Heaven
Scathe
meic Beorh
No one, not even myself, will ever
convince me I didn’t see my grandmother again that hot June morning.
I
loved my grandmother like no one I have ever loved before, or since—except my
own mother. My first memories of her are of watching her fry rind bacon at her
white gas stove, making breakfast for everybody. Grits and butter, bacon, and
toast. And for us kids, water served in a jelly glass.
My
Uncle Paul kept her yard up. A silver palm grew there, and to the north side of
the house there was a giant pine—some kind of majestic, tall spreading pine, a
Monterey maybe, with short leaves, tiny cones that grew along the branches, and
a radius of at least one and a half feet. The back yard was a crawdad field—wet
and bubbly. Until the late 1960’s, an outhouse sat there. Then my grandmother,
whom we all called Big Mama, had one of her two bedrooms made into a bathroom,
and she moved her bed and dresser into the dining room—so if somebody were
walking from the front room of her house into the kitchen at the back of the
house, they had to walk through Big Mama’s bedroom that smelled like liniment
and old oak furniture.
***
Big
Mama died after a head injury in January 1980. She had spent the holidays with
us in Ferry Pass, and Christmas of 1979 was the last time I ever saw her
living. Well, I say that, but...
The
old homestead, which had been built by Big Mama’s parents, Ma and Pa Calloway,
was razed to the ground either in late 1980 or early 1981. All that was left
were Big Mama’s red-painted cement steps, which led up to her wooden
porch—always painted green—I guess to match the tin overhang which was green
and white striped.
Never
have I forgotten Big Mama. Never have I forgotten Big Mama’s house. I have
written several pieces about it. The first one I wrote for a college
composition class, only months after the old place was torn down. I wrote about
how I missed the place, and was sad that it had been torn down. It was the
first time I had ever really tried to write anything serious, other than
poetry. My English instructor told me it was very good, and said she thought I
should become a writer.
***
In
2005, I was moving to Vermont, I thought, and so I wanted to say good-bye to
the South Flomaton, Florida of my childhood... and so many precious memories. I
pulled my car down the little paved road next to the Willet’s house, long time
neighbor’s of my Big Mama. They, too, have been gone many years.
I
felt sad as I walked up to Big Mama’s property—‘heir’s property’ in her will. I
had hoped to be able to go onto the lot and find the cement steps, and imagine
going up on the porch and hearing it thunder under my feet, open the creaking
screen door, walk through the house, the kitchen, going out on the back
porch—find the yellow tabby barn cats meowing for fried chicken... and the
crawdads in their mucky oblivion.
I
had been told by my Cousin Joe that the place, last time he had bushwhacked his
way in, was filled with pygmy rattlers. This rattlesnake, I understand, is one
of the deadliest. That information was one of the things which halted me that
hot June morning. There were others.
Briars
big enough to tear clothes. Hundreds of scrub oaks intertwined with bushes and
other undergrowth. The whole piece of land, I found, was impossible to enter. A
sharp machete and a good pair of high boots would be needed to brave Big Mama’s
land. I didn’t have either one.
So
I stood at the southwest edge of the land, and I imagined. I saw all us kids
playing on the porch, rocking in the rocking chairs, swinging high in the porch
swing, going in and out (and in and out) the screen door, begging for water,
begging for ice cream money, begging for somebody to watch us cross the highway
so we could go play with our cousin Keith...
I
saw my tired mother trying to relax after a hard week of school bus driving;
trying to spend some time with her brother Paul, her brother Roy, her sister
Margie, her Mama.... I saw my dad eye every detail of my grandmother’s house,
making sure everything was safe for her. Everything.
And
then... as I stood there in that morning heat... my grandmother, my Big Mama,
was there. She was on her porch, and she was smiling at me. But... she was also
the land, and she was every encroaching vine, every unseen rattler, every
bluejay, every scrub oak, every briar... everything.
And I knew that she was really there, just the same as I know that I am
writing this memoir right now. I did not imagine her, I was not dreaming, I did
not hallucinate. My Big Mama was at home again—and maybe had always been there.
I cried so hard. I could not believe my eyes. And the love of my Big Mama for
me in those sacred moments washed over me so that I will never doubt again the
healing power of love.
***
My
Big Mama is on the little piece of property that she loved so much... and so
deeply missed when the decision was made that she was too feeble to live in her
home anymore. She was moved only a few hundred yards away, across the highway
to live in a trailer with her sister Ida—but his move killed her spirit, and she
died only four or so years later.
I
think she has been on her land, and in her house, since the moment she crossed
the veil.
The
thought that makes the deepest impression on me that morning was this: My Big
Mama is in Heaven—and this is Heaven,
or we can be in Heaven, or taken there, when we least expect it.
***
I
went back to her plot of land a year later. It looked even more overgrown than
it had on my first visit. I waited at the corner for my Big Mama to come again
to embrace me with her love as she had done that magical morning. But, though I
knew she was there—I could feel her there still—she didn’t come to greet me as
she had before. Yet, I knew she was at home—and when I die, I will take my mother’s
hand, and we will both climb those old red cement steps, and we’ll sit with my
Big Mama on her porch, and we’ll sing the old hymn “In the Garden” together—and
we will love each other, and make one promise that we will always hold true...
never again will we leave home, or ever leave one another. Ever again.
The Barber's Conundrum
