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During those early years in our marriage when we lived at Fayetteville,
and later, we spent a lot of time at Watson. Mostly, we just loved to be there,
but also, Verla Mae, Barbara's mother, just had some mysterious hold on her
large family. She seldom spoke, but when she did, they listened. Right up until
the day she died. When she called our house, if I answered, all I ever heard
was “Barbara there?” Then when she got Barbara on, she said her say, a few
words, then just disappeared from the air waves. Never “bye” or “so long.” just
disappeared. If one of the things she
said in that phone call was, “Ya”ll coming for Thanksgiving?” we went. We all
did. She always prepared about twice as much food as we needed, and we ate it.
By the time that food had just began the digestive process properly, she was at
the living room door. “Supper.” Then she was off to somewhere to eat hers
alone.
Us
prospective and actual in-laws never really knew where we stood with Verla Mae.
She just never talked to us much. The only hint of where I stood with her
occurred one day before we were married when another guy she was dating for a
time, the jock, came home with Barbara to meet the family. (His idea, Barbara
says.) She got Barbara alone, said, “Where's Pat?” A short time later, I was
back in the fold, he was out. I've always had a warm place in my heart for
Verla Mae about that.
I
have never seen a large family so close. They pretty well all wound up living
close together, but if some of us did venture off for a time to another state,
Sport and Verla May just got in that old truck and came to us, regularly. Verla
Mae worked very hard, and she was always very fast. If she was chopping cotton,
and Sport dared to suggest she slow down a little, as she was chopping too many
cotton plants, She didn't say a thing. Just threw the hoe down, went to the
house. Sport seldom did that, by the time I came around. Throughout our married
life, as we worked together, if Barbara or I got a little too bossy, we had
only to say, “I'm gonna throw my hoe down.”
If
one of her children wanted/needed some new clothes, shoes, etc. badly, they
never discussed it. Verla Mae just found a way to make it happen, it just
showed up on their bed one day. There was never any family discussion about
whether they could afford it or not, it just showed up. Never a word said
later. But they always got by, money wise. Verla Mae just saw to that. Sometimes,
after the girls got older, Verla Mae would buy them new shoes and she would
wear their old ones. She made sure her children and grandchildren never missed
celebrating a holiday. One rainy Easter, she hid a dishpan full of Easter eggs
in the house. Took hours to find them all. She was a firecracker fanatic. I
think she liked them more than the kids did.
Verla Mae loved to drive around, find an old house place, dig up some
plants to put in her yard. When she got behind the wheel, she started humming
church songs, then got to tapping her gas pedal foot to the beat of the music. That could be a hard ride.
Phyllis said, they bobbed their heads long before head bobbing became the thing
to do
Verla Mae instilled an extremely strong sense of right and wrong in her
children, similar to the old Gillum “ Do Right Mechanism” I have already talked
about. But somehow, she just brought it
about, with no screaming at them, no
constant reminding, no watching them with eagle eyes. However, they did get THE LOOK if they messed up. She expected it,
therefore they did it. Maybe a “Stop messin' and gommin'” thrown in
occasionally. Just generally speaking, some sort of magic.
A
little word about THE LOOK. Barbara inherited THE LOOK. During the years Barbara
was substitute teaching, she was always
the first sub called to handle a difficult situation. Even in boy's PE, shop,
whatever. They quickly learned, that soft spoken young lady could just put a
rowdy kid on the floor with THE LOOK. Kinley was always especially vulnerable
to it, and would do anything she could to avoid it. Oh, all right! I'll admit
it. I was, and am, vulnerable to it too. I have changed more than one segment
in my writing, when Barbara, while proofreading, gave me THE LOOK.
When
Verla Mae's children got married, they
always stayed married. None of that messing about stuff. The world needs a lot
more mothers like Verla Mae Dunnahoe.
Verla Mae had a very hard time in her last years. Congestive heart
failure dogged her for a long time. Once, in the hospital, daughter Patsy was
helping her across the room. She just totally collapsed. Patsy ran to the hall,
and there just happened to be a team of doctors with a defibrillator walking
by. They hurried in. One doctor got to her side, while the other got the
machine ready. Right after the first doctor pronounced her dead, the second
doctor kicked a can out of the way to get the machine in place. "Do you
want her back?" A doctor asked Patsy. "Oh, yes! Yes!" After
awhile, the machine brought her back to life.
Later, she took Patsy aside. “You should have let me go. I was floating
above that room. I saw the doctor kick something aside. I saw a bright warm
light. It was pulling me to it. I wanted to go. Then I was pulled back, slowly,
into my body. I wish I had been able to go.” A year later, she finished that
journey that she had started that day.
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