Another Day

I got the beans picked this morning.  I cannot pick beans without thinking about mama.  It's not possible!   If you picked beans with mama, without fail, she would remind you to, "watch out for old snakes".  You know Shirley was picking beans one time and reached under a bean vine and there lay an old Copperhead"!  Mama used to get the beans snapped, washed, and in the pot and then put small new potatoes on top of the beans.  I can see her now adding the fried-out fat back grease.  A tablespoon at the time slowly drizzled over the potatoes so it could run down into the beans.  She put the lid on the pressure cooker and knew exactly how long to cook the beans.  Sometimes she would put pods of okra on the beans instead of potatoes.  Daddy loved okra cooked on top of green beans.  Everything mama did, be it cooking, cleaning, or raising us children, she did with love and care and most of all patience.   Even something like polishing silverware.  I can just see her picking up each piece, as if there was something special about that one piece, wiping it clean and gently putting it away again.  I wish I had more of that quality...my rule of thumb...give it a lick and a promise and move on!! 

Mama probably had been cleaning in this old picture...This was many years ago...the 1940's.  Still glamorous and beautiful...We were living in Summerville, South Carolina.  I remember the moss that hung from the trees.

Mama fussed at Shelby the most about keeping her room clean.  (late 1950's)  Sorry Shelby!!!  Remember what a mess your room was most of the time? :)  Not a dirty mess, but messy!!  Shelby loved magazines, books, and papers of all kinds...reading and studying and collecting...with (as mama used to say) her head in a book all the time!!!  That's where my head should have been instead of laying on my back on the cedar chest all day, daydreaming about being a movie star!!! :)  Arriving home from school one day (we were teenagers then), mama met us at the door and said, guess what I did today?  Shelby said, "what, blasted my room off the end of the house???  Of course we thought that was funny!!!  Mama probably didn't see the humor.  What mama was going to say was,  "I crawled around on my hands and knees today waxing these hardwood floors, so wipe your feet before you come in "!!!

Have I told you how much Shelby has always loved babies, always?  In this old picture (late 1940's) of Aunt Eva holding cousin John, you can see it in Shelby's eyes; she wanted so much to hold that baby.   Shelby seriously wanted to be a pediatrician and should have been...you know how things have a way of not working out.  Dreams not coming true!  Shelby has the brains to be a doctor, she also has the patience.  Shelby was the smartest in school...always in the Beta Club and making straight A's!  Jackie and I barely got by.  Daddy used to try to help me in arithmetic, fractions...he would finally give up, shaking his head as he walked off. 

 Mama never learned to ride a bicycle. (late 1940's)  I remember that about her.  I also remember when this picture was taken, even though I was very young...like second grade.   Mama was afraid the bicycle would turn over, that's why she was so close to the porch.

I keep going back and forth talking about the 1940's and 1950's.  My choking on a jawbreaker happened in the 1950's.  I was laying on the couch in the den watching The Art Linkletter show when I jumped up to say something to Shelby.  I inhaled to speak and that jawbreaker went right down and stuck in my throat.  Mama had been in the bathroom getting a bath and she rushed out in a panic and began slapping me on the back as I walked bent over around the kitchen table.  As it turns out, I had put my lipstick, my very first tube of lipstick, a little blue metal tube that costs me .15 cents at Lee's Dime Store, in my shirt pocket.  I was so bent over that the lipstick fell out of my pocket and hit the floor...mama said, "thank the Lord", thinking it was the jawbreaker that had hit the floor.  As I straightened up, holding my throat, motioning that I was still choking, I swallowed and the jawbreaker went on down!!!  Truly, thank the Lord, I could have died!!  Something from that story I think about a lot is the fact that Mama ran out of the bathroom to help me, in her slip, a full slip.  I had never seen mama in her slip before.  She was very ladylike, very modest.  She taught Shelby and me to be modest and I am very grateful for that.

Good gracious!!  Am I wound up today!!  Wonder if sitting here at this computer, enjoying this blog, (thank you, Lynn) has anything to do with more leg pain lately?

Love, 
Henny Penny