Verla Mae

     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.

     Barbara tells of a little incident that happened when she was 12 years old, the one time Verla Mae used more than just THE LOOK on her. Barbara developed early, and at 12 she looked 16. Her brother brought a friend home with him. He was 16. He started paying Barbara a lot of attention, and Barbara was flattered. Barbara and the older boy were flirting away with each other in the back yard. Verla Mae called Barbara over to the back door. "Get away from him." Then Verla Mae turned and disappeared. Barbara did, pronto. Case closed.

      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.