The Damn Quilt

When I turned 12 Mama announced that I would make my first quilt. It caught me by complete surprise because I thought this was her skill, not mine. I did know how the process was done because I had watched her and Aunt Ruby made quilts all winter long and it was fun for them.  This was how they spent the winter months.   So why was making a quilt now something I should do? Her answer was rather simple:  I needed to fully understand this process because "it was what mountain people do." I protested, but Mama simply answered by saying that I  would start after Christmas to make a 'Nine Square' pattern because it was easy and I could do it. She went on to say that I'd have the rest of winter to cut the pieces and sew each square together. Then she announced, "You should have the quilt top finished by the time school is out and you, Aunt Ruby, and me will have all summer to quilt it."  

Oh, Lord, what an awful year this would be!  I had plans to learn twirling, read movie star magazines, cook some neat desserts and talk to friends on our new telephone. I didn't want to do a quilt!! Mama never bothered to answer me or argue.  She just put me to work each night cutting out quilt pieces and sewing them together after my homework was completed. Just as she planned, the quilt top was completed by April and the month of May found Mama, Aunt Ruby, and me in front of the quilting frames starting the process of quilting.  Mama said, "We'll have this done by the time you are ready to go back to school in August."  Aaaaah, I was doomed to misery all summer!  And just as planned, the quilt was finished about a week before school started.  


We put the quilt away in a trunk for later (whatever that meant) and I was just thankful to have survived the summer of quilting without loosing my mind or the sex appeal I was growing into. My hormones were taking over and I had to learn about a lot of other stuff that Mama and Aunt Ruby appeared to  know little about. I had made the damn quilt; it was out of my sight in the trunk; I never liked it nor the colors in it, and I never valued the sewing skills I had mastered while doing it. I moved on with high school, college, marriage, and moving away from home.  The quilt remained in the trunk, rarely looked at, never used, just a memory of a miserable summer.


Mama died and I finally had to confront the trunk and the quilt.  It still looked ugly to me.  Why, on God's green earth, had Mama chosen hot pink for the set up color which surrounded each square.  She didn't like hot pink as a color, but there it was all over my quilt! I took it out of the trunk, placed it on the bed and looked at it fully.  For the first time I had to acknowledge the skill of the quilting, at least Mama's stitches. Mine were 'beginner' stitches and could be found, and yes, there were Aunt Ruby's stitches, those awful, crooked, wandering all over the place stitches which were her trademark because she talked so much while quilting that she paid little attention to where her hands and the needle were going.  Suddenly I remembered their fussing and fighting over the stitches as they worked.  They had done this all of my life and neither one of them ever listened or changed their behavior. 


What I now understand about THAT summer which I could not grasp for over 40 years was the lessons I was learning about my mountain heritage and the incredible people who helped raise me. It was not about the damn quilt, really. Now I get this quilt out periodically when I want to laugh and remember Mama and Aunt Ruby and my mountain heritage.  I really KNOW quilting now! I'm proud of my quilt. I have earned the privilege of conversation with other quilters and I've forgiven Mama for the 'hot pink' color.  I now just laugh at it and wish I had asked her about the choice.  I still don't use the quilt on my bed because it's too precious to get 'wore' out, as Mama would say. Guess Mama did know what she was doing after all.

A Different Wedding Cake

Thirty years ago I would have never thought that my two sons who are 9 years apart in age would be getting married within a year of each other, but that's how it has worked out.  Over the year we have learned 'wedding speak' and now know the issues involved with this process. From my Appalachian roots getting married was not a very complicated process. My parents got a license, found a preacher, and were married beside the road about a mile from their home. No one attended the wedding except these three people. They went back to one of the parents' houses and lived there until they could manage to have a home of their own. Few families had parties or celebrations. From my so called more modern world, I've often thought this was a bit odd, but believed it was the custom for a 1929 Appalachian wedding.


In a recent phone call with our son we learned that they have not chosen to have a traditional wedding cake; instead they want Appalachian Stack Cake and assorted Italian cookies (from her heritage) for a reception that will host around 200 people. Hearing this I immediately went into a conversation within my own head, "How will I manage to make 15-20 stack cakes assuming that each one serves ten to twelve people?" While they can be purchased through Apple Barn, I would love to be able to provide them since I take pride in being able to make them. Being able to make a great apple stack cake is one of my family traditions. They were my mother's favorite cake to serve to guests.

