Celebrating Life

Celebrate your life. See it and yourself as a blessing. Don’t wait.                                                                                 --- Maria Shriver 

As we write about our lives, we learn much about ourselves. I have learned things about my family that I didn't understand before I began to write about my parents and my siblings. 

I want to celebrate each family member's life because each one was a blessing to me. I wrote about my brother, Ray, recently and as I did, I thought about how blessed I was to have him as my brother.

I plan to write about each family member on this blog as I celebrate their lives. I hope these blog posts will entertain you, my readers, and enlighten you about what life was like for them in the twentieth century. 

I will start with my mother. She was born in Decatur County, Georgia on a farm near a community called Spring Creek. Like me, she was the next to last child in her family, the daughter of William Henry and Lula.  ( I will not use last names due to privacy issues.)

My Mother, Lois, when she was a young woman

The ancestors of both William and Malula had migrated from the Carolinas and Virginia in the 1700s and 1800s. Their fathers had fought in the War Between the States (Civil War) and their great-grandfathers fought for our freedom in the Revolutionary War.

Mother's name was Georgia Lois. She had an aunt Georgia Ann and was named after her. But Mother preferred Lois and never told anyone her name was Georgia unless she had to legally give her full name. 

I believe Mother's life was a blessing to all who knew her. I never knew her to say or do anything to hurt another. She had a tender heart and a caring spirit. She told me how much she respected and loved her father. She said he often took her to the big church in Pelham where they lived. She remembered him taking her by the hand and walking across the railroad tracks to the town where they entered the large Methodist church. 

She didn't mind or feel less worthy because she didn't have fine clothes like most of the other people in the pews on Sunday mornings. 

Lois had a loving family and always knew she was loved. Because of that, I believe she had a good self-image and her confidence in herself was seldom shaken. 

Willie and Lula, Lois's parents were grateful for the textile mill that Mr. J.L. Hand built in Pelham, GA because the farm work all summer in the hot sun was horrible for Lois's sisters and her mother who worked in the fields with the men. Planting in the spring, hoeing weeds out of the corn and cotton, and harvesting in the fall took a toll on their skin and their health. In the 1880s farming was done by hand. There were no tractors, no equipment to make work easier, and certainly no slaves as most people think did all the farm work. The Civil War ended in 1865.

Mother's sisters and brothers were born in the mid to late 1800s. Lois was born in 1904 and that was about the time the family left the farm and moved to the little town of Pelham where life would be so much better for all of them.

The older children worked in the mill but Willie did not. He became the maintenance man for the mill, the mill houses, and Mr. Hand's other properties and his family lived in a house on Wilkes Avenue rent-free. 

 Willie and Lula with their daughter, Mildred in early 1900s

As I heard Mother talk about her childhood and her family, I could tell she was a happy child. The only time she remembered being spanked was when she threw the pan of dishwater on her brother Rudolph as he sat on the steps of the back porch. He had been sick and was recovering from the illness. But Lois was a child, two years younger than he, and she did it because she wanted to tease him. She would never have wanted to hurt him. She adored him.

She always felt bad about that incident. She said, "Mama told me I could have killed him because he was not well and could have gotten sick again."

I have a beautiful memory of the love between this brother and sister. Mother almost died from a ruptured aneurysm on her Carotid artery in 1975. She was in the hospital for a long, long time. She didn't know her own children because her brain was damaged from the swelling. But she recognized love. One day when I went to see her in the ICU, I stopped to watch Rudolph feeding his sister from her food tray. I knew that she knew him or knew she loved him. She smiled at him when he talked to her. She was seventy years old and he was a couple of years older at that time. 

Not too long after Mother came home and regained much of her physical ability, she and I were called with the sad news that my uncle Rudolph was extremely ill in the hospital. We went there and sat in the waiting room with family members. But we were allowed to go in to see him one time. He was not conscious and was soon to leave this world. Like so many of her family that had passed away, Mother always remembered him as he was when she and he were young. 

Lois's life as a young girl was filled with friends like Mary, who had a crush on Rudolph that was not reciprocated. Lois and Mary would sometimes sit up with the dead. As long as the two of them were together they didn't mind doing that for the older folks. It was a custom then for the dead person to lie in his coffin at home the night before he was buried. Visitation was held at the home instead of a funeral home as is done today. 

