Opal and Gertrude

This photograph taken circa 1930 is an image of a friendship that lasted over 80 years! On the right is my mother, Opal Auntionette Terrell, who married my father,  John William Howard Teal, on December 27, 1931. On the left is Gertrude Mae Burks, who married Herod Bickerstaff on December 4, 1931. These two young women "stood up" for each other at their weddings that December in 1931. But they had been standing up for each other for years before that.  They went to church and school together, both graduating from Bullard High School in 1931. They shared  living in big families on farms with no indoor plumbing, drinking water from a dipper stuck in the well bucket,  learning to cook on wood stoves, learning to iron with flat irons heated on those stoves, writing in their diaries, the giggling of girls, and the satisfaction of working hard,. In those days, school text books were hard to come by. They shared those books, which were called "partner books"  I have one of those books with their names and that designation handwritten inside the book.

Through the years Opal and Gertrude remained close friends. They grew up on farms whose acreage backed up to each other.  There was a small creek with a bridge in between. Mother spoke fondly of the times they would plan to meet at that bridge. I am sure Gertrude was at a party Mother went to when she was a teenager. She told how she had such a good time she was late coming home and as she tip toed down the long front hall of their big white house on the hill in Bullard, she kicked a washpan that had been set outside a bedroom door and woke everyone.  Gertrude shined her patent shoes like Mother did, by rubbing a cold biscuit over the toes!

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Best friends for so long, and married in the same month, their married lives began as Gertrude and Herod worked a farm in the sandy soil of East Texas, raising watermelons among other crops.  They had 2 sons and  2 daughters. Opal and Howard moved to Tyler where they both worked in Cameron's Cafeteria and where they lived when I was born in 1940, later moving to New Orleans, LA during WW II  Daddy worked in shipyards. When they came back to Texas, both worked in cafes in Jacksonville and later operated and owned cafes where Daddy was well known for being a wonderful cook.  My sister Janice was born in 1946.  When I left home to start college in 1958, Gertrude and Herod's oldest daughter Nona was my first college roommate!

Both were strong women whose faith was apparent in the way they lived life in their communities, raised their families,and served in their churches. Gertrude was an active member of First Baptist Church Bullard.Opal was a longtime member of First Baptist Church Jacksonville. Both were married for over 50 years.  Howard Teal died in 1982. Herod Bickerstaff died in 1987.  So both women were widows for many years.

 Gertrude was born August 30, 1913 lived in Bullard all her life and died in Jacksonville (less than 15 miles away) on April 15, 2002 after a couageous battle with cancer.  Opal was born October 20, 1913, lived all but 2 years of her life within a 15 mile radius of her childhood home, and  finally left her home in Jacksonville when we moved her near us the same year Gertrude died, 2002.  Often in those last few years, she would tell me she was ready to "go Home."  On that night,  September 21, 2006, as I grieved her loss, I smiled through tears and said,

"She is meeting Gertrude at the bridge."

Her Father's Daughter

I often mention things my granddaughters do that remind me of their fathers doing the same thing when they were little boys.  This photo Jeremy sent me of Jordann tackling a bowl of watermelon slices almost as big as she is takes me back to days when our boys would ask if we could "cut this watermelon" as they rolled it across the kitchen floor. As they stood digging with forks into the heart of a watermelon half, juice sparkling on their chins, they had the same happy smile as this one.  Sometimes we took the melons outside on the porch and  enjoyed the cool sweetness that seems part of hot Texas summers. Then they would have a seed spitting contest!

 Going back to the 40's and 50's,  I think of all the watermelons grown by my grandfathers or the farmers on nearby farms.  The vines sprawled out in sandy fields, where melons swelled and grew juicy, and melons were harvested, piled into the beds of pickup trucks and taken to town or roadside to sell.  I grew up thinking the heart of the melon was for us to eat, sprinkled with a little salt.  The rest of the melon and its rind could be thrown acorss the fence for the cows to enjoy.  How different that image is from the dear prices we pay for a single melon today!  

Bon Appetit, Jordann!

