Category: Writing

I take the two bags of old papers found in the dilapidated shack and dump them on the counter top.  Curiosity gets the better of me. Wiping the off each item with a damp paper towel, I sort  the trash-like items into stacks of pictures, old letters, newspaper clippings, and official documents. Most of it goes into the trashcan beside me. I don’t keep the hundreds of Christmas cards with a simple signature. If a note is on it, then I keep it.

 I go through the documents and realize I’ve never heard these names. Well, then, I’m not from around here, what do I expect? I find birth announcements, report cards,  a death certificate dated April 3, 1929, and another dated April 7, 1927. The bank statements bear the name Theodore McDaniel. I open a marriage license between a Mattie McDaniel and N.L. Walker, dated 1954. Don’t tell me there isn’t a story here!

 I enlist Ma’s help. She’s lived in this area over 40 years. She confirms that the last person to live in the old house was Theodore (or Buck, as he was called) and he died more than 20 years ago from a tree that fell on him a few hundred yards away.

 Well, I’m bound to learn more. It will take time to sort out the letters by date and read them. There’s also two more old houses to search.

December 27, 2010

I found my calling. A historian. Or collector of junk, whichever way you look at it.

Carthage, Texas, is the least likely place to find authentic artifacts, but it goes like this. Pa purchased 11 acres adjacent to the pine cabin he built on his 100 acres. The new purchase has 3 old constructions on it. One, a nineteenth-century wooden house. The sound of Pa’s tractor and brushhog resound behind me as he proceeds to level the overgrown brush. No one has been inside the dilapidated building in many decades, which tempts me to make my way through the overgrown vines and up the rickety stairs.

The floors are sound and the roof has held out the rain. Tossed, half empty, boxes, trampled rags, and electrical wiring, nuts and bolts cover the floor of the two rooms. Pa is intent on destroying the old building, and I want to see if anything is salvageable.

I stumble through the debris and overturned boxes, discovering half-eaten letters among the mouse-made confetti. At this point, I get a little nervous. It dawns on me I could disturb a mouse family and I start to withdraw, but I hear Pa’s tractor and know the contents in this long-ago home have been given one last chance at divulging its secrets.

I collect a stack of faded sepia photos of someone’s grandparents. I stack up an assortment of 1930’s Christmas cards scattered around the floor. I discover a box of documents, handwritten letters, Depression bank statements. Buttons, a chipped china tea cup, a mason jar. At this point, I don’t know if anything valuable exists, but I wonder who lived here, why they left, and who were these sweet children holding their mama’s hand?

So my expedition of the day results in two large bags of damp, half-chewed refuse. Not bad for an amateur sleuth. Or a crazy lady.

Saturday, Bill and I had a free afternoon, seldom found around here, even if we don’t have anyone else living with us at the moment. So we decided to eat out for lunch. Again, very rare that we eat out. Anyway, I mentioned Inspirations and he agreed.  I’m not sure what he thought when he walked into a dainty, feminine tea house, but I think he enjoyed it. He just seemed out of place, my big tall man surrounded by dainty tea cups. It made me think of this essay I wrote for my mom.

Sentimental, maybe, but I remember the teacup well. Little rose-colored hearts adorned the sides, and gold swirls laced the rim, playing along the edge. Near the bottom, tiny treasures signaled the time to refill the cup with tea. And so we refilled it over and over as we sat and talked at the table. Perhaps it was your heart talking to mine or my heart responding to some mysterious message of warmth from your sweet raspberry tea.

Mother, I still remember the insight into life you shared. When we laughed at my two-year-old’s gibberish and she crawled into your lap wanting a sip of hot tea. You taught me how to be firm but loving. And I remember the day we cried together over your own mother’s rejection of you, her harshness and the healing that came when you understood her past.

Some days we had big grown-up talks about men and boys and the horror of rape or incest or neglect or abandonment. Somehow it was never as horrible, the way you said it. Your heart always enveloped the unmentionable in your warmth and your concern. Even my own pain lessened and I felt your words comforting and expanding to embrace my hurt. You were always there with your support and insight as to why.

And just when my heart could not hold any more, the cat would jump playfully into your lap and you would laugh. “Someone is always begging for a sip of my tea,” you said.

And you’d pour out a little of the raspberry sweetness into a saucer and set it on the ground, never holding anything back. Wisdom, maybe that’s what you poured into my cup of tea.

God’s wisdom, and sometimes His wisdom through others like my mother,  is never ending, always being poured into our lives.