Ch...ch...ch...changes

My aunt Linda told me this story at my mother's funeral: My mama was one of 10 kids and Linda was the youngest. I figured it out one time: my grandmother Nellie must have been pregnant or nursing for more than 20 years (no wonder she died young.) Mama was 9 years old when Nellie died but for reasons I never clearly understood, the bulk of Linda's care and feeding fell to her.

They lived way out in the rolling hills of northeast Arkansas on a dirt poor cotton farm, fried their bacon on a wood cook stove, pumped their water from a well. Mama had to muck out barns and work the fields, cook and wash, and then carry an infant with her to the one room elementary school where she scratched out an education. It was a hungry, dirty, hard life and my grandfather was, by all accounts, a hard man. She had every reason and excuse to be hateful and bitter, but she wasn't. She was gentle, kind, nurturing, funny as hell, stubborn as a mule. She was loving, genuinely loving, and she genuinely loved her family.

So, here's the story Linda told me; when she was about six and they had all gone to town of a Saturday. As they were walking past the shops, Linda saw the most cunning, darling little white coat and cap on a girl mannequin in a window display. She thought it was the prettiest thing she'd ever seen, and told my mother so. Mama took a look at it and said, "well, you better ask Santa Claus if he'll bring it to you for Christmas." Linda pined after the coat and hat for the next several weeks and every time she brought it up, mama would tell her she better ask Santa for it. Linda finally forgot about it turned her mind to something else. On Christmas morning she found a long white box with her name on it. Of course it was the hat and coat. My mother had picked cotton every day after school for the money to buy them.

That was my mother. She was always taking care of others. She didn't do as good a job taking care of herself.

I'm not my mother, and I was never as good at taking care of others as she was but, like my mother, I haven't been taking very good care of myself, either. I'm self absorbed enough to want to do something about the latter. I'm making some hard choices and big changes in a last ditch effort to achieve something like healing in this life. I don't know how it's all going to play out exactly and I'm superstitious enough to want to avoid the attention of the gods while I'm in transition because, as they song says, they'll fuck you up. But I'm taking some steps. I don't know exactly where they're leading, but it ain't here.