 From my son's research on apple stack cakes, he learned they were traditional celebratory cakes for many Appalachian holiday and church events.  As it were, each family or friend contributed one cake layer which was brought to the event and assembled with the dried apple mixture.  Thus, the more people who brought a layer, the higher the stack cake became, and the more respect and popularity you had in the community. A ten layer cake would signify a very respected person, or two or three ten layer stack cakes would mean an even larger sphere of influence and popularity.


While I haven't yet answered how I will manage making enough Appalachian Stack Cakes to provide my part of the dessert for 200 people, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to count on each of our guests bringing one cake layer to the wedding. My most recent plan consists of calling my cousin who also makes stack cakes and asking her to join me in an 'apple stack cake cook off' for this event. If all else fails, I suppose there's always Apple Barn.  


Below is a link for an Appalachian Stack Cake. 

 http://www.appalachianhistory.net

patsyhlawson@gmail.com

The Winters of Spring

Anyone from Tennessee knows about blackberry, dogwood, and red bud winter.  These words describe the transition from one season to another, particularly the transition from winter to spring which details the ebb and flow from warm to cold, cold to warm, and finally to completely warm. It often takes a month or more to make this transition and during this time there is a great deal of complaining and dialogue about the process. In reality the same transition happens in the fall season, but interestingly, there are no names given to the fall process, or if there were, we did not use them in East Tennessee.


Like all their neighbors Mama and Aunt Ruby could have an hour conversation on any given day related to these 'winters'. These conversations usually began with Aunt Ruby's first of her three or more daily visits to our house.  Living across the road from each other on State Route 33 these two women had constant contact and worked together daily to get their farming done. Aunt Ruby would come flying in the back door her dress flapping in the cold wind saying, "Well it's blackberry winter alright cause I saw some blooms on the blackberry vines along the creek bank." Mama would respond with, "Yep, I think it is and what are you doing out in this air with nothing on but your petticoat and dress?" Aunt Ruby, not bothering to answer the question, just went on with her description of the cold wind and how she hoped this would not be a long winter spell.

Its now 55 years later and I find myself in Middle TN hearing many of the same comments about the winters of spring. The only thing that is different is this current generation does not know the exact definitions of each winter. Now the conversation begins with, "Is this another winter and how much longer will this last?" And most of these women are dressed in skimpy, too early for the season, dresses or summer shorts and tops that are flapping in the wind.

Lately I have come to believe these winters are a great metaphor for adaptions to life changes. Often the life span is broken into the spring (youth), summer (young adulthood), fall (middle adulthood), and winter (late adulthood).  These transition phases of human life are recognized and referenced as moving into a new season, but how many of us stop to consider the 'winters' process of our transitions? Do we see that going to a new phase of life has many cold spells or rude awakenings about our inability to do things. We also experience warm spells when things go better than expected and we begin to believe we really won't have to change. Do we acknowledge that we are in a new phase of life and realize that the choices we make about the upcoming phase have an enormous impact on how the transition turns out? 

The cold winds and rainy spells tell us that change is coming and we frequently find ourselves under or over dressed in our clothes from the former or upcoming season. We can be overdressed or under-dressed for any new life season if we fail to acknowledge life changes, if we insist that no changes are needed, if we fail to see that different clothing is required for this new season.


What new seasons are you entering and what winters of spring or fall are you trying to endure?  Are you making appropriate changes?

Sexuality According to Mama

The Smokey Mountains are at their finest in the Spring. Everything is new, alive, vibrant, and sensual.  Trees and wild flowers are blooming; ferns unfurl their new leaves, and in the animal world almost everything is mating or birthing.

Spring was calving season on our farm. We tried to arrange birthing of calves in the spring so the calves could have time to mature enough for the fall cattle market, therefore, most of our calves arrived in late February to early April.  Within 21 days after giving birth the cow begins another 'heat' cycle which, if successful, assured a new calf would be born the next year. If mating was not successful this first heat period you had to wait for next month's heat cycle.  


