Sherry L Huckabee: Wa Wa

There I was, in the middle of my grandmother’s kitchen, tears streaming down my face - not just dropping but flowing, creating tiny rivulets down my cheeks. If someone had walked in I couldn’t have even told them why I was crying. It had been three years since my grandmother passed away. I had cried my tears for her death already. No, somehow I was crying for my own life in the shadow of her life.

When I was two I took to calling her WaWa because I couldn’t pronounce Grandma. Even as an adult, I would write ‘Dear WaWa’ on my really special letters to her. Funny the things you remember about your grandmother. I remember her hair. She always wore those hairdos that they had set at the beauty parlors. Her hair was stiff as a board. She would sleep in hairnets and wear scarves when it was windy outside. She never even had to wash it. How lucky she was; I had to wash my hair every day! She was forty something when I was a little girl and she seemed ancient to me. She always had this powder-closet aroma around her. I still smell it now and again when older women walk by. It is strange how a smell can flood us with memories. Like Juicy Fruit gum. She always had Juicy Fruit gum in her purse. She would walk in the door and after giving my quick obligatory hug and withstanding my cheek pinch, I would go straight for her purse. She would laugh and try to tease me that she didn’t have any this time, but she couldn’t fool me, I could smell it. Powder puffs and Juicy Fruit gum, that was my WaWa.

Once I fell asleep and the big wad of gum collected over the day left my mouth to create a tangled rat’s nest in my hair. What a mess that was! With baby fine white-blonde hair, I could just look at the wind and my hair would tangle. I remember her, comb in hand, trying to work out the tangles in the bathroom that had the mirrors you could open towards each other and see yourself into infinity. When she had to pull really hard she would stomp her foot and yell, “Out you rats, out!” That was my grandmom, scaring the rats out of my tangled hair. Spider back rubs – those really light, tickling kind of back rubs, still my favorite to this day. Vicks menthol rub when I had a cold. Jigsaw puzzles. Drive-thru theatres and afternoon matinees. Sweet tea and Dublin Dr. Peppers (you’ve never had a Dr. Pepper until you’ve had a true Dublin bottled Dr. Pepper). Those are the memories of her I hold dearest.

I never really thought of my grandmother as a real person, not with real troubles and worries and fears. She was just this big, sweet, cushiony lady who loved me no matter what and always had Juicy Fruit gum, a tickle, and a smile. I guess we never really realize our parents and grandparents are fragile human beings just like we are until we grow up and walk in their shoes.

That is what I was struggling with as I sat weeping in her kitchen. What had it been like to be her? What was her life like? What was she like? Did she have the same fears, the same confusions I had? Our worlds were so different, hers and mine.

She had been a farmer’s wife through and through. Married 62 years and put three square meals on the table every day for all those years. She was eighteen years old when they married. They lived in De Leon, a small little Texas town that even today only has a population of 2,400 people. They had a good life on the farm; Grandad bailed hay for hire and grew peanuts. They even had a few rows of pecan trees. I remember everyone got together once a year and would meet up at the farm. We would spread these big blankets out and then beat the trees with great big sticks to get the pecans to fall out. I guess they do that by machine now. What a shame.

I’ve been married eight years total, to two different husbands. So much for my marital longevity. I attended 15 different schools by the time I graduated high school, two of them two different times. So far I’ve lived in California, Texas, Colorado, Florida, New York, and North Carolina – six states. My grandmom hadn’t even left Texas six times in her life.

The drought had come in ‘51 and Grandmom and Grandad decided to move to Odessa where there were jobs available. They kept the farm, taking vacations and weekends to work it. Grandad was working the farm when he had his heart attack. He was only 37 years old. Grandmom worked for Mayfair’s Department Store and my uncle, Parker, just a boy then, worked at the grocery. They barely made ends meet while Grandad was out of work. The doctors said he could never work again. Boy were they wrong. After two years, he took a job at Sears playing Santa Claus. When Christmas ended he applied to work as a repairman. He worked as a Sears Repairman for thirty years, logging over 30,000 house calls. Thirty thousand! He was the Sunday School Superintendent and a Deacon at the Baptist church they belonged to. He considered it a blessing from above to work as a repairman for it gave him the chance to show people in their homes the loving kindness that faith in his Lord brought. Now, fifty years later, he is still working the farm and is healthy as a horse. So much for the doctors’ prognosis.

