Barefeet and Angels

My mama was the most down to earth person I have ever known. Learned professors of the English language would use phrases such as ‘pragmatic’.

She was born in 1920 on a farm in Middle Georgia, she survived, went to school and learned in the Depression in Middle Georgia,she married my Daddy in 1939, sent him to war,kept the farm going while he was gone,raised a family and died in 1974.

Nice, tidy summation of a lifetime of victories won on the battlefield of life by an unheralded soldier with bare feet.

When we were little, she rarely went to church. But daddy took four children,two grandchildren and himself in freshly laundered, line-dried,starched and ironed clothes each week,and everybody looked like they walked out of a Life magazine advertisement of the 1960’s.

While we were coloring in Sunday School and Daddy was doing his duties as Head Deacon, Superintendent of Sunday Schools, Usher,etc.; Mama was at home in her bare feet.

After church we would all climb out of the car and pile into the house delighting in the aromas coming from the kitchen. There mama would be, barefooted,  under that tin roof ,in summer, the roast in the oven or the chicken fresh out of the skillet and her stirring the gravy, tea steeping on the stove,sweat pouring off her, dripping off the tip of her nose, and one insistent little ringlet springing forth from her scalp to wave its independence in her face,only to have its uprising swiftly vanquished by a swipe from her hand before bending down to check the biscuits. While we were singing about Heaven in the air conditioning at church, she was stewing in  South Georgia’s version of hell.

Then the next day before daylight she was up percolating the coffee for  Daddy’s thermos  while we still snuggled and snoozed;we all got up and ate a hot breakfast cooked  by Mama in that already steamy kitchen,put on more freshly ironed clothes,and went out into the world; to work and school, or the little ones out in the yard to play. In my case, out to the wash shed in the back yard with the old wringer machine to play around mama’s feet as she slopped through the mud, filling the tubs with the water hose and flopping the clothes from  the  machine to rinse tubs, her hands in the soapy,stringent, bleach water.  All day, carrying them from the house out to the shed,into the machine, agitating them, lifting them wet, into the wringer, guiding them through,down into the rinse tub,plunging them up, down, up, down, lifting them full of water back up to the wringer again, down into the next rinse tub; through three rinses. Then finally out through the wringer for the last time and into the big metal tub waiting  to receive them, where she lifted them to be carried to the line,bent, picked up each garment, hung it out ,then bent , and on to the next. All through the dirt with her wet feet ,so that by the time she got to the back door to get the next load of dirty clothes, she had to scrape the mud off her feet before she could go in . Then back out to the wash shed with another load, to lift the tubs of rinse water and fill them again so she could start over.She repeated this for the laundry for all eight of us, even Daddy’s heavy overalls and my brother’s blue jeans.

As each load would dry, she would bring it in and put it on the spare bed in the room off the kitchen  where a maid was supposed to sleep,fold and put away as much as she could, and start starching the rest for ironing on Tuesday,seperating the piles all over the bed.

She would go over to the back door, look out to see where the sun was  positioned in the sky to see  what time  it was, start looking for the produce man’s truck to come by, and get preparations for supper underway. Her ‘break’ in the day came when she would sit outside on the front porch peeling potatoes, shelling the peas, and  such “sitting down” chores. But even then, she had no break, for then they would come; the people… the people who REALLY relied on ‘Mrs.Mac’… the ones who needed to unburden, to ask advice, to share their good news,to tell a secret they knew would never be repeated, to ask for prayer, to have a catfish fin removed, a baby’s rash looked at, to let her know someone in the community was in need, knowing she would help; they came needing love.. and they all got what they needed. They gathered around; when the settee  and glider were full, Mama would tell them “Grab you a chair out of the kitchen”. But likely as not unless they were a lady, they were happy to sit at Mama’s dirty bare feet.Mama never drove,so people came to her; from all walks of life. They sat,and when they got up they dusted off their trousers and straightened their ties.

After supper we all played and got baths,getting ready for bed while she cleaned the kitchen and mopped the floor, so none of us could “track it back up”,   poured the dirty mop water out the back door,and her house was in order. She cleaned herself up,came to bed,sat on the side of it, and rubbed  her bare feet together to “knock the sand” off,then laid down to meet her Savior in prayer.

I knew to lie quietly ,barely breathing,while she  and God had one on one,deep ,close time. I was always careful to listen so I knew when to ask her ” Mama, can I get up with you in the morning?” before the first gentle quiet puffy snore told me God had  given her rest.

Next morning in the dark she would shake me awake, whispering my name, “Let’s go potty”,carry me downstairs, put me on the toilet,wipe me, help me off, lift me to the sink to wash my hands,and carry me to the little room off the kitchen to lie there while she got the percolator going with  Daddy’s coffee. Then she would peep around the corner, tiptoe in, and lie down with me for a few more minutes’ sweet repose. We would lie there in the dark, just the two of us, anticipating something which could not be seen, but knowing we would know it was time whenever it was time.

There was a little  AM radio in there and I would whisper”Mama, can we hear Snow White Dove?”  This was the opening theme song for a daily radio show by a gospel group called the Chuck wagon Gang and my favorite, because I could sing part of  it… ” A sign from above, on the wings of a dove”… and then a little later… “He sends down his love, on the wings of a dove”. She of course wanted me to doze back off  and I wanted to play so she might stroke my hair back from my face to try to get me drowsy, while I would  giggle and stroke her unruly ringlet off HER forehead, back into place !

