Cecil was my mother's mother. She was widowed with five children, the youngest being 9 months old, on April 1, 1941. During the Great Depression. She had a 6th grade education and no job skills.
The saving grace was the farm that was given to her by my great-grandfather, her father, who won it gambling on Tennessee riverboats. It became truly a working farm, nearly self-sufficient save for coffee, flour, spices, and sugar.
Cecil found work at the local nursing home, as a nurse's aide, aka grunt work. All five children were afforded a college education, a rarity in those days. I often wonder how she did it. She told me once that she knew she could not fail. Faithful reader, does that sound familiar?
The lovely and attractive mu-mu featured in the photograph, above, belonged to Cecil. Wonderful Sister spied it in a box of clothes in my parent's basement and sent it to me. On particularly grim days when I'm in the Black Hole (or Black Hell if you choose) which is chronic depression, or my ankle is hurting so bad I just want to cut it off, or words won't come for my ongoing Stubborn revision - I put on this old, worn-out mu-mu and channel Cecil.
Good lord! You are totally rockin' that ensemble. Scary stuff! Actually, what Delilah left out was Cecil made these attractive dresses and wore them around all the time, completing the look with positively ancient shoes with no backs (because she had them folded down) and usually cut open on the sides. She referred to them as her "slippers." The other intriguing thing about Cecil's wardrobe was her underwear, aka "step-ins." She had a famous clothing storage system known as the "quilt box" which was made by my father and lived in the hall of Cecil's house. It is about 8 feet long and at least 4 feet high. It stored many things other than quilts. I firmly believe Cecil could have outfitted an entire army division out of the quilt box. Of course, nothing matched, everything was ancient and Cecil was never troubled by trivial matters such as gender appropriate clothing. Hats provided some extra special entertainment. None of the clothing ever fit, your outfit would not merit a place on the "Best Dressed List" but you were certainly warm running around chasing cows with your stick. (Cecil always said, "You can't do nothin' without a stick." I have found this applicable to life as well as chasing cows.)
ReplyDelete"she knew she could not fail" rang a bell in my head after I slept on the blog post. When I was an undergraduate I was taking a class on family history. (It's a long story. Don't ask.) As part of the course requirements I had to do some primary source interviews pertaining to my family history. I was talking to Cecil about growing up on the Tennessee River, the youngest of 13 children. One of the most interesting stories was how she walked, yes walked, across the Tennessee River. No, she didn't think she was Jesus. Prior to TVA constructing dams for flood control, the river could get kind of low. So one day Cecil, who could not swim, decided to walk across. She took one of her sisters along with her. When I heard this story I nearly fell in the floor. (I have a thing about bridges and dams. Windows open, regardless of weather when crossing.) I asked her why on earth she would attempt such a thing and her reply was simply, "To see if I could." And with that she crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. That was 1984 and I can see it in my mind's eye as clearly as it was yesterday. Obviously she had a long history of "she knew she could not fail." It never crossed her mind that not only could she have stepped off a ledge and drowned herself but her sister as well!
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