Many farmers in our area did not have a bull and they relied on the services of other bulls in the community. We always had a registered bull, one with  pedigree papers, to service our cows and the cows of the farmers without bulls. This service required that the farmer bring his cow to us for this service. The farmer tied a rope around the head of his cow and walked her to our farm. He knocked on our back door, asked for my father who then walked with the farmer to the pasture field where our bull 'serviced' the cow. 

This process was never described to me fully. Mama basically dodged my direct question about why the farmers brought their cows to our house for a few hours and then took them home with statements like, "The cow just wants to share some of our grass" or "The cow needs to be 'serviced' without explaining what it meant. I was told to come inside to play if the cows were nearby and when I asked why, Mama just ignored the question.  Most of the time I did what I was told, and if Mama was busy, I sneaked out the front door to see what I could see in the pasture. I don't think she ever caught me; if she did, I never knew it. Thirty minutes later I saw the farmer leading his cow back home. 


The birthing of calves was very common in the spring. Mama watched each cow carefully and seemed to know when the new calf would arrive. She watched to see when the cow left the herd and headed for the woods. Cows give birth away from the herd. Often Mama would say, "We need to go look for Big Red or Gernz, common names for our cows, because she may be having her calf."  We walked into the hidden spaces of our pasture fields where we often spotted a cow lying down.  Once she was spotted by Mama, I was told to stay behind while she went to check on the cow.  Doing as I was told I was always curious about what was happening up ahead that I was not allowed to see. Mama checked things out and walked back to where I was giving me a report on the cow with one of two sentences.  "She seems to be doing just fine so we can head back to the house", or "I think she is having trouble. We need to get hold of your Daddy, the vet, or a neighbor to come and help."  This last explanation had a sense of urgency about it and Mama looked worried.

I always wanted to know more, always had questions, and I wanted to see a calf born.  I thought that would be a very special event to witness. But, Mama never seemed to be interested in telling me anything or allowing me to see more, and I did not ask. However, I did know that these types of things were explained to boys and often boys came with their dads to view the process when the cow was serviced by our bull. I never understood this difference.  To this day sixty years later I have never seen a calf born.

Looking back on these events I wish Mama had been honest about all sorts of sexual matters.  It was the one topic she never could address. I understand that things were different in her time and she was only doing what she thought was best.  Many years later I asked her why she was never comfortable talking about sex and she said, "I knew you would find out on your own anyway!"  While this is a true statement, I believed then and now that she missed a great opportunity to share one of life's greatest pieces of information.  How I wish she could have been comfortable with the topic. The best part is I did not repeat this behavior with my own children.  Of course, things changed with my generation and they should have changed.

 

Uncle Ted: My Personal Monster

patsyhatfieldlawson.com Uncle Ted: My Personal Monster

I hated Uncle Ted most of my childhood.  He was Aunt Emma’s husband.  They came to visit us at least one weekend every month or two. The visits were usually for Sunday dinner and I started dreading the experience as soon as Mama said, “I think Emma and Ted will be here this weekend for dinner.”

Uncle Ted was a large man, kinda like Bluto, Popeye’s brutish friend who competed for Olive Oyl’s affections. When Uncle Ted walked into a room it shrank in size and he appeared to fill the whole room. His voice was loud, rough, and commanding.  Even his ‘hello’ sounded like an order to me. He always greeted me first and as much as I craved attention, his comments were never welcomed because they were so loud, unpredictable, and rough. A common greeting from him consisted of rubbing my head with his knuckles, greeting me and leaving my short hair all tangled and messy. I could not hide my disdain for him. I spent most of my time taking paths around the spaces he occupied hoping to avoid contact with him. I didn’t have to read books about dragons that breathed fire and ate people because Uncle Ted was my fiery dragon.

I was a very finicky eater as a child.  Uncle Ted made me eat when he came. Since he owned a men’s clothing store he paid close attention to others’ clothing and offered generous comments about others’ clothing choices and how they looked on their body.  One Easter Sunday dinner Uncle Ted patted my stomach and told me that my new dress looked like a maternity dress.  I was 12 and so self-conscious about my body that I cried over this comment. I never wore the dress again. Mama and Aunt Emma knew my feelings about him and always said, “Honey, that’s just the way he is; get used to it.” While I accepted this advice on some level, my preferred way of coping was to stay out of his notice.

