In a poetry class long ago, I embraced an assignment to honor “where I came from.” I had intended to write about my hometown of Fort Worth, but instead decided that I “came from” strong women. Instead of writing about a city or state, I wrote about my mother, my maternal grandmother, Marie, and her sister, my great-aunt Era.
Oh, I am amazed by my mother, who still travels the world, who lived through two tornadoes without complaint, and who chose home birth before home birth was cool. And I am amazed by my grandmother, who was a businesswoman through and through. As an enterprising widow in the 1950s, she operated a grocery store (where she did not shy away from being the butcher, for goodness sake), a fabric store, and a laundry service (It is true: a load of laundry spontaneously combusted in her hands). She was a female entrepreneur before women-owned businesses were cool. Or even possible. She fought breast cancer courageously and went home when I was just a baby.
But today I honor Aunt Era most of all. I loved and admired her so. She became a Christian in her forties, and as soon as she met the Lord, there was no stopping her; she loved like her life depended on it. She wanted to be a missionary every day and in every way, so for years she sent World Bible School correspondence courses to more than 2000 students in Nigeria (2000 people!) from her small town in Alabama. She and Uncle Bobby had no children, but she was a mother to every child she knew. She kept chocolate pudding, Coca-Cola, and thick, soft peppermint sticks in her house at all times. She ate nothing but homemade wheat bread and vegetables herself, but she always wanted to be prepared for a child’s visit. She had boxes of chalk for hopscotch in the driveway and tiny homemade furniture from Spam cans she’d cut and shaped, even sewn cushions for. She had a flannelgraph set from which she taught Bible stories; we’d play with it long into the afternoon. Children loved to visit Aunt Era. My brother and I visited her in Alabama many summers. My memories of her are rich and full. In fact, she was part of an original chapter that was cut from my memoir, Twelve Clean Pages. I will share that with you soon.
She must have been in her twenties or early thirties, sometime before she was married, when this portrait was made. As soon as I found it in an old box, I had it framed for my home. Reading a book. Who makes a portrait of themselves reading a book? Reading and writing were important to my Aunt Era. And that is one of the reasons that reading and writing are important to me, I’m sure. It could go without saying that her passionate faith shaped my own. When she cared for and served tirelessly her dying husband, enabling him to live far longer than doctors ever expected, I paid close attention. When she traveled to China in her 80s, not letting age dictate a thing about her, not a thing, I peered in closer. I learned from the letters she wrote to me. I learned from conversations we shared. I learned from the lessons she lived out in front of me. She was one of the most influential people in the shaping of my character. Of course I must honor her on Mother’s Day. You don’t have to have a child to be a mother. You just have to nurture one.
I pray that I will live a life of spiritual strength and gentle influence, in keeping with the women who taught me how to live bravely by being brave themselves.
In Keeping (2001)
My heels are as strong as my mother’s heels
who walked the globe until her soles wore clean through,
until she’d laced the Taj Mahal into her shoe
and Greece was a link around her ankle.
My neck is as strong as hers
who woke in the wailing dark,
when a tornado had taken her street into its mouth
and was choking on the rope of her bedroom curtains.
Who picked up the bricks of the houses she loved,
while other women stood
and screamed at the sky.
My teeth are as strong as hers
who bore thirteen pounds of my brother
in the back of the old gray house,
in silence
like Wang Lung’s wife.
My bones are as strong as my grandmother’s bones
who could lay a side of beef on a block,
and hack with a cleaver until her arms were sticky red.
Who tied sausage in the morning and hung it to smoke.
Who stirred tongues in a black pot all afternoon.
My spine is as strong as hers
who kept the town clean in a washtub,
her brow dripping in with the soap and the clothes.
Who pulled load after load from the dryer,
when Georgia was a Fury
cursing August to burn.
Even the air was dangerous,
so that sheets burst into flames.
Who dropped a blaze of laundry
just before it scorched her hands.
My eyes are as strong as hers
who still saw herself when her teeth were not her own,
nor her hair
nor her breasts.
My blood is as strong as my great aunt’s blood
who fell in love with a boxer,
and dreamed of seeing whatever was past Alabama
as soon as she could.
My lungs are as strong as hers
who then carried the fighter’s shriveled body
when he’d met his final match,
coming toe to toe
with Parkinson’s.
Who cleaned a hero’s bedpan for a decade of every day,
because if she didn’t, even once,
then who would?
Who put food in his newborn mouth
with a spoon.
And when I feel weakness creeping underneath my fingernails,
I envision her, after he is gone.
Knowing, and counting her nickels, smiling.
Knowing she is eighty and that now it is time.
There, she stretches her arms out,
closes her eyelids,
unknots pewter hair.
There, she stands in the coolest wind,
an old woman
on the Great Wall of China.