I could get a new golf cart just because I want one.”

I honestly believe he thought he was being funny . . . bless his heart . . . but I do not share his sense of humor.

“Now wait just a cotton pickin’ minute,” I said. “My mother may, indeed, be blessed, but she can afford to buy a new golf cart because for decades, she lived beneath her means . . . which is to say she saved money. She did marry well, but you insult my mother when you say that her husband or her parents or her in-laws made the money that allows her to buy a new golf cart. My daddy was a good entrepreneurial provider. It was my mother who brought home the steady paycheck, who provided the health insurance, who built up a retirement nest egg. How dare you dismiss Mother, her abilities, her efforts, and her career. She may never have been paid what she’s worth, but my mother is buying a new golf cart with money she earned.”

He never saw it coming, and I’m not sure he gave it a second thought when he left. But my mother, who’d most likely never considered things from my perspective, sat up a little straighter and beamed.

And I’ll have you know, she sold the golf cart before we paid for our breakfast and bought the new one that very afternoon. She’s still driving it, too.

When Aunt Rene died, we found only two books in her house: How to Play Canasta Without Cheating that I told you about yesterday and her Bible. Her well-worn, falling-apart, oft-used black leather Bible.

I’ve always said you can tell a lot about a Southern woman by what she keeps in her Bible, and Aunt Irene proves me right with the poems and quotes that meant enough for her to tuck safely away between the pages of her Bible. If you were lucky enough to know Aunt Rene during her stay here on earth, you’ll be nodding your head at what an accurate portrait these saved treasures paint of her. If you didn’t know her, read on and you will . . .

THOUGHTS FOR MEDITATION
The more of friendship you display
the more will come your way.
The more kindness you bestow
The more gladness you will know.
The more for others you can do
The more you’ll find they’ll do for you.
The more desire you have to give
The greater is the life you’ll live.

~~~~~~~

JUST FOR TODAY
My goal today is to make someone happy.
I will expect less of others and more of myself.

I will do my best to give more than I receive
and love others as much as I love myself.
I will try to see Christ in the face of each person I meet.

~~~~~~~

A VERY SPECIAL RECIPE
1 cup common sense
1/2 cup of justice
1.5 cups of love
1.5 teaspoons mutual confidence

Add 2 large portions of sense of humor.
Spice to taste with wit and nonsense.
Bake in a moderate oven of warm approval.
Cover with generous appreciation.

~~~~~~~

TEN BEATITUDES
(FOR THOSE WHO HAVE LOVED ONES
OF MATURE YEARS)
1
Blessed are they who understand
my faltering days and palsied head.

2
Blessed are they who know that my ears today must strain
to catch the things they say.

3
Blessed are they who seem to know
that my eyes are dim and my wits are slow.

4
Blessed are they who look away
when coffee spilled at the table today.

5
Blessed are they with a cheery smile
who stop to chat for a little while.

6
Blessed are they who never say
“You’ve told that story twice today.”

7
Blessed are they who know the ways
to bring back memories of yesterday.

8
Blessed are they who make it known
that I am loved, respected, and not alone.

9
Blessed are they who know I’m at a loss
to find the strength to carry the Cross.

10
Blessed are they who ease the days
on my journey home in loving ways.

(copied from St. John U.M.C. Bulletin, Augusta)

~~~~~~~

If someone were to pay you 10 cents for every kind
word you ever spoke about people, and
collect 5 cents for every unkind word,
would you be rich or poor?

~~~~~~~

SUMMER SANCTUARY
I cannot think an unkind thought
When working in my garden.
My heart is full of tolerance,
Forgiveness, love and pardon.
I cannot harbor hate or greed
When working with the flowers,
So I shall harvest love enough
To last through winter hours.