Too soon, though, much too soon, the percolator would start its strange little sound and we would lie there listening to it until it quit,and she would rise.

When Mama had her stroke and cerebral hemorrhage, those same people  who used to visit her on the porch came. They came to the  hospital regularly, they came to the house, they cut grass, they cooked food, they did laundry, there appeared a new automatic washer and dryer.Months later when Mama’s bed was all set up in the living room and Daddy drove up with her in the car,there was a throng to support her weak side  which was still affected, as she made her way from the car to the bed.

They came in the weeks and months and years to come; they were told ” Grab yourself a chair out of the kitchen”, and they did. They sat in kitchen chairs in the living room with her until she was able to recover enough to sit up, then they grabbed their chairs and followed her around to whereever she was.

I was nine by this time, so I did my share with Mama’s care too. Daddy had installed an outdoor faucet on the bathtub along with a washing machine hose with one end cut off so that she could sit in the tub as I bathed her and be able to rinse her clean after the soapy water had drained. So I would get her out of bed, she would lean on me, and we would make it to the toilet. I would position her in front of it and she would hold onto my shoulders while I grabbed the hem of her gown. Then she would sit while I lifted the gown over her head. After she rested, we would maneuver her into the warm bath water.

Unfortunately, one of the effects of the stroke she had to recover from was control of various muscle groups, and one time as I sat her down in the warm water, she turned her head to the wall and about the same time I realized she was crying, I smelled it; the source of her embarrassment. I reached down into the brown bath water and released the plug,let it drain, and used the hose to wash the tub around her, hose her off, and run new warm bath water while she cried. I hugged her and said “Mama, please don’t cry, you’ve cleaned my messes lots of times. I won’t  tell nobody”.

After that she became determined not to ever be a “burden” to her family again. She fought back. She never regained vision in one eye, but she got a lot better,and she walked. Barefooted. Everywhere. One hundred and twenty pounds’ worth of steps. She prayed at night for God to  let her live long enough to raise her children. She lived another nine years after that debilitating stroke,and when the last one came, I was eighteen and my brother was sixteen.  We could “do for ourselves’ as she would put it. Her  job was finished. The bath water was down the drain, the mop water was out the back door.

I was beyond grief,inconsolable. The closest thing I  found to any sort of comfort was when  I was sobbing and praying, crying out to God. I had to find some way to let her go, someway to make peace,some way to know Mama was alright. So I begged God for a sign.

She died on a Saturday morning after cooking  everything imaginable,all day Friday, for a planned family reunion on Sunday and traveling to her hometown Friday might. Instead of the family reunion, the family gathered for her wake, with no unexpected expense or trouble incurred on their part.  They brought food and enjoyed the feast she had prepared for her own wake.

I sat in the empty funeral home Sunday morning in the small country town with no locked doors,  next to the casket, looking at her,and trying to comprehend the concept of letting her go. Her ringlet kept springing forth as if it hadn’t received the message “life has departed”. I played with it, stroking it back, watching it pop back over her forehead, and became aware of a small sound somewhere, a sound that seemed slightly familiar, but hauntingly unfamiliar. It continued on, getting incrementally louder, until it went,over the course of about twenty minutes,from”do I hear something?” to “what IS that?”

I alternately pondered a car running out in the street somewhere, to a suction machine somewhere in the funeral home, to  a dog who had possible been hit by a car and was softly moaning in its death throes. Not being able to stand the thought of anything dying alone, I got up and followed the sound. It seemed to be coming from the front  porch,  a stately antebellum affair with two story columns rising,rising majestically up to the peak of the porch roof,and as I opened the door and stepped out, what I thought was a pigeon swooped down as if to attack me from out of the heavens.Instead of attacking me, though, it dove straight down to me, circled around me, and flew off. I couldn’t move; it was as if I was paralyzed and  the world stood still; there were no street noises, no chirping birds, no breeze  to be heard.

I don’t know how long it lasted, but I then heard my ex husband frantically exclaiming from the doorway “get back in here! ”  I was still dumbfounded, asking  him “Did you see that pigeon?”, and he was almost hysterical by that time “that wasn’t a pigeon, didn’t you see it? That was a white dove ! That was a sign you will be the next to go!”

For some reason I wasn’t afraid, though, and as I sat back down near Mama and resumed playing with her ringlet, stroking her hair, trying to figure out where I had heard a sound like that sound…. that sound  I now knew had been the cooing of the dove  calling me to the porch, I knew: the old percolator !

It was a sign, alright ! But not a portent of looming death death for me. It was the answer to Mama’s child’s prayer. God had sent me the sign  I had asked him for,telling me Mama was alright; she was with Him. He sent down His Love on the Wings of a Dove; a sign from above, on the wings of a dove.

The next day was the funeral, a storm cloud blew up but passed away. I went back to the cemetery and some of the flower stands had toppled over; I straightened them up. One had had a dove affixed to it that had blown away  so I didn’t know which one to put it back on. I kept the dove; I figured it was meant for me.

Later that night  I went back to the cemetery at bedtime. Mama had never traveled or slept in a motel alone so I wasn’t going to leave her there without saying good night.

I sat down on the mound of earth and looked up at a vast blanket of stars. There was a peace there, a quiet, a solitude,a vast openness, a beauty, but Mama was not there.

She had flown away; her feet were no longer on the ground.