Grandmom and Grandad were devout Baptists. The loved their Lord Jesus, their bible, and their rules. What I know about Jesus and the Bible I learned in the time I spent with them. The worst fight my grandmother and I ever got in was over church. I was throwing a temper tantrum, and I mean a temper tantrum – yelling, screaming, kicking, because I did not want to go to church. My grandmother was yelling right back, her finger wagging in my face, while she declared that I darn well would go to church. I screamed at her “There is no God. I don’t believe in God, never have and never will. The Bible is just some made up book to make people be good.” I may as well have stabbed her in the heart. I’ve never seen anyone go from fury to iced numbness in half the beat of a heart before or since. She lowered her finger, her voice almost in a whisper. “I will never ask you to go to church again,” she said and she quietly left the room. There is nothing in this world I could have done to hurt my grandmother worse than I had hurt her that day and I knew it. She never did ask me to go to church again though I usually offered. I didn’t understand the God she believed in or the faith that she had, I still don’t, but I knew how important He was to her life and for my love for her I paid my respect to Him.

They moved back to De Leon when Grandad retired in 1985. They had never made much money, but were frugal and wise with what money they had. They had their savings and a nice nest egg and were able to buy a house and renovate the inside. Grandmom loved her new house. It had a big living room with a fireplace, two guest bedrooms, a big master bedroom, a den where Grandad could watch his Dallas Cowboys play, a huge kitchen with a wall of pantry cupboards and a wrap-around sit-down bar with cushiony swivel chairs where she served all Grandad’s meals, and a dining room large enough for her wall sized china cabinet filled with her china and crystal sets - minus one. For Christmas two years before she died, she had taken her best china and crystal set, wrapped it piece by piece, packed it in three big Dole Banana boxes, and brought it to me. It was the last Christmas I ever got to spend with her.

It was in this kitchen I was performing my waterworks display. We had all come down for Grandad’s 81st birthday party. I was the only one of the five grandchildren to stay at the house since the others all lived nearby so I had clean up duty. I had put the food away the night before then set my alarm to get up early and finish cleaning before anyone came back around. The problem was there was no place to put all the leftover food. No one had touched Grandmom’s cupboards since she had her stroke six years before. They were overflowing and offered not even a square inch of space to the leftover boxes of cookies and nuts and other non-perishables. Being the compulsive organizer I am, I decided rather than leave it all out on the counter, as had obviously become the custom, I would clean out her cupboards and find a place for everything. I could see the distant hints of organization that had once existed all those years ago when this kitchen was her pride and joy. Cans together, boxes in one cupboard, pastas, rice and beans in another, the larger, lesser-used appliances in the bottom cupboards, baking goods for Christmas and other special occasions in the top cupboards. Once upon a time our pantries must have looked very much the same.

It was strange to think how much I was like her in some ways. It wasn’t as if I had spent a lot of time with her, just the visits once every year or two. But still somehow I had picked up many of her domestic talents. God knows I didn’t get them from my mom. My mom is an incredible businesswoman, but the year she ruined eight teakettles my dad put in a special hot water dispenser and took away her cooking privileges. If you’ve heard the phrase “can’t boil water,” whoever said it was likely talking about my mom. But she can cook in a conference room with the best of them.

When I married at eighteen I knew nothing about the kitchen. The first time I made meatloaf, I browned the hamburger first and then couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t form a loaf. Grandmom walked me through those years, sending me recipes, coaching me on the phone, teaching me how to please a meat and potatoes man. When I got pregnant at 19 and Mom was upset because she was so terrified I would drop out of school, Grandmom was the one who would reassure me all would be fine. She would say to me in her deep southern drawl “You just wait till that young’un is born. Yur mom’l take one look at that li’l baby and love it more than sheez ev’r loved any livin’ bein’.” Boy was she right. My son became the center of my mom’s world the day he was born.

My dreams as a girl were always to care for a home and a husband and a family. As a teenager though I became torn between being a mother like my grandmother and being a career woman like my mother. I swung back and forth like a pendulum, marrying at 18 to be the wife and mom, divorcing at 22 to go to law school, marrying at 26 to be a wife and mom to two little girls who desperately needed a mom, divorcing at 30 again because I didn’t know who I was anymore. So many choices. So much freedom to choose. How do you know which are the right choices and which are the wrong ones? When my son was young, I never pursued a career whole-heartedly because to me he always had to come first. I was too independent though to have a successful relationship. The vulnerability that comes with the deep intimacy of real love was beyond my level of coping. The whole concept of leaning on anyone left me dizzy, still does.

How easy Grandmom must have had it. She knew exactly what path her life was to take. Society demanded it. Her upbringing demanded it. There were no other choices, no confusion, no questioning. They married for better or worse. They stuck it out through drought, and heart attacks, through children, through the joys and sorrows that make up this thing we call life. She never had to decide. She just did what had to be done. She never had to question. It was already all decided. So long as she was a good wife and a good mother, she was a success in her world. She never had to wake up in the middle of the night confused, dazed, wondering what path she should be on. She never had to stand in her grandmother’s kitchen, tears streaming down her face, wondering if she was living the life she was supposed to live, making the choices she was supposed to make. She knew she was. Always, she knew she was.