~~~~~~~

Is anybody happier because you passed his way?
Does anyone remember that you spoke to him today?
The day is almost over, and its toiling time is through,
is there anyone to utter now a kindly word of you?
Can you say tonight, in parting with the day that’s slipping fast,
that you helped a single brother of the many that you passed?
Is a single heart rejoicing over what you did or said?
Does the man whose hopes were fading
now with courage look ahead?
Did you waste the day or lose it?
Was it well or sorely spent?
Did you leave a trail of kindness,
or a scar of discontent?
As you close your eyes in slumber,
do you think that God will say,
You have earned one more tomorrow
by the work you did today?
Always leave home with a kind word –
it may be the last.

~~~~~~~

The Daily Dahlia #67

Canasta was Aunt Rene’s game of choice. Don’t tell my mother, but when I spent the night with Aunt Rene, we’d stay up till 10 o’clock playing canasta at her kitchen table. When I married The Engineer, we pulled up another chair to the table and asked him to join us. We stayed married, but it was embarrassing watching him play canasta. He may know how to build magnificent buildings, and he may know how to jack a house up to fix the foundation and he may know how to construct roads and bridges, but he sucks at playing canasta.

He just never quite got the hang of the game . . . or at least how Aunt Rene and I played the game. Every now and then, for example, Aunt Rene needed a few more cards, so she’d pick up the discard pile and proceed to make good use of it. The Engineer somehow got the idea that it was okay for him to do the same, so he’d pick up the discard pile and commence to melding and adding cards to his hand. Before he got far enough to mix up the cards, Aunt Rene would look over the top of her glasses and inform him, “That’s not allowed.”

“But you just did it,” he said.

“No I didn’t,” Aunt Rene said with the best poker face you ever saw.

“Yes you did,” The Engineer argued, clearly baffled.

“Put the cards back down,” she’d tell him. “We don’t like cheaters.”

At his first Hewell Family Christmas party, The Engineer gave Aunt Rene a book called How to Win at Canasta Without Cheating. Aunt Rene opened the package, saw the title of the book, and without missing a beat passed it right back to The Engineer saying, “I don’t need this, you do.” If amortized, that book was the cheapest Christmas present ever because it just went back and forth between The Engineer and Aunt Rene every year till she died.

Book or no, we never, ever invited The Engineer to our canasta game ever again. He was just too darn much trouble. You had to watch him every minute.

These women – Ada Hewell (a.k.a. Mother, back row, far left), Helen Voyles (a.k.a. Mama Helen, back row, far right), and Opal Howell (a.k.a. Mama Opal, seated in front) – worked together for a long, long time. At first, their office was in the red brick building at the corner of Hwy. 54 and Hwy. 85 mere feet from the Fayette County Jail. If a prisoner was deemed trustworthy, he was given the title of Trustee and sent out into the town to perform various duties like emptying trashcans, sweeping floors, moving furniture, carrying heavy things in from trucks, etc. Barring illness, Mother, Mama Helen, and Mama Opal saw the Trustee every single work day. These women got to know the Trustees. They baked them birthday cakes and bought Christmas presents for the Trustee and his family members. When the Trustee was on the eve of release, they bought new clothes and shoes for him to wear out into the world. If the Trustee became a law-abiding citizen, these women beamed with happiness for him and his loved ones. If the Trustee broke another law and wound up back in jail, these women sighed, shook their heads, and expressed their disappointment before returning their attention on the current Trustee. They were sometimes disappointed in an individual Trustee, but they never gave up on Trustees as a whole.

Here in Cashiers, N.C., a few residents quietly bought up the land at the major intersection (and site of one of our two traffic lights) and donated it to the town to form the Village Green. Local merchants and service organizations host arts and crafts shows and concerts there during the summers. There are grills, picnic tables, playgrounds, restrooms, walking paths, and more. Every other year, sculptors are invited to display one of their pieces in the Village Green. Local folks vote on their favorite, and the sculpture with the most votes is purchased and goes on permanent display at the Village Green.

Another family donated land and money to build a lovely, well-appointed library that rivals facilities located in much larger towns. During the winter, a fire burns in the fireplace in the comfortable reading room that’s located across the hall from the lovely conference room. Both rooms are available for local residents to use as needed. On the other side of the library is a large room with a raised stage that local residents can use free of charge for all sorts of things.