Another brother, Dewey, played a large part in Lois's life. When she and Coy Council married in Albany at the Justice of the Peace office, they had no home to go to. Dewey and Sadie, his wife, invited the newlyweds to stay with them until they could find a place to live.

My father had no money when he married my mother but they had been apart for too long and had waited too long to be together. Lois was always appreciative of Sadie who took her in and made her feel very welcome. 

I never heard my mother complain about her lot in life. She had lived in a comfortable loving home before she married my father. But once she married, she had children and also worked outside the home when she could to bring in more income. She said she sold shirts for a while and I am sure she was good at it. But the babies kept coming. Her husband was in Florida when the first child was born and she was in Pelham with her parents. He was working for his brother who had a farm and Coy planned to bring his wife down to Palmetto as soon as he could.

The three years they spent in Florida was the only time my mother was actually unhappy. They lived in a rental house in a bad neighborhood and Coy took a second job working at night. She was overjoyed when, after the second child was born her husband decided to move back to Georgia. 

The next few years were good for the family because they rented a store which my father referred to as the Filling Station because there were gas tanks out front. The family lived in the back of the store and both Coy and Lois worked there. The third and fourth children, two boys were born there. 

But the Great Depression came hard in the late 1920s and thirties. Soon there were no customers because no one had any money. The mills closed and that left many people out of work. Coy and Lois and their kids lived off the food in the store until they had to give up the filling station and move into another house that had been Coy's sister's house. 

Because my parents always found a way to have chickens and a milk cow where they lived, my family did not suffer hunger. But Mother learned ways to stretch a few eggs and a little milk to feed her children. And she seemed to know more than one way to cook chicken. 

Lois was hit hard by the death of her mother, Lula, soon after moving back to Pelham. Seventy-five years later, Lois stood by her mother's grave and said, "I miss you so much. You were the sweetest thing to me and I wish I could talk to you again." Tears ran down my mother's cheeks and I cried as well. After Mother's brain was damaged and she lost her short-term memory, the people she knew and loved when she was a child and a young person were remembered better than her own children. 

Lois Council was the glue that held our large family together. She was the calm one who did not overreact or get panicky. She almost died when her gallbladder burst, but she overcame that and was soon back in her kitchen cooking for us.

 

At one time she had a little dairy business. She sold milk and homemade butter and buttermilk to her neighbors when the family lived in Lakeside in Dougherty County. Those were some of her happiest times because she had dear neighbors who liked to visit with her. She was in her mid-thirties and enjoyed having morning coffee with the ladies in the neighborhood. Lois enjoyed people and never met a stranger. She would talk to people in the elevator when we went to the dentist. She talked to people in line at the grocery store. I find I do the same thing now.

For six years she lived on a farm in hot south Georgia with no air conditioning and no electricity. She knew coal oil lamps, and ice boxes with a place for a fifty-pound block of ice in the top section that kept the milk and butter cool and meat from spoiling. She knew a kitchen with only cold water coming from the faucet. She cooked vegetables from the garden on a wood stove and sewed on a Singer sewing machine with a treadle. She killed chickens to cook for dinner when a family of relatives showed up unannounced. She seldom used a cookbook when she was in the kitchen and as a result, she left very little of her cooking knowledge to me. The only thing she taught me was how to make biscuits. She was an expert at that. 

The Rural Electric Association ran lines out to our land in 1947. She was glad to get an electric stove and a hot water heater in the house. Electricity made a huge difference in her workload every day. 

When I think about those years when Mother had two babies and didn't have a washing machine or dryer, I sympathize with her.  Everything was washed by hand and hung outside on a clothesline. But she never complained. 

She never said, "I am so tired I need to lie down and rest." 

She woke up early and cooked a big breakfast for her large family. And as soon as the kids were off to school or everyone went to work, she started the noon meal which we called "dinner". In the summer the first thing she did was go to the garden and get peas, beans, corn or okra to cook. Sometimes she had no meat but made a delicious vegetable meal. With her hot biscuits or hoecake cornbread, no one ever complained. 

No matter how much she had to do she always had time to sit down with me and let me tell her about my day or my troubles. She made me know she cared. I feel sure she was the same with each of her children.

Next time, I will tell about my mother as she aged, the sorrows that befell her, and the joys she experienced. I was the only daughter who lived near her and we spent much time together. She was always good company and always a good listener. In spite of the hardships and sacrifices she made, Mother said she had a good life.

