my great-grandmother, my maternal grandmother's mother, was born during the civil war. no one is sure of the exact year of her birth, but she could recount events from that war that occurred in her childhood. it seems that her mother, my great-great-grandmother married a man who came through their little community in southwest arkansas. he was from pine bluff, arkansas, and after their marriage, he and his bride moved back there. he was known by the title of "doctor," but we're not sure if he was a medical doctor or had given himself that appellation. he seems to have been something of a scoundrel, and after several years of marriage and several children, including my great-grandmother, my great-great-grandmother left him in the middle of the night while he was out carousing. she loaded the children and all the belongings that she could on a wagon, hitched up the horses, and returned to her family's home in southwest arkansas. such a journey took great courage. the distance was over 200 miles over primitive roads in the aftermath of the civil war.
this is where my "grandma kate," as we all called her, grew up, and married a man from her community, my great-grandfather orren. they had seven children who lived to adulthood, three sons and four daughters, of which my grandmother was the oldest. after the birth of the youngest child, orren passed away, leaving grandma kate to raise these children on their small farm. my grandma kate could recall the difficulties this presented in the midst of recovery from the war. she told of her contempt for the ku klux klan that terrorized people in her area, both black and white, and the struggle to hold onto her land in an era when taxes were difficult to pay from the meager proceeds she and the children could earn from their crops.
after her children reached an age where they could live independently, grandma kate sold her farm and went to live with her daughter, bess, in magnolia, arkansas. she lived with bess for several years, until she married a man from indiana after her first husband had died. grandma kate believed that her struggles raising her family on their farm was caused by the northerners who had come into the south after the civil war and told bess that she couldn't live with "that yankee" in her home. she moved to live with my grandmother and helped raise my grandparents' four children.
grandma kate was a lively woman. she was a staunch baptist and believed that games that involved cards or dice were the work of the devil, so any time she discovered her grandchildren playing any such game it was burned. she was a talented seamstress and did lovely embroidery work. some of it is still in my possession. despite her strict baptist convictions, she was a loving person. she and my grandfather had lively discussions about religion and politics, and, though they agreed on many things, when they disagreed, sparks flew.
one of the things she passed on to her descendants is a love for coffee. i remember her taking her small great-grandchildren who could barely drink from a cup into her lap, where she would spoon some coffee with cream and sugar into her saucer. taking a spoon, she would cool the coffee by blowing on it and let the child sip it from her spoon, as she declared that she once had to do without coffee when it was scarce after the war and no one in her family would ever have to do without coffee again. under her influence, we all became avid coffee drinkers.
when television became commonplace, my grandparents bought a small set for their living room. grandma kate was scandalized by the costumes women on tv shows wore. "they might as well be naked," she would say, but she watched them nonetheless. one of her granddaughters smoked cigarettes, and grandma kate would admonish her for her "unladylike" habit. she said that while dipping snuff or smoking a dainty pipe was acceptable for a woman, cigarettes should only be smoked by men. for many years, grandma kate dipped snuff, and i remember her coming home from church one sunday in a huff. the preacher had exhorted the congregation to abandon the evils of tobacco, mentioning not only cigarettes and cigars but also snuff and pipe tobacco. grandma kate said he had stopped preaching and started meddling.
one of the many things i learned from grandma kate is that women are the equals of men. while she adhered to strict gender roles, she was adamant that a woman could do anything as well as a man when the situation called for it. she never backed down from her position when someone disagreed with her, and she insisted that a woman ought to be able to take care of herself without help from a man. she also taught all us of the importance of family. no matter how much someone disagreed with a member of the family, family was still family and should always be there when one needs it. she said that if we can't or won't take care of our own, how can we be trusted to take care of those outside the family.
may i remember the lessons i learned from grandma kate. may we all value our families, even when we dislike or disagree with some members of them. may we learn to help one another and remember that there is really no such thing as "self-reliance." may we pass on the values of those who've gone before to those who follow after us. shalom.
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