So this was why I was crying. How I longed for a moment’s peace to know I had chosen the right path. A friend sent me a quote from Emerson in a Christmas card this year declaring it was the life I lived, To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Indeed it described rather well what I have strived to accomplish in this world. But now with my debt seemingly and increasingly insurmountable, both my “starving artist” jobs ending in two weeks, and my dreams of being a writer dying with each passing day as I realize I must turn back again to the practice of law to support my son adequately, all the love I spent my life giving, all the days I spent reveling in the sunshine and the beauty of the world, all the dreams I’ve tried to have faith in, all the emails I sent to brighten a day or further a political objective seemed rather nonsensical, living the good life as Aristotle would say sure didn’t pay the bills.

The tears poured even faster as I stacked cans and shifted boxes - touching, sensing, the world that was once my grandmother’s. What it must have been like to know what you were supposed to do. Granted they had challenges and heartaches. But they put their faith in their God and plugged through them. Their faith in God…. They thanked God for all their blessings and viewed their challenges as lessons He was teaching them. They believed they were merely His instruments, acting out His plan. How simple to rest the responsibility for all, good and bad, on another’s shoulders, to offer up their weary bones for Him to carry, like the old story of the footprints in the sand. How simple, how clear….

I cried on and off again that whole day. My grandad and I talked in between my bouts of tears. My mom and dad came by, though my mom knew I was crying she just presumed it was because my WaWa was gone. I went through my grandmother’s things for some mementos of her to take home – something I had never had the chance to do. Her bathroom drawers still smelled like her, that powder closet smell. One drawer held all her scarves she would wear over her hair to keep the set from spoiling. Her costume jewelry was scattered here and there in all sorts of odd containers. I took an old pill box of hers, a little treasure box locket, a scarf to wear in my convertible, a crocheted doily, and a frilly, lacy little apron like June Cleaver would have worn for a special dinner. All these things seemed somehow her. I didn’t take any of her owls – her favorite collection. There must have been hundreds scattered throughout the house. All of us grandkids had given them to her for years. Last year an owl made his home in the tree by the creek that runs in front of my house. I live only ½ a mile from downtown - not exactly owl territory. But here was this owl, none-the-less. I decided it was WaWa watching over my son and me. I didn’t need an owl from her collection. I already had one.

The day was drawing to a close and I had to make the drive back to Dallas to take my step-daughter shopping. I took flowers to my Grandmom’s grave and sat on her little bench watching the sunset and weeping hysterically. “What am I supposed to do with this life, WaWa?” I cried, “It was so easy for you. You just knew. I don’t know. I don’t know what is right anymore.” A voice inside answered. Perhaps it was her talking to my soul, perhaps it was just my own inner self. “We knew,” the voice said, “because we had no choice. Do you really think it was easier to live with knowledge but without freedom? We lived the lives we lived because we had no choice but to live them. Society offered no other alternative. To divorce was to be shunned, to risk the health of my children, to be outcast from my church, my community. There was no consumer credit to live beyond your means. You made your way or you starved. There was no real chance for education and no chance for a career without an education, and that only applied to the men. Women had no chance, no choice, no option but to marry and stay married. Sure a few found a different route but the price they paid was incredibly high. You are only confused because you have the freedom of choice, you have a world of opportunity. Do you really think you would give up that freedom to clear the confusion?”

I thought of these words as I drove the desolate highway back to Dallas, to my step daughter who I would never have had the chance to love and raise if I hadn’t divorced my first husband. There is no place in the world where the sky is as big as it is in Texas. The land is so flat and barren and the sky so bright and blue, it feels as if you are in the center of the whole world, a whole world of opportunity. As I watched the sunset I thought of my life, my happy, healthy son who had never been teased about having a single mom, the ease with which I had always found jobs to support him well thanks to my education and a world of equal opportunity, an education I would never have had if my mom hadn’t been one of the first career women and successful female business owners of her time. After my divorce, when my son and I decided to move, we had the whole country open to us. We could have moved anywhere. We chose North Carolina for the economy, the seasons, and the trees. Though Charlotte didn’t have the big Texas sunsets that I’ve always loved, it had been a wonderful place to raise my son. As the sun sunk lower and lower, the blues and pinks danced with each other on the horizon. No I wouldn’t trade my confusion for my freedom.

The freedom of choice and wealth of opportunity we have today is a wondrous thing. Like all wondrous things it carries a price. We, each and every one of us, are responsible for our own happiness. No society, no person, no church carries the reign over us that they once did. The life we live today is the culmination of the choices we have made until now. If we don’t like where we are we need only to change our choices. What a grave responsibility, and yes it carries confusion as you wonder whether you have charted the right course. And yet what a wondrous gift, to be truly be the captain of your own ship, the master of your own destiny.