Citizens like this exist everywhere, but often you have to dig for the stories or maybe you just stumble across it by accident because these ordinary citizens aren’t looking for attention. They are just doing what they know is Right and Good.

When I was in undergraduate school, there were sit-ins and flag burnings and marches – all attended by people as far as the naked eye could see. A few decades later when I went to graduate school, there was much talk of activism and “the greater good”. Protests and demonstrations had to be big, involve large numbers of people, and capture media attention.

But let us never forget that:

Societal change doesn’t have to mean disruption and destruction.
Making the world a better place can mean making your community a better place.
Enkindling change doesn’t have to be splashy and noisy enough to make the 6:00 news.
Quiet activism is still activism.
And quite often, in changing one individual life, many are changed in the process.

(The fob Granddaddy Hewell carried on his keychain)

On May 5, 1933, while my granddaddy was changing from his banking clothes to his farming clothes, came a knock at the door. Granddaddy opened the door to find four bandits who’d come to rob the bank. Even back then, the vault was on a time lock, so with nothing to do till the next day, the bandits did what I suppose makes sense to any bandit’s mentality: they held my family hostage overnight then kidnapped Granddaddy the next day. My daddy was 5 years old and the uncle I am named after was a babe-in-arms.

Times were hard in May of 1933. At 1:00 a.m. on Monday, March 6, 1933, only thirty-six hours after his inauguration (and two months before the bandits came to call on my family), President Roosevelt issued Proclamation 2039 ordering the suspension of all banking transactions for three days, effective immediately. Before the three days were over, the Banking Holiday, as it came to be called, was extended for another four days. It’s estimated that as many as 4,000 banks failed during the year of 1933 alone. Maybe because they felt they had nothing to lose, bank robbers – like Bonnie and Clyde, for example – became daring and glamorous. As they later told officials the five bandits (Four came to the door while one stayed out of sight because he was a local boy whose entire family was known to Grandmother and Granddaddy.) had aspirations of becoming famous.

I’m writing these 100 stories as a gearing up for spending next year writing the book I’ve spent my whole life working on . . . a book about this particular event in my family’s history. So imagine my surprise when I opened the mail yesterday – yesterday, I tell you – to find a letter informing me that the bank that holds my business account and safe deposit box has been declared a “failed institution” and closed by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance.

Dear Sweet Spirit of Surprise,

If you closed the bank and sent the letter to get my attention or to give me the supportive thumbs up or to nudge me forward by giving me a deeper empathy with folks who probably didn’t receive a letter in 1933, well, you shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.

Your Admirer and Faithful Servant,
Jeanne

Yesterday we took a ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway,
and out of my memory banks fell remembrances
of how one Sunday every fall, we got up at dark thirty,
met a few families at the courthouse,
and caravaned to the mountains to see the colorful leaves.

We stopped at a roadside picnic table,
and after lunch,
the kids took a walk in (yes, IN)
the nearby creek
while the parents relaxed and talked up a blue streak.
(The sun photobombed this photo from yesterday.)
(Which is perfectly fine.)

My friends laughed and skipped
from stone to stone on one foot,
and I joined them . . .
for maybe two stones
before I fell into the creek.
I was clutsy, no question about that.
(And I’ve not developed physical grace with age.
I’m still unsure on my feet
when walking to the falls that are at our front door.
The Engineer says I need to put my feet down with more authority.
I say he just needs to hold my hand.)

We never had a towel
and had usually thrown away the picnic napkins
on those childhood day trips,
so I’d just drip dry,
and shiver all the way home
despite being wrapped up in Daddy’s suit jacket.

Now it’s true
that we went to the mountains to see the leaves,
and it’s true
that we had a picnic,
and it’s most definitely true
that I fell into the creek every darn time.
But I can’t imagine why Daddy
would wear a coat and tie for a leisurely day-long drive
through the mountains of north Georgia.
That just doesn’t make sense.

Stories are constructed.
Memories are fallible.
Some tales are ruined by questions.
Some tales are never questioned and should be.

But that doesn’t mean stories shouldn’t be told.