December 29, 2005
Last Day
Today was my last day in Ohio; I begin the 9-hour drive back to Atlanta bright and early tomorrow morning. I've had a great week and though I am anxious to get back to my house and my friends, it's tough to leave home.
Yesterday my mother and I drove the short 14 miles to Greenfield, her hometown. We visited the cemetery and we stopped by each grave that marks the spot of someone we love. Two of my great-uncles and my great-grandparents are buried there as well and it seems as though each time we visit, I am rewarded with a new story - a snippet of legend that I weave into my own version of our family's rich tapestry. After we left the cemetery we drove past the house where my mother spent most of her childhood - it looks the same, yet different, as most childhood homes do. MeMe and PaPa lived there from 1950 to 1995 and as every step and crevice of that house holds many memories for me, I figure my mother's memories must overflow. We drove out of town to the Hall farm, where one of my first cousins still lives. The land around it, once Hall acreage for miles and miles, has been sold off by bits and pieces. So the lane that was once dirt, and was then paved, is now a road where dozens of families live in tiny tract housing. The farm house, once grand and important, stands falling down. The barn, piecemealed together, is one bad storm away from crumbling in on itself. We didn't stop long.
Tonight, when we stopped by MeMe's so I could say goodbye, she got to talking about that farm, and the one before it, down on Paint Creek. She and my grandfather bought that first farm in 1926 from a family named Fishback, and they lived there, in a 3-room house, for 21 years. My grandmother, only 18 when they moved in, already had two young babies, and while they were living there she gave birth to three more (all but one of them at home in that house - oh the stories she could tell you about that). They finally moved out to the Hall farm in 1947, a few months before she gave birth to her seventh (and last) child. MeMe said that the big white house on that farm was like heaven - she had a kitchen sink for one (the 21 years prior to that she'd had to go to a spring for water, as the well water had sulfur in it and was therefore unusable). They were only there three years before moving to town. My grandfather, tired of milking, let his eldest son take over the operation, and that son's daughter, my cousin, lives in that house today. They don't milk anymore, and the acreage is smaller, but it's still a working farm, and it isn't work that I envy.
But my grandmother, in her amazing resiliency and fortitude, speaks with no bitterness or hardness about those days. She was 40 before she was able to bathe in a tub, or use water from indoor plumbing to wash her hair (although she will tell you that rainwater will give you softer hair than anything else). Not only can I not even imagine it, I can hardly bear it. But she laughs when she tells stories - of milking at 4 a.m. in snow and ice; of her tiny young babies, kicking each other out of their shared bed in the attic room above her; of the never ending daily struggle to simply live - she laughs.
I have never known anyone like her, and I know that I never will. She says that each morning when she wakes up she thinks, "Well. . . okay then. Guess I'm here another day." Her doctor says there is nothing wrong with her, save aging, and so she wonders, this wonder of mine, exactly what it is that she's still hanging around for. And so every day I thank God that He's kept her here, for me.
Posted by hannah at 06:45 PM