Another day at home alone because of Covid-19.

Today, March 27, was sunshine-filled, and I wanted to get out and do something outdoors. We have had rain, rain and more rain lately. It was a day for hiking, gardening and doing any kind of work outside. But I did not work outside.

Yesterday was a Computer Day.
I worked almost all day at my desk. And, I paid for it last night. Sitting too much or too long causes me such pain it is hard to sleep even after doing the stretches and exercises I am supposed to do. I need physical therapy, but can’t go now.

I have six students in my virtual writing class. I edit their work and give them instructions and comments that I hope they read and learn from. As the class proceeds, I can see what each student needs most. So they receive individual help according to what I see in their work.  We have a couple who are early beginners, and some who are about ready to publish. All of them continue to learn in my class. They are working on using dialogue in their stories, true and fictional. They are learning to use dialogue to show characterization. It is fun and interesting to read the great stories by these adult students.

I knew I had to get away from the computer, so today I cooked.

I decided to make something I could eat on for several days and use what I had in my house. One of my favorite dishes is my New Year’s Eve Black-Eyed peas. Using dried peas, I bring them to a boil for two minutes, soak them for about two hours, drain them and put them in my crock pot. Cover all with half chicken broth and half water. I add a chopped onion, half a green pepper, garlic, salt and pepper and cook until the peas are soft. 

I have been thinking for several days that I wished I had some Brunswick stew, a mix of meats, tomatoes, and vegetables. I didn’t have the canned meat on hand, so I ordered one half pound of cooked chopped pork and a half barbecued chicken from Rib Country, a great Bar-B-Q restaurant. They are now offering take out, so I called in my order and about fifteen minutes later picked it up without leaving my car. (I sanitized everything before taking inside)

I had enough pork to make a sandwich and still have plenty left. Soooo good! I love barbecue pork sandwiches. 

Next I gathered what I could find that would complete my dish. I had two cans of chopped tomatoes, an onion, catsup, barbecue sauce that came with the meat, Worcester sauce, and Tabasco sauce. I didn’t have any canned corn which the recipe calls for, but I had frozen corn. I poured out about a half cup, thawed it in the microwave, and found left over lima beans in my fridge. All of it went into the stew and boy, is it good! Lexie smelled it cooking and began begging for a bowl. Naturally, I shared with her.

This set me to thinking about my mother when I was a little girl. She did not have easy access to a super market like we have today. She bought groceries once a week at the local store, but she could always create a good meal from what she had in the kitchen. She made biscuits or cornbread for every meal. We always had eggs and milk because we lived on a farm. At times she would make gravy with eggs when she didn’t have enough for each of us to have one. The gravy over those wonderful hot biscuits along with some bacon or sausage was more than enough to fill the stomachs of her children and make everyone happy.

Perhaps at times like these when we can’t always have what we take for granted, it is good to see if we can do with less. I am going to try to make my last two rolls of paper towels last twice as long as I have in the past. Mother didn’t even have paper towels when I was a kid. I am going back to the old cookbooks from the early sixties when casseroles were in fashion. Those recipes were delicious and only called for few items.

I am ashamed that I am often wasteful, especially with paper goods. When I think of countries where people have no running water, no stove, and no bathroom, I want to cry. 

At this time, maybe we all can be more mindful of doing with what we have. We can do it. I know I can. But I will be very happy when this crisis is behind us and things are back to normal again. I wonder, will our normal ever be the same?

Thanks to those whose shoulders I've stood on.

Quote from Maria Shriver: This week, thank those whose shoulders you stand on. Honor those who came before you. Be grateful for those who paved the way for the life you have now. And, if you don’t know their stories, then ask them. Or look them up. Read about their lives or watch a documentary, like my daughter did. One of the best ways to honor someone’s legacy is to learn about it, and then carry their story forward in your life and in others.

I stood on the shoulders of my sister, June, who would not accept that her only alternative was to marry and be a housewife.
She wanted to earn her own money, make her own decisions and she did. She earned a scholarship to college and then helped send me to college.

June Council 

Without June's encouragement and support, I don't think I would have my B.S. in Education. My parents' hope was to have their seven children complete high school. College was too large a goal and seemed much too far to reach for my father.

