Dear Mothers,
Oh, lately nothing has ministered to me as much as looking out my
side screen door. It’s right behind me as I write. That old black screen
door is maybe 50 years old at least. It’s wooden and has an old screen
in it on the outside and then a strong one on the inside. I imagine in
the old days, the children kept breaking it out and a Daddy nailed a
stronger screen on the inside. Anyway, between the screens I have placed
flowers that I have dried.
Johnny mowed
just lately but the grass was getting pretty high out the side yard and
I loved it. Oh, it looked so old fashioned with Dixie’s windmill out
there and the gourds growing around it. See, Iowa became a state in
about 1850 something I think. So the house I live in is one of the first
ones built in Iowa. I let my wild herbs grow in my yard as to take the
land back to the way it once was. I have old fashioned flowers, too,
that come up each year. The flowers I am enjoying right now are the
morning glories. In the fall, these glories cover everything. They have
blue flowers and purple, white and pink. They grow up the house and all
over. Many people hate them as they intertwine everything but I love
them. If I could, I would just let the grass grow in certain areas of my
yard. I love the tall grass and old kinds of flowers as they sway in
the summer breeze.
I am so
happy here with my home as Papa had it. Jim loved nature and back to the
land things. Papa wasn’t much with words. I never got into a word war
with Jim as I knew I would win. I mean without really winning? But, oh,
we connected in many ways. Mostly over homemade bread or a fresh apple
pie.
Papa ran
after me in his heart, always afraid of losing me to something. One
time, he wrote about how glad he was, as I had told him that I had
abandoned myself to him and our children. Jim wanted all of me and
didn’t want to share me. It was a sacrifice to him to give me up as a
writer. It was a sacrifice to me, too. All I ever wanted was Jim and the
children and our home. I wanted to have children through my 50s. But
Jim used to tell folks that one of the reasons he ran away from his
family in the old days is because he had put me on such a pedestal and
didn’t think he could keep up with me. Often I told him I loved him and
only him. But in the early years he would say, “You only love me because
God told you to.” Little did he know that I truly loved him with or
without God.
When I first
met Jim, I just loved him right off the bat. I ate bullets for
breakfast and nothing less than Jim would do. I still remember how he
held me as we danced our first slow dance together. The other day, as I
had gone to the store, I heard a song on the radio. I had to listen to
it in the car before I went in the store. The singer was a son asking
God to let his Mom dance one more time with his father who had died.
Well, Papa and me will dance again with golden slippers on golden
streets.
But as I
write this morning, I can feel Papa’s spirit as I feel the cool breeze
coming through the old screen door behind me. And I hear locusts and the
crickets chirp. “Oh, Papa, yes, I will pick the apples this morning. I
picked the wild plums yesterday.” Jim always called me away from my
daydreaming and writing to the Prairie Land and to the works of
righteousness. Papa was a dreamer, too — a visionary. But he didn’t know
how to tell me what he had dreamed.
I talked to
Danny, our son age 24, last week. He went to NYC to find himself and to
get discovered as a musician. Feeling kinda like a failure as a mom, I
said to Dan (my fifth child), “Danny, did Dad and I do anything right
raising you kids?” He said, “Oh, Mom, you and Dad did everything right.
Us kid had a ball growing up. We learned to be creative and to do things
on our own.” But I said, “Danny, do ya still love the Lord? And what is
the best thing Dad and I taught you personally?” Danny said the best
and most important thing we taught him was that he could make it one way
or the other. That nothing could take him down. I asked Dan if he liked
NYC and he said that he missed home and the garden and the fruit trees.
He misses Papa, as we all do. But the City is mostly concrete and he
misses the wild flowers and what he grew up with.
I haven’t
made a loaf of bread since I lost my Jim. My heart land has not rained
and my heart has been dry and covered with sand. But it will bloom again
I see it in my visions. I see specks of dreams that I am going on — as
Dan says, “Mom, you and Dad taught us to never give up.”
Danny and I
laughed about the year the gas bill got so high. And how we turned the
heat off altogether and wore our coats in the house. The bill went to 25
bucks after being 500 and some dollars. Our outside dog would cry by
the kerosene burner but I wouldn’t turn it on until just before the
family was up for breakfast. We laugh about how Mom outlasted the dog. I
would tell the dog that if I could make it without fur, then she could
make it, too. Even our dog was a survivor. She lived to be 15 years old.
The only time she saw a vet was when we took her to have her put down.
She was old and had pneumonia.
I guess we
just didn’t have much money to take us through and we refused to give up
on anything. As I write, I look at my family table still set for 7 or 8
people. Oh, the stories I could tell. Stories of just plain not givin’
up. Papa and me would just say, “Well, we will just make it somehow.”
Then Jim would smile and pretend to tip his hat. “We always do.”
But ya know a
lot of it had to do with going back to the land. Going back to basics.
There is a secret there. The Depression era Mothers did the same thing
when they lost everything. They went back to the land and made a home.
This old home of mine went through the Depression era and stood tall and
strong and I will, too. And in my desert, I will bloom as the desert
rose. And as I tip my hat to Papa in heaven, I say, “And, yes, Papa we
will make it as we always do.”
Love Connie
* Order Connie's book, "Dear Kitchen Saints," available on Amazon. It is autobiographical and tells the beautiful story of her marriage testimony!*
