Far from Home: Memories of World War II and Afterward

17. Ups and Downs

17 Ups and Downs 194 In all thy ways acknowledge Him And He shall direct thy paths. Proverbs 3–6. DIFFERENT PEOPLE have been curious as to how I managed to raise my children and care for them without being able to hear, and they have asked me about it. I never thought much about it at the time, but looking back, I think it was due to Mama’s teaching and the instinct God gave me to sense what I couldn’t hear, because I could always tell when one of my babies needed me, day or night. I’ve never been able to figure out why some hearing people think that if a person loses her hearing she loses her mind and feelings as well. We have all of the feelings, hopes, and dreams as anyone else, maybe more than some. My children are the center of my life and my purpose for living. Every day I thank God for placing them in my care, and no matter how old they get, they are still my babies. Back to their growing-up years, one morning I saw Papa pass in the truck dressed in his Sunday clothes. He didn’t stop, so I wondered where he was headed. I thought he might be going to a convention at some church or to something the Masons he belonged to were having. I didn’t see him come home all day, but sometime after dark, I was in the kitchen cleaning up the supper dishes when he walked in grinning a little. I smiled back and asked where he’d been all day and if he was all right. He looked around a while then looked at me and said, “I went and got married.” My mouth hung open, but then my brain started working again, and I asked, “Who?” It was Bertha’s mother, Mrs. Sally. I told him I hoped he’d be happy again and hugged him. He cried and patted my head and went out. “Well,” I thought, “Papa won’t be down there alone.” I didn’t want him to spend the rest of his life lonely and sad. I wished him well, and after that I didn’t go down home every day anymore. I still liked to walk someplace, so I took Mary and Carolyn and walked across the field to Frank and Lattice’s house to visit if they were home, or to some of the other neighbors I hadn’t seen much of—Mrs. Lizzy and her sister, Artelia, Sadie Murphy, Annie Mott, Cousin Helen Boney, and Mrs. Sissie Maybanks—or I just walked along the woods enjoying the outdoors. Red would be in school. Edna had come back from Philadelphia and married her high school love, but they now lived with Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom just across the woods. She had two little girls, Lorey and Shelia. We started visiting each other often. Our children enjoyed playing together, and she and I loved to talk and read romance magazines and discuss the stories while drinking coffee. It was about this time that Edna, Mrs. Bertha Williamson (better known as Cousin Bert Williams), and Sam’s wife, Sylvia, started playing a big part in our lives. Cousin Bert lived in the same little house across the field that her sister Cousin Honlow had lived in years ago, the house where she made tea cakes for Ups and Downs 195 196 FAR FROM HOME Sam and me when we played in her back yard under a pear tree while Mama worked nearby. They were both short in stature, round, and a little stooped. They liked to wear long dresses and long full aprons, and they always had something on their heads, either a scarf or an old hat. Cousin Honlow had been a sweet kind little lady. The winter I was taking treatment for my eyes and couldn’t go to school, you would see her coming down the road with her little black iron pot filled with dry field peas she’d cooked for me because I loved them so good. It was a blow to come home one spring and find out she’d fallen sick and died. Now her sister had moved in her house, but Cousin Bert was as different from her sister as night and day. There was no sweettalking from Cousin Bert. She...