June was taken under the wing of her art teacher, and she often spent weekends with the teacher's family. My sister was determined not to marry a local farm boy and work as hard as farmers' wives worked. She wanted a home like her art teacher had and lovely things she saw there.

June finished two years at GSCW (Georgia State College for Women, before she came home and went to work to help the family. Soon she was employed at Turner Air Force Base in Albany.  By that time, the family had a new house and life was better for everyone.

I admire her because she never forgot her little sisters and was determined that we would have more opportunities than she had.  In summer, we spent weeks with my sister and her husband, Stan, who was an officer in the Air Force. We saw a more sophisticated lifestyle and a home with finer things.

At their house, art by famous painters hung on the walls. On Friday evenings, Stan grilled a large steak. Although only he and June and Gay and I sat at the dining table, candles burned in the center giving a soft glow to our little circle, making the crystal and silver shine.  Being there made me feel warm and loved. My sister showed me a life that I could have if I wanted.

Women living today have stood on the shoulders of the women who came before us. My mother showed me how to love unconditionally and how to appreciate important things in life that money could not buy - love, family, generosity and compassion for others. She taught me acceptance, a hard lesson for me. She did not enjoy the frugality she had to endure, but she had chosen to help her husband follow his dream and she did all she possibly could to make that dream come true. Without her, he and his sons would not have been successful, because she was willing to sacrifice for her family. I am thankful that she prospered as well when the family business paid off. 


I have stood on the shoulders of my sister, Gay. 
Her giving heart, her genuine caring for others, has been an example to me. She is an unbelievable artist and has inspired me for many years. Recently she inspired me even more when she decided to get in physical shape by doing something she loves -- dancing! When many women younger than she are complaining of aches and pains, are sitting in front of their television sets or sitting around a card table, she attends classes three times each week where she dances for hours. In a short time her endurance and stamina have grown as well as her self confidence and renewed interest in her improved physical appearance. I am trying to emulate her now. Every time I look at her, see how happy she is, I am overjoyed.

My painting instructor, my first poetry teacher and my friend, the first woman poet laureate of North Carolina, are in the same category--women who paved the way for me to journey on to where I am today. Without them, I would not have achieved much of what makes me the woman I am today.

Do you have women who helped pave the way for you, or gave you a boost to achieve your goals?
Are there women in your past who changed your life?

Christmas 2013 - a Family Time

It is Christmas Eve, almost Christmas Day, 2013.

I am spending the holidays with loved ones, and I hope each of you have warm and peaceful days to remember and to make memories. 

 Thanksgiving ran right into making plans for the holidays. With a quick and busy visit to south Georgia my strength and perseverance were strained but not so much as was that of my sister, Gay, who hosted an absolutely lovely dinner today.

Christmas Day I will spend with family also – and be a guest at another Christmas dinner.  How fortunate we are to have family and to want to be together.

My immediate family, cousins and friends gathered in May this year at Lake Blackshear Resort

 Although many of my loved ones have passed on, and I am one of three siblings left, I was delighted to see the next generation carrying on our annual Christmas party that was begun years ago as a birthday celebration for my mother and her sister who were both born December 23. 

Lois Robison Council and her sister, Mildred R. Whitley

My mother, Lois Robison Council, would be 109 years old if she were living today. How I still miss her. If she had been at the party in her house, she would have met her great-great grandson, Elliott, who is not yet two years old. In my mind, I can see her smile as she hugged that little boy. He would have loved her.

I was told that I reminded some people of my mother. “You were channeling Aunt Lois,” my cousin Ginger said to me. I thanked her for the compliment. 

I enjoyed talking to the “kids” as we once called my nieces and nephews, one of whom is the grandfather of Elliott. 

As I sat in the same spot where my mother used to wait up for me when I was out on a date, sat in the place where her chair sat so many years ago, in the house that was my home until I met Barry and married him, I traveled back in time. The day I left to marry my soul mate, I cried as though my life were ending. Always fearful of change, I had no way of knowing I was embarking on a great adventure with the person sent to me to make my life complete. I only knew how much I was going to miss my home and my mother.

H. Barry Beall 

This Christmas marks five years without Barry. I don't think I will ever get used to his empty chair at the table. He is not forgotten. We tell stories and remember his humor, his large presence in our lives. But life goes on, holidays come and go, and I have much to look forward to in 2014.