A Love Note from Mother

My mother, Opal Auntionette Terrell Teal, mothered me long into my own adventures with motherhood. She was not a hover mother or helicopter parent (today's terminology) but she was a a careful parent. "Be careful on your way home."  "Wrap up, it's cold and wet outside!"  "You need to eat right to keep up your strength."
"Don't try to do so much. Slow down."  - only a few examples.  As she advanced in years, eventually wearing a diagnosis she didn't even understand (Alzheimers), she often repeated herself.  Her short term memory was gone, but she never forgot something she had always said often: "I love you."  By the time she died 8 years ago, she had resorted to leaving yellow sticky notes all over her room where she wrote that.

Since she could no longer plant things for herself, various of our family members brought her a pot with a blooming amaryllis from time to time. She enjoyed the blooms, but when they faded she would hand me the pot and tell me to plant it in my yard.  Each year now since she left us, the amaryllis plants that I stuck here and there push their green spears out, shoot up long stems and flower.  Do you see the yellow sticky note?

Crawfish Season

My granddaughters are such a source of delight for me, often reenacting a scene straight out of the past when their daddies were the same age.  In this photograph, Maddie has captured a large crawfish from one of the mounds near their house.  Her gleeful grimace may be a touch more dainty than those I remember on the face of her Dad and his brothers, but I love hearing that Maddie and her sister Jordann have now lured their neighboring friends from the grip of Minecraft and Dora the Explorer to this sunny spot outdoors to join them in their quest to "catch critters."  I am sure my son enjoyed showing them how, which is exactly what he did nearly 40 years ago!  Our sons were 3, 5, and 8 when we moved to a house that backed up to a creek in Plano, Texas.  They didn't have any trouble making friends once they got out their string and bacon and began fishing for the crawfish that were all along the creekbanks.  In good old East Texas lingo, they called them "crawdads."

The boys enjoyed keeping one for a pet now and then.  They had captured a very large crawfish which was being kept in an aquarium on our kitchen buffet. My mother came to visit and as usual, she got up earlier in the morning than any of us and slipped barefoot into the kitchen to make her first cup of coffee.  She suddenly woke up the rest of the house when she started yelling because she didn't know what had invaded the kitchen floor. The boys had unwittingly caught a mama crawfish that had dozens of tiny babies clinging to her swimmerets  She had crawled out of the tank, slipped onto the floor, and scattered little crawfish everywhere.  Mother thought they were bugs, and indeed, in some places they are called mud bugs!

Easter 2014

In recent years, Lent resolving into Holy Week and Easter has become rich with ritual and remembering for me, but it is always a time of remembering  Easters in the 1940's, when I was a little girl.

  Mother sewed new dresses for my sister and me, which  inevitably wound up being hidden under coats as we made our way to the Sunrise Service held. in our hometown.  This service was early, and happened at a place called Love's Lookout where there was a large ampitheatre formed from  red rock, a WPA project. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Depression-era Works Progress Administration came to the hill in the 1930s and, using red rock mined from Cherokee County, built a park, picnic grounds and an amphitheater used for these sunrise services, plays and other events.

The scenic bluff which was the location of  the ampitheatre was named to honor Wesley Love who in 1904 bought much of the surrounding area and planted a 600-acre peach farm. After Love's death in 1925, his wife donated 22 acres to the state for a state park. The state, however, failed to create the park and in 1934 the City of Jacksonville purchased an additional 20 acres and developed the two tracts as a city park. That's when the Works Progress Administration began its project.

In the Spring, dogwoods and other spring flowers are in bloom, making the setting even more beautiful.  I remember shivering on the cold hard semicircle of rock on which we sat, but I loved this sunrise service, with its gathering of Christians from many area churches, the joy of singing "Christ Arose" and Alleluia, the feelings of newness and festivity in our Easter clothes, and our family traditions that would follow:  church services at First Baptist Church, Easter Sunday dinner which would included having grandparents at our house or going to theirs.  There was baked ham, potato salad, new potatoes with green beans put up in Mason jars, Jello salads and sometimes Coconut cake or pie - all homemade and delicious.  I can almost smell the vinegar we used for die to color boiled eggs the day before so that we could hide them over and over again on Sunday afternoon.

Today our family includes some version of many of the same traditions as those I loved 70 years ago, but
we have added to these a deeper awareness of the season of Lent, and more intentional observance of Holy Week.  Our church for 22 years now, First Baptist Church in Richmond, Texas is where we gather for services such as one we attended last night, Tenebrae.  The church  has a prayer garden with a small labyrinth where chairs will be set up for a Sonrise service tomorrow morning followed by breakfast with our church family served from dishes made with eggs and