Ten
Thousand
Oprah
Winfrey says that when she walks into a room she expects people to say there
goes one phenomenal lady.
She says
she never feels out of place, inadequate, or an impostor, for she knows she is
only one, but she comes as ten thousand. Those were the people who made her.
One, her Great-grandfather, was born a slave and could not read. After the emancipation
proclamation, however, he learned to read and eventually became the first of
their family to own land.
You know
Oprah didn't have an easy life. After being raped as a child, she was taken out
for ice cream by the person who raped her, and she stood there with her ice
cream while blood was dripping down her legs. She had an illegitimate stillborn
child, but she didn't let that stop her forward movement into life and success.
And there she stood, proclaiming she doesn't feel out of place or inadequate.
I know
that my Great-grandmother was the family's first child born on American
soil.
I know her
mother was pregnant on the boat to this country, and imagine pregnancy mixed
with the rocking sea. Maybe I inherited my propensity for seasickness from her.
I hope she wasn't sick on that crossing.
I know the
little German community in Kansas was a close-knit community, and all through
my life, I heard my mother say she cooked as though for a threshing crew—or
liked to. Big family holiday meals were fun for her.
The phrase
“Cooking for a threshing crew” came from the years on the farm when, during
grain harvest, all the men would band together and thresh the grain first for
one farm, then another, and the women would cook for them.
I know
that my grandparents butchered a hog for winter and let nothing go to waste,
including making head cheese, which mom tried to make once. I could never bring
myself to eat it, and I don't know what happened to the mess she made. It
disappeared from the scene.
My mother
wanted to create a farm for herself, and she began with a garden and chickens.
One day, a large box containing 100 baby chicks arrived in the mail. They
became our laying hens. All the males ended up in the freezer. Mom had
researched how to cut up a chicken. Her carving always had a wish-bone piece,
her favorite, but I never see that piece of chicken anymore.
Mom
praised her mother's quilting ability, for Grandma's stitches were small and
her lines straight; Mom said she was the best of the quilters. The women got
together for a quilting bee, which meant the quilting fabric was stretched over
a frame. The women sat around the periphery of a frame that took up most of the
room, and while their fingers worked, they visited. I thank my lucky stars I
don't have to do some of the work they performed, like quilting, darning, and
canning, and what must have been endless cooking.
Women have
been credited with creating language. Not only do women like to visit, but
exchanging knowledge around the food preparation was essential. The men, being
hunters, could get by with pointing and grunting.
My mother
also said her mother didn't teach her about housework, for her mother preferred
to do it herself. My attitude was, "How hard is it to clean? You figure it
out." However, her mother's attitude probably bothered her more than any
teaching she would have given.
My
grandmother liked canary birds; she had one at our house in Mt Vernon who
trilled like an angel. So, the story goes, Grandma also had a canary when they
lived in Kansas. One day, a cat broke into the house and killed her canary. She
picked up a broom, intending to chase that cat out of the house. She
accidentally hit it on the head, and to her shock, she had killed it.
Mom said
her father, Frank Bertsch, would coax her to reveal the contents of his
Christmas gifts, and she couldn’t keep the secrets. He would also stand on the
front porch and tell her to listen carefully, and she would hear the corn
growing. On storm threatening nights he would stand on the porch watching for
tornadoes.
(The
boiling of a purple sky such as happened in Oklahoma was a weird and fearful
scene to Oregonians. There were no tornadoes though.)
Mother's
sister was tall—Mom was too, but Marie was also thin and probably looked taller
than mom who was buxom. Marie was perhaps self-conscious about her height, as
well, for people often asked her, “How’s the weather up there?”
People can
be unkind without thinking about it, especially regarding physical traits
people have no control over and feel self-conscious about. To add
insult to injury mom had curly hair and was the prettier one. Marie said she
kept stealing her boyfriends.
I never
heard any snide comments or complaints about the people in the family.
The women
in my immediate family longed for a child. Marie's husband didn't want
children, so she was childless for years, but eventually they had a son.
Marie's husband enjoyed that boy so much that they had two other children,
another boy, and a girl. Mom didn't have a baby for 19 years after me, and a
tumor took away Dottie's ability to have children, so I worried about my
fertility. Thankfully, I easily had two girls.
Mom named
me Joyce after her best friend, but I don't know what sort of person she was.
I'm honored, though, to be named after someone Mom loved.
Great Grandmother
Hertenstein had arthritic hands, locked up joints bent at a forty-five-degree
angle. It was troublesome to see her crippled, and Mom said she couldn't sew
anymore, something she loved. She spoke in an accent and visited us at least
once, from where I don't know. We have a picture of Mom, Great Grandmother,
Grandma, and me—four generations of women. I look to be about six.
She must
have visited earlier, for Mom told me that they pressed upon me to be on my
best behavior before her visit. I tried hard, not knowing my best behavior, but
when she asked me, "Joyce, where are your stockings?" I was
dumbfounded. I didn't know about long stockings; I always had bare legs and
wore short skirts.