I hope your New Year brings good health, peace, joy, and a life free from fear, anxiety and undue stress. Most of all I wish you time to stop and see the wonders of this world that surround you every day. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Thank you all for reading my blog. You are the best.

Fears and Phobias

Tonight I watched a man overcome his fear of heights by being hoisted high in the air, and a woman put her hand in a bucket of worms although that was one of her biggest fears. The treatment for those phobias, a fear that is irrational and obsessive, is exposure therapy. It works.
At one time mountain roads terrified me. I clung to the car door or the hand grip in the car when we drove over Blood mountain. I wouldn't look over a precipice. But once I rode my own motorcycle down a steep mountain road, I no longer feared riding that curvy road in a car.
Wow, did that feel good. When we overcome that which held our emotions and our well-being captive, we feel as free as an eagle soaring over an Alaskan bay. We feel shame because of our fears and we don't talk about them, but talking about them and facing them head on is the only way to overcome. Writing about them is sometimes the first step.

  I recently realized that I lived in the fight or flight mode even as a  child.
What was I afraid of as a child? Snakes, the dark, bad people who might come in the night and harm my family, bad weather, and the death of my mother.
I didn't understand that those irrational fears were not normal. I don't know why I had such a fear of my mother's death. I didn't fear for my father.
Of course, I didn't think fear of snakes was uncommon. Mother deliberately frightened us.We lived in the country in south Georgia. Snakes lived in the barn, in the oak tree in our yard, under the smoke house, in the blackberry brambles, and she was scared we would be bitten.
Mother's words to my sister and me, were, "Run like crazy if you see a snake no matter what color or what size."
We saw a snake crawling on the oak tree, and we ran screaming to Mother. She came out and with a hoe chopped the snake to little pieces. We were told to stay clear of the reptile even after she cut off his head.
"Snakes don't completely die until the sun goes down, " She told us.
I admit the more I learned about snakes, the more mesmerized I became. In Sunday School I learned about the evil snake, the devil,  in the bible. My skin crawled when I thought of a snake. It didn't help when my brother played on my fear and tossed a non-poisonous snake at me. He never thought it would wrap around my neck and knock me to the ground. Terrified and breathless, I ran for my mother. My brother still regrets that act and says he never meant for the snake to touch me.

All of my nights were scary. While my little sister slept beside me and my parents snoozed in the next room, I curled into a ball, tense with fear, unable to sleep. When the wind whipped the limbs of the big oak tree outside our window, I was sure a hurricane was coming and the tree was going to fall on our house and kill us.

A jacket hanging on the closet door turned into someone evil waiting for me to close my eyes. The sound of a distant train became the footsteps of an intruder approaching my room. Many nights I didn't fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning, when exhaustion overcame my fears.

I became obsessed about my mother's life when I started school. Something told me I needed to be with her and  everything would be all right. This apprehension continued into my college years.  I am now free of that fear. When she passed away, I was forty years old and I had to face my worst fear. I didn't think I would survive, but I did. 
At this time in my life, I've been exposed to everything I feared, including my fear of flying, and I have survived. Even death has no sting.

Did you have childhood fears? How did you overcome your fears?


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Tops on My Gratitude List - AC

Think about all the things we take for granted today. I often thank God for air conditioning. If I knew the name of the person who invented AC, I'd also thank him.
Some have never lived without cool homes in summer, but I remember well when I was a child in the deep south on the farm. We had no AC and my room sweltered with the heat from the hot sun that beat down all day. I couldn't sleep. I sat on the foot of my bed,  my head on my arms in the open. window.
Not a breath of wind could I feel. No breeze moved the leaves on the big oak tree that sheltered our house. Memories of that time are as real as the humidity that wet my hair and the sweat that crawled down my sides under my pajama shirt. I was not born for the tropics.
That is why this past weekend  hit me like a blast from the past. My central air conditioning quit on Saturday around noon while I cooked fresh vegetables I'd picked up at the local produce stand. The heat from the stove turned my small kitchen into a sauna.

I checked the thermostat. Blank spaces greeted me. Nothing there at all. The silent unit squatted outside my window, stubbornly refusing to react to the Reset button. Push the red button - that was all I knew to do.

