In Gratitude

March 25, 2011: The redbuds are blooming, and I am remembering a grandmother's birthday. She has been physically gone from me for 34 years, but she is part of me and will always live in my heart and in the way I live my life. Mary Clyde Curley Terrell was born on this date in 1887 and lived until just weeks short of her 90th birthday. She loved me lavishly, taught me much of what I know about taking care of home and family, the gifts of hospitality and gardening. Her faith in God never waivered, throughout years of growing sons and a daughter (my mother), during which she endured the tragic death of her first son at age 13, loosing home and household to a fire, working ceaselessly as a farmer's wife to "make do". She never drove a car, did not have indoor plumbing until she had to move from her home to a small apartment when she was in her 80's. But she knew how to spread her table with a white cloth and gather flowers in a jar and make fried chicken Sunday dinners for her preacher and our family. She made patchwork and crazy quilts from clothing scraps that are still kept and passed on. She knew how to give a skinny litle girl good night kisses and tuck her into a feather bed. She made tea cakes and cornbread and chow chow. Near the end of her life on earth, sharing a room in a small nursing home, she saved her morning snack cookies and wrapped them in a napkin so she would have something to offer me when I came to see her. I saw the face of God in her face and felt His hands in hers. Thank you, Grandma. I am your namesake. You do live on, not just in me and in my sons, but in their children. I see the Redbud trees and greet another Spring, a precious reminder of ongoing life.