My mother
was a frustrated artist—my evaluation. I don't think she would have
acknowledged it, but it showed in her beautiful yards, and how she could prune
those apricot and peach trees so their fruit could be picked while standing on
the ground. She spent years at the kitchen table designing the house they
wanted to build but never did. She taught herself cake decorating, made my
wedding cake, and then sold some cakes to other brides.
Mom liked
to cook and sew, and while I was in grade school, she made many of my clothes.
I remember her hand stitching the hems of those immense skirts we wore in those
days. The last dresses she made for me were my bridesmaids' dresses.
On the day
when I was nine months pregnant and feeling a bit off, I propped myself up in
bed to open a box I had received that day from Mom. It was full of old baby
clothes she had made for Bill seven years earlier.
My baby
girl was born that night.
I was
disappointed that the nurse wouldn't give me the phone at three a.m. so I could
call my mother. I wanted to be the one to tell her that her granddaughter had
arrived. I was so energized I could have run down the hall, and I was starving.
But they only had a hot 7-Up, and I don't like 7-Up.
Neil
called her later. That's customary, but that wasn't right, I wanted to tell
her, besides, I was awake the rest of the night.
Did I tell
you that my mother was pregnant at my wedding? She was only two months pregnant,
and tended to have round belly, so it was not noticeable. Bill was a surprise
baby, a happy surprise. An old wife's tale says that babies bring more babies,
so it was with mom. It was only about a year after Mikie came that Mom became pregnant.
My parents
always scrambled for money, but they scraped together enough to adopt their
first two Korean children. The little boy, Mikie, arrived a year after Jan and
weighed only ten pounds at one year of age. Mom could be credited with saving
his life, for he had such severe dysentery she would stay awake nights tending
to him, and our family doctor would make house calls.
After that
slow start, you should see him now. He is a career Military man. Currently, he
teaches, but for a time, he was a paratrooper sent to South America to thwart
the shipment of drugs into the United States.
After
Mike's father passed, his mother gave her sons, there were four, some of the
family money. She didn't want them to wait until she died. My mother had often
said that if they had the money, she would adopt another child. Mike agreed,
and they used it to adopt the six-year-old girl.
Mom and
Grandma Holt, Bertha Holt of the Holt Adoption agency, communicated through
letters. Grandma Holt liked Mom's descriptions of their family and enjoyed
hearing how the children were growing and maturing. I was astounded that the
agency kept those letters. It was years after mom’s death that they sent the
letters to Mike. Mike sent them to Jan who was an adult by them. She gave them
to me.
The
letters were photocopied front and back, and many were not dated, so they were
a puzzle, but I typed them and made them into a book titled Mom's
Letters and Mine. It's on Amazon. (You must also type in my name, Joyce
Davis, as the author to find it. It’s Mom’s Letters…and mine by Joyce
Davis. The quickest way to find it is by the ISBN number BOOJH1PUK8.
Her
communication with Grandma Holt was a bit of history and a time when she laid
her soul bare on paper. Now, I may take my commentary out and republish the
book from Mom's perspective only. They don't need me in there. It's her voice
and her legacy. At the time, I thought telling the rest of the story was
essential, but maybe it wasn't.
(PS It's
still there. I bought my own book on Kindle, reread it, and left it as is. DD
said my words are essential. Okay.)
Mike went
into military service at fifteen, lying about his age. His mother said she
didn’t know what to do with him, so she signed for his admittance.
Putting an
errant boy with a horse is about the best thing you can do for him, and Mike
entered the Calvary. I don't know how he or his mother managed that, but it was
a coup. I didn't think he was particularly savvy around horses, for he didn't
ride, but he knew how to pick a good horse. (He chose Boots.) He said he had a
teacher who couldn't ride but could teach others how. Once, he rode Boots to
bring home the cow, and he told me that Boots knew what he was doing, but he
was falling all over that horse. His unit in Calvary was the last one and used only
for ceremonial purposes. Eventually, he was transferred to the army and was
stationed in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, where he met Mom.
He had
pictures of his unit at a swimming hole with horses and men in the water. I
thought that was so cool.
He
believed that the army saddle, called a McClellan, was the best and bought one
for me. It was miserable, hard as a rock, with an opening down the center—for
the horse, not the rider. The straps to the stirrups would slide as the horse
moved, and a canter would leave nasty bruises on my thighs. So, instead, I rode
bareback, which is the best way to teach a child to ride. Luckily, Boots had a
perfect back for bareback riding, and that muscle behind a horse's front legs
is the ideal spot to tuck your leg. You can communicate with the horse, and
having your leg tucked will help you stay on the horse. Notice how many times I
use the word perfect? Well, Boots was.
.I've read
since then that the misery of the McClellan saddle was the reason the Rangers
were in such mean spirits and took it out on the Indians. The Indians who rode
Appaloosas--claimed to be a rough ride—set them up to be their grumpiest. Thus,
the battle was on.
“Every oat tree started out
as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.”--Henry David Thoreau
From Goddesses 50 and Beyond, https://goddesses50andbeyond.blogspot.com
"Breathe, Pet Your Cat"