Rocky and I retreated to the basement. He panted like he had been on a long run. The floor was too hard for his old bones,  he didn't like the rug. I had to bring his bed down before he would be happy. The small window AC accompanied by a large fan kept me from taking my dog and heading for a motel. I was prepared to sleep downstairs, but a nice little storm that night cooled my bedroom enough for us to sleep in our own beds. 
I don't know how my parents lived in the heat of south Georgia half their lifetime without relief. I don't know how people worked on the farms all summer long with burning sun beating down on their bodies, with gnats and sweat in their eyes and on their faces. I don't know what I would have done if I had been a boy in my family. They endured the heat and worked all day long in the fields.

Daddy and Mother handled the heat of summer for years before getting air conditioning in our home in south Georgia. 

 

My mother didn't have it much better than the men. She cooked three large meals every day in a hot kitchen. On my Gratitude List - right up near the top - just behind my loved ones - is air conditioning.
I begged my heating and cooling company to come on Monday. They did. I think they realized I just couldn't take it any more. I'll put Dorman's on my Gratitude List now - right up behind AC.

Music from Now Might as Well be Then

Singing in My Memories

Music was born in me, in my mother,
in my sisters and my brothers.
We sang in the barn and on the farm,
and in the country church.

My sister and I blended childish
voices singing Down on My Knees.
We sang, as teens, with Elvis on the
radio, Diana and the Supremes.

Singing alto in the choir later brought
me peace. Our voices raised in praise
drowned my sorrow, dried the tears I shed
inside, until I thought of Mother’s damaged mind.

Thanksgiving, Family, Food, and Days Gone By

Part of the Council Clan at the Big House

With Thanksgiving coming up, my thoughts turn to the holidays of the past. It was a big, big day in our home where I lived with my parents and my younger sister, Gay. Big sister June and her husband Stan, and their little girls arrived the evening before Turkey day. When we heard their car drive up, it was celebration time. "They're here. June and Stan are here!"

Mother had been busy all week sprucing up the house and buying extra groceries. The twenty pound turkey had been thawing for three days.

Wednesday night my brothers, their wives and children came. The noise level rose and became a cacophony of sounds with the greetings, hugs, laughter and nine kids running in and out of the back door of the farm house. November weather in south Georgia is perfect for playing outside. The sticky summer humidity dissipates. Evenings turn crisp and cool.

On Thanksgiving day, Mother woke early to start cooking the turkey and the cornbread dressing for a noon day meal. We girls set the tables and filled glasses with ice for the sweet tea everyone drank except Daddy. His place was set with a huge cup of coffee.

We set two tables -- one for adults and one for the children. Mother made oyster dressing in her old yellow casserole dish, deep and large as a roaster, but she also made a smaller pan of dressing without oysters just for me. That was the kind of mother she was.

We piled our plates with turkey, giblet gravy and dressing, sweet potato souffle with nuts and marshmallows, jellied cranberry sauce, green beans, Lima beans, salads of all kinds and rolls or biscuits.

Three or four different desserts lined the buffet. Mother made sure we had chocolate -- chocolate pie or chocolate cake. Someone usually brought pecan pie or lemon pie. Mother also made a delicious banana pudding.

No one worried about his waistline that day. We sat around the dining table which had been stretched to its limits with two wide leaves, and we talked all afternoon. Occasionally one of us got up and helped ourselves to more dessert. We caught up on all the news from all the families.

Daddy withdrew along with some of the brothers to sit before the TV and pull for his favorite football team.

On Friday after Thanksgiving, we didn't head for the stores to shop. Mother and Stan pulled out all the spices, candied fruit and pecans and began the ritual of making the annual fruitcakes. No one else was allowed to help, and therefore, now that Mother and Stan are gone, no one knows the recipe. Once the cakes began cooking in Mother's large pressure cooker, the aroma of Christmas permeated our house. Mother's recipe required bourbon, and she and Stan poured some for the cake and a sip or two for themselves. She claimed the bourbon was the ingredient that kept the cakes moist. I think it kept the cooks happy, too.


When done, and cooled, the cakes were wrapped and stored in the cupboard. Once a week for the next month, Mother unwrapped the cakes and poured a little more bourbon over them; and wrapped them again. They would not be eaten until we gathered for Christmas dinner when Stan, June and the girls would be home again.

On Sunday, at the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend, June and her family drove away and the party was over. The only remnant left of Thanksgiving was the bare turkey carcass. Quiet settled on the house like a somber spirit. Mother, missing her oldest daughter already, sat down in her favorite chair, no doubt tired from constant cooking and dish washing.

