Mother's Beautiful Hands
Long before I owned a computer I thought of writing . and I did write "Memories of Blue River." and "Mother's Beautiful Hands." and a few more but some I didn't keep up with. I kept thinking there is so much I want to say but a Novel is just too big an undertaking for me. So God made a way for me to write, He is so good to me sometimes I just feel like I'm His Little Girl and He's looking out for me.
My mother had big hands for a woman. Her fingernails were big and well shaped naturally. They were tough and my mother was tough too because she went thru a lot in her life time and always kept the faith. I can remember watching her scour the pots and pans when she didn't have what she called a "kettle scratcher" and She'd say she needed one of those. There never was any nail polish and very little lotion until she got older and had some exzema.
Every spring those hands made a garden. When Mother couldn't find someone to plow our garden , those hands were used to hook up the horses and run the plow. Then she would take a hoe and chop up the clods of dirt.
In the summer of 1936 was the year of the locust. We had several lightening and thunder storms that summer and it was extremely hot. In fact it was the summer after "The Long Hard Winter of 1935-36." I have already written about, except now we had moved to a different house which was East of Blue River this time. there was a great dought and we heard stories of how all the crops had died out west. Mother had already planted one garden which failed miserably and so we were looking forward to a winter with little or no food. It was August I beleive (too late for a crop to mature before the cold weather hit us) but Mother had a little talk with me about the situation and she said "You know Rose I think I will plant some more beans, I know the other ones didn't do any good, But I feel like I have to try. If it makes good then we'll have food for winter and if it doesn't come in all I have lost is the seed." Then she sat me down on the porch steps and sat the Baby "Raymond." in my lap and said "If you will take care of the Baby I'll make another garden." and she proceeded to do just that. Pop came along and said "Murray, you're just waisting your time, it's too late to plant a garden now and he laughed at her." But mother was not deterred. She planted green beans which came in abundantly in spite of the weather and timing and she also planted some other beans I guess you could call them soup beans, but they also produced and after that she and I picked beans and shelled beans. I always wondered why Mom planted so many beans but her saying was "It's better than snowballs."
While I was sitting on the steps I noticed the head of the Baby I was holding and I became alarmed. I called out "Mommy come here." and she said "What is it ?" My reply was "you've got to see this." Reluctantly she put her hoe down and came to me. "Then I said this Baby has a hole in the top of his head." Then she explained to "me of course all Babies have that." Then she told me that was a safty measure for the birthing process or something like that. Being an eight year old I was really scared, until she explained it.
Mother would come to our beds in the cold winter nights and she would have an old coat or an old blanket that she had held up to the heating stove to get it real warm and then she would slip it under us. Then we would stop shivering from the cold.
Mother's hands would drag up limbs from the woods and chop them up for fire wood. They scrubbed clothes on the wash board after she carried water from the spring and heated it in a kettle in the summer or on the cook stove in the winter.
Mother cooked for the preacher and his family on Sundays. so they wouldn't have to drive sixty miles back home and then back again for Sunday night service. She did this joyfully every Sunday until they got moved closer to our town.
Mother always shared whatever food she had and and her home when needed. After she began to drive she would go out into the country round about each Sunday and take people to Sunday School. I have never known a more un selfish and caring person. She was always thinking of others more than herself. It was almost as if she didn't exist she was so intent upon helping other people. The good things she did are too numerous to tell, I guess you could say she had a beautiful heart too.
Rosemary's Songs
Turn Your Radio Onwith Mark and Jeff Brown
Wait a Little Longer, Please Jesus with The Brown family
Throw out the Lifeline with Rose Brown
Start here: Grandma's House
Yes, Maam! Remembering how my grandma kept her houseWe decided to have church in the kitchen
Uncle Lacy (and my brother, June, too)
Gladys:
Safe in the arms of Jesus
The little errand girl, part 1