Aunt Emma was Mama’s youngest sister. She was petite like me, pretty with twinkling brown eyes, and always finely dressed. People in our community often accidentally called me by her name because I looked like her. She was kind most of the time and only rarely made critical comments.  I loved her very much and liked her visits. She often brought me new clothes, books, and encouraged me to do well in school. One persistent question that plagued me during adolescence, however, was did he treat Aunt Emma the same as he treated me and why did she tolerate it?  

Today Aunt Emma is nearing 82.  Uncle Ted died about ten years ago. She is still quite attractive, mostly healthy, generous, and a fine dresser. We speak and visit often. Our conversation eventually focused on my and Uncle Ted’s relationship, or lack thereof.  She still insists that I was a favorite niece of his and that he loved me very much. She told me that while he knew he scared me to death he always cared deeply about me and how my life turned out. We laugh about his Bluto approach and my reactions. While I now know that my reactions to him were somewhat based on the gentle nature of my parents, I still feel he had a strange way of showing his love. I also now accept that his style was a product of his family relationships.  His family were straight shooters who told you their thoughts and feelings honestly and without apology.  I still don’t get the connection between his business success and his communication style, but do have great respect for his contributions to his community and family.

Recently I encountered a difficult situation which called for straight honest reasoning and communication.  I was amazed to realize that the words coming out of my head and mouth were those of Uncle Ted’s, spoken exactly as he would have said them!  Inside my head I could hear him confronting the situation as it happened and the exact words he would have used. I was very surprised! My second surprise was the realization that I had been given a gift from Uncle Ted.  While we don’t get to pick our relatives or their personalities, or the discomfort they produce, we can learn valuable lessons from our interactions with them. My parents were great models for me, but Uncle Ted provided me with the problem solving skills I needed to handle really tough situations. These were some skills my parents did not teach me. Maybe the reason we are given so many relatives is to provide us with many different examples of problem solving.  Thank you, Uncle Ted, for being who you were.

Patsy Hatfield Lawson is a professional storyteller, speaker and entertainer who performs at business conferences, civic functions, assisted living facilities, and storytelling events.  www.patsyhatfieldlawson.com

patsyhlawson@gmail.com

Lessons From Our Family Boarding House

The flow of guests in and out of our house was endless. There was rarely a month, week, or day when we weren't hosting some relative or acquaintance at our house all year long.  Mama and Daddy came from large families; Mama had nine siblings; Daddy had six and both were among the first born in their families. As with most families the older children got placed in a 'nurturing role' to younger siblings by default. Mama, Daddy, and Aunt Ruby parented all the later born children in their families. I also should include the many neighbors and friends who dropped in at our house unpredictably.


 I arrived on the scene when Mama was 40, Aunt Ruby was 42 and Daddy was 50. By this time Mama, Aunt Ruby and Daddy were the established 'home base' for 20 or more people because all the grandparents had died. I honestly knew little difference between my own siblings and my first cousins.  All total I had 33 first cousins!  Aunt Ruby and Mama lived across the road from each other and had daily contact.  When out of town relatives came to visit they always visited at both houses, but no one ever stayed or ate at Aunt Ruby's house. She loved everybody and she wanted to be a good hostess, but she was not good at it.  She had a small house, an unpleasant husband, unlike Mama, and even though she loved to cook, she burned everything she cooked.  None of her siblings wanted to eat it.  Mama ended up feeding most of them and bedding down as many as she could for the night. This ebb and flow of relatives presented me with unique situations and constant contact with a variety of personalities and dilemmas.


I often served as a babysitter for cousins, doing potty training, napping, diaper changing, entertaining, and teaching them about farm life. I was a waitress, cook, farm hand, storyteller, medic, and teacher. I remember the year cousin Linda got mumps during her visit. I was her companion and was expected to 'catch' her mumps as well, but for some strange reason I did not. I learned to do hair, manicures, sewing, embroidery, and clothing repair. All of these skills were learned by necessity, not choice.  It seemed that Mama and her sisters assumed that I should learn these skills as part of my hostess duties for relatives.  Cousin Ralph, Aunt Ruby's youngest son, taught me lessons about sexuality until Mama figured out what he was doing.

I remember loving to swap clothes with my visiting city cousins and being jealous of their city experiences and knowledge. I considered myself inferior to them because I was a country girl and believed that my knowledge of farm life, birthing calves, bailing hay, milking, being able to catch Nell, the mare who hated riders, and growing crops always paled when compared to the city life I imagined they had. I also remember a few fights with these cousins and every time Mama got wind of it she assumed I caused it. 


What I didn't learn from my family clan I learned from my community.  There was the neighbor who had 'spells' that I later learned in college that she probably suffered from schizophrenia. There were several neighbor families with a variety of disabilities in speech, movement, intelligence, each of which got explained to me with Mama's limited vocabulary for these types of things. Then there was Liddie, the hypochondriac, who could drive Mama out of the house on a hot afternoon to hoe the taters just to escape her visit. Of course, I didn't know what was wrong with her until my freshman introductory course in psychology.  At least, I though it was hypochondriasis. Finally, there was Daddy's sister, Nell, who had a birth defect which did not allow her to speak above a whisper. As far as I know she never saw a doctor about the condition so I never had a name for it.  She, as Mama explained, was "just made that way." Adding to this mixture of personalities was Daddy, an outgoing friendly man who often sat on his front porch reading the newspaper while Mama finished dinner.  If anyone walked past our house near mealtime Daddy welcomed them to our front porch for a visit and invited them to dinner. Mama never knew who was coming to dinner.  She handled that by making extra amounts of food to cover whoever showed up, and she rarely complained about our many invited or uninvited guests.


I used to wonder how I ended up with my fascination for psychology because I had no role models and no encouragement to pursue the field.  But after I finished college I finally connected my career choice with my experiences growing up in our accidental boarding house. I suppose it was the best training I could have had for learning about people, their many issues, and learning how to explain human behavior. Also the stories of these people are very rich.

Mama's Secret Vice

My mother's secret vice was chewing tobacco.  It was a secret she kept from everyone except the family.  She started chewing tobacco at age 10 when her mother gave her small pieces of tobacco to hold in her mouth.  This was a common practice at the time for mountain women such as herself. This tobacco was grown on our farm, air cured, and part of our annual income. During my growing up Mama used King Bee Twist or Day's Work brands along with her Garrett's Snuff.  Her 'tobaccer' was the first thing she put in her mouth in the morning and the last thing she took out before she went to bed at night.  This vice was shared with Aunt Ruby.  They often discussed some aspect of chewing in daily conversation; they had spitting contests; and conversed about good spittoons - those that were fancy and made with ceramic or the type they used which were empty sixteen ounce pork and bean cans.  She preferred the latter. 


She told me I should NEVER develop a chewing habit and said that it was bad for me. Her habit along with no dental care had rotted all her teeth out by age 35. But the thing that stopped me from chewing tobacco was running through the house and tripping over her pork and bean can. The rule was whoever knocks over the spittoon has to clean it up. It seemed like it was always me. The rags I used for cleaning up my mess were found in a kitchen drawer and it always took too long to get the clean up rag before the ambeer had done its damage to Mama's floor or carpet.


With my bare hands I dragged that rag through the slimy, molasses colored spittle, gagging the whole time. Mixed in with the slimy spittle were flakes of brown chewing tobacco.  It ran out of the pork and bean can like mud and the smell was distinctly that of our barn as those firm green tobacco leaves dried and turned dark and limp. Mama's carpet appeared to soak it up in seconds and once there it left a brown stain no matter how hard I tried to get it out. I hurried to stop the flow while Mama stood over me, looking down, judging my every move and secretly enjoying my suffering because I had been "clumsy enough to knock it over in the first place!"


While Mama's filthy, nasty habit stained my hands it also told me something about my mountain roots and what it meant to be a real mountain woman. Today I vomit easily at the sound of someone else vomiting, or at the sight of vomit. It reminds me of the ambeer I cleaned up many times in my youth.   Even now I can gag at the thought of cleaning up this mess because of the memories of the molasses colored spittle oozing across the living room floor. I never tried to chew tobacco.  I suppose Mama's solution achieved it's purpose after all.