I sensed Mother's sadness, and I felt a little sorrow also. Perhaps she knew what I didn't know at the time, but I've learned. Those family holidays together were more precious than I, so young at the time, could ever imagine. But she knew. And now I know.

FAMILY LOVE BY GINNY WALSH

Ginny Walsh of Hayesville, NC relates a veterans day story about her brother, Eddie Fields

The last communication we had from my brother, Eddie, told us he was somewhere in the South Pacific. He could not be more specific because all mail was censored. World War II was raging in the South Pacific as well as Europe. It had been three months since we heard from him. Our family was worried and deeply concerned, especially my mother. She was in utter despair.

Eddie joined the Coast Guard in 1940, at age 18, a year before war was declared, so he was a well trained, seasoned sailor and among the first to be put into action. He wrote us often as time permitted, though they moved constantly. Because a moving target is harder to hit, his ship stayed in port just long enough to refuel and take on food supplies.
Mother wrote him every day, as did most of the family. We mailed tons of "V Mail", the onion skin, square envelopes with the red, white and blue diagonal stripes around the edges. I still see those letters.

Suddenly, our letters began to come back marked, "UNABLE TO DELIVER," or "ADDRESS UNKNOWN." We weren't too concerned at first. During those war years it sometimes took two weeks for the mail to get through. Then all communication from him ceased. Mother wrote to his Commanding Officer. That letter was also returned.

We continued to write, but the letters came back. Each day mother waited for the mailman. When he handed her the mail he always said, "Sorry, nothing today." We waited, kept hoping and prayed.

Silently, by example, my parents ushered us into completing each day's demands, whether it was work, locating gasoline, planning a meal around ration coupons, finding a store that had sugar and coffee, or going to school.
Evening brought us home to the dinner table and more often than not, the conversation turned to "remember when's..." "Remember when Dad got our first car?" Eddie pleaded with Dad to let him take the car to visit friends about five miles away. Daddy finally relented but not without ten minutes of forceful instructions regarding the care of his treasured Model A.

Some years later, Eddie was heard to say, " I have never dreaded anything more than having to stand by my Dad's bed at midnight and tell him I had wrecked the car."

"Remember when Eddie would jump up from the noon dinner table and run to the outhouse, leaving his chore of drying the dinner dishes up to someone else?"

Our fun loving mother decided to put a stop to that. One day she slipped away from the table and went to the outhouse, draped a white sheet over her body, stood behind the door and waited. Sure enough, here he came, he ran inside and slammed the door shut. Mom jumped toward him and yelled "BOO." Eddie said it scared him to death and forever after he checked behind all doors.

How remorseful I felt for all the times I quarreled with him. Though in truth he teased his three sisters at every opportunity. Eddie was the only boy in our family, and we three were convinced that mother loved him best -- a common misconception among siblings. I thought of the time he was stationed in San Diego, waiting to be shipped out and wrote that someone had stolen his wallet out of his foot locker. I was going to school and "jerking soda" at the corner drugstore for fifty cents an hour, but I sent him my last five dollars. I didn't mind. I loved him. He was my only brother.

With the passage of time, some things in our memory fade and seem less important. But, I vividly recall the events of a Saturday afternoon in May of 1945. After three months of waiting for some word from my brother, it finally came.

On that day, I came home from work at 5:00 p.m., greeted my mother in the kitchen, said hello to the family and dashed upstair to get all primped up for a date. As I started down the hallway the phone rang. Being the only sixteen-year old in the house, I naturally assumed it would be for me. I started back downstairs.

A family friend answered and summoned my mother. I heard him say "It's San Francisco." Mother sat down and raised the phone to her ear. "Hello?" After a short pause, I watched my mother's entire body melt into the chair and heard her whisper, " My son, My son."

He had arrived in San Francisco, was well and would be home in a week. When all our tears of joy were dried, all the neighbors informed of our good news, and we had settled down, I glanced toward the phone. Mother had been frying chicken when the call came. There on the receiver was her handprint in flour. Her grasp was so firm the imprint looked as though it was imbedded in the black, hard rubber of the telephone.

I thought, at the time, I knew what agony my mother was suffering in those months. I didn't. Only now can I fully comprehend her feelings. I have three sons.