Mama, Lord I Miss You!

  Mama, Lord I Miss You!

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), May 13, 2023

            The year was 1947. In three months I would be three years old. A black ambulance drove slowly up the long path from the graveled road to our house which sat in the middle of a vast cow pasture. As with tenant houses throughout Mississippi that so often sat in the middle of a cotton field, there was no yard as such and no fence or any type of border to separate the house from  the pasture. Cows could and did often graze right up to the front porch, prompting us to shoo them away lest they fill the surroundings with “cow patties.”

            The ambulance had no driveway to follow from the road to the house. My father had no vehicle and needed no driveway. The ambulance merely wove its way here and there as it traversed the foot path that the Hines kids kept beaten down with their daily treks to the school bus and mailbox. I had seen few motorized vehicles but enough to know that the ambulance wasn’t an ordinary one. This shiny, odd-shaped vehicle was bringing Mama home from the hospital with her seventeenth child, Carlton. He and I were the only ones not born at home.

            My sister Tressie, two years older than I, was in the front “yard” with me. Our much older sister Authula was overseeing our play. The slow arrival of the ambulance that interrupted our play scared me. I was accustomed to mule-drawn wagons, a few pick-ups, and aging T-Models but nothing so flashy as this funny looking … truck?.

             While Tressie and I stood in silent awe, Mama and her newborn were taken inside. We were shortly allowed to see them up close. Authula has reminded me many times over the years that I didn’t like the new baby and that I also showed a measure of disapproval toward Mama for showing up with him. I take Authula’s word for that since I don’t remember that detail. I do remember that during the years I was five, six, and seven Mama’s love for Carlton was beyond measure. A visitor would have thought this child was her first.

            But how could that be? How could the weariness, the toll taken on her body by sixteen other births not limit even the joy brought by yet another child? I say the answer lies in Mama’s strength of character. She was obviously blessed with physical strength but beneath her physical strength lay a foundation of faith, hope, and a love of life that even seventeen childbirths couldn’t diminish.

            My memories of Mama center on her personality as well as her character. She lived each day with joy and laughter while bearing up and doing without. I see her now at 6 o’clock in the afternoon wiping Daddy’s brow with a damp bath cloth because he once again worked in the field too long and appeared to be fainting.

            “Walter, I wish you wouldn’t stay in those fields so long,” she begs while rapidly passing the cloth across his face. Within minutes Daddy is revived and Mama heads to the kitchen. Truth is Mama didn’t like the kitchen. Her favorite place was the garden and the fields with Daddy.

            At age sixteen, now living in a different and slightly better place, I selfishly said something to Mama that I regret to this day. One morning after breakfast which always meant “meat” (we never said bacon for some reason), biscuits, syrup, and fried eggs, I said to her, “Why do we always have the same thing to eat?” Mama was standing inches away from me. As soon as the words left my lips, I watched as her face drooped. Without comment she walked away. Were I not already late getting to the road to catch the school bus I would have fallen all over myself getting to her to hug her neck and apologize.

            My mother was always saying “Lord,” as in “Lord, that’s a beautiful song!” or “Lord, that sun is hot today,” and sometimes, to express a bit of exasperation, just “Lord!” I don’t believe she was taking the Lord’s name in vain and if she had any inkling that she was doing so she would have ended the habit immediately.

            It wasn’t the birthing of seventeen children that brought Mama down at age 65.  She had labored on for seventeen years after her last child was born. Her death was hastened by kidney stones.

            We never celebrated holidays except July 4^th, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. No birthdays, Mothers’s or Father’s Day. That’s why every Mother’s Day I have a great deal of celebrating to make up.           

Happy Mother’s Day, Mama!