I was thinking this weekend about legacies. Specifically, legacies of motherly love. One of my nieces gave birth recently and I’ve been ogling the baby’s ever-changing face (along with the other half the world) on Facebook.
My dear son treated me to dark chocolate and a lunch of fabulous Indian food and wrote me one of those heart-felt letters that makes me cry. I save all those so I can cry over them later! (I have one that dates back to kindergarten. It’s a four-word-tear-jerker written in a chubby hand, “I love you, Mommy.”) And then Andy showed up at my door with a big bouquet of flowers and another bar of rich chocolate, which I ate half of, crying over the letter my son gave me. (I’m thinking Andy is a keeper.)
There were lots of things my mother taught me. And her mother, a mountain matriarch, lived with us for half the year (after she turned 90 and her kids caught her on the roof cleaning her own gutters) and Grandmother taught me a lot as well.
But the memory that came back to me this weekend the strongest was of a dress Mother made me for our family’s debut in a new town. We were moving again. This was a three-year occurrence for Methodist pastors back in the day. We were moving from a very ornate church in a highly cultured town to a not-so-ornate-one in a not-so-cultured southern part of West Virginia. This church did, however, have three of the richest coal barons in the country on its administrative board. They were known as “The Three Eds” and they ruled the mines, the town and the church.
Now it just so happened that my Dad was involved in the civil rights movement back in the day and was known for preaching some pretty powerful sermons about racism in the church. And before we moved to this town, The Three Eds had paid my Daddy a visit. Just like the three kings, they brought gifts from afar for us kids. Shiny things like what the settlers gave the Indians. And after a delicious meal out (which in those days was a real treat and usually happened a big hotel) they sat down with cigars in the lobby and had a “talk” with my Daddy. They told him they’d been talking with some pretty big people and that it had been decided that he wouldn’t be preaching any of his freedom sermons in their pulpit. They didn’t care what the bishop said. And the appropriations committee that loved to see their checks arrive every year in the denomination’s headquarters agreed with them. Daddy didn’t say much, which surprised me. He wasn’t the silent type.
But the next day, Daddy sent Mother out to the fabric store with a wad of “Mad Money” he’d saved from the previous year’s weddings and funerals. She bought a beautiful piece of fabric for each of us and began to sew frantically. It was only three weeks before we would move to the new church and the dresses were to be ready by then. In the meantime, Daddy contacted the local paper and told them that our family would be available for a photo and interview. Mother sewed with a frenzy and still managed to pack our household with the help of her women’s circle, who seemed to be whispering, hugging her and rubbing her back an awful lot as I look back on it.
Like many of the women of her day, my mother was an excellent seamstress. The dresses had simple lines and elegant details. They were the finest we’d ever had and they were barely finished when we made the move.
We got to town, unpacked and mother set about ironing the dresses and curling our hair. I remember seeing my father in his home office, big reference books in open boxes all around his chair, praying. It didn’t feel like a good thing was getting ready to happen.
The newspaper came and took our picture, us girls in our elegant new dresses with our curled hair, Daddy with his clerical collar and jet black hair that matched his suit. They did the interview and he invited everyone in town to worship the coming Sunday. The article and photograph came out on a Wednesday.
When that Sunday came, his “girls” as he called us, had our hair curled and our new dresses on. We were introduced to the congregation before worship and everyone clapped. I looked at my Mom and she looked back at me. She had soft blue eyes unless she was mad. When she was mad they turned the color of storm clouds and when they looked at me that day they were dark gray. We sat in the front row and I politely folded my hands in my lap. I didn’t know what was going to happen but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t misbehaving when it did.
Daddy began his sermon with these words: “See, I am making all things new.” And then he informed the church that he’d been told that some pretty powerful people didn’t want him preaching his civil rights sermons from that pulpit and that he had been given to understand that he was in the South now, and that things were different there. You could have heard a pin drop. Then Daddy said that he’d been talking to a pretty powerful person, too, and that the sermon he was about to preach was inspired by prayer with his Lord, Jesus.
When the sermon was over, my mother took us by the hand and lifted us up for the benediction. I wasn’t sure my legs were going to work and I wasn’t sure we would be allowed to walk out of there. But walk out we did and that church became one of the leaders in the civil rights movement. It seems not everyone agreed with “The Three Eds.”
My mother taught me how to stand by your man and stand by what is right on that hot summer’s day and she even made sure I wore a beautiful new dress as she did it. Thanks for making me the woman I am today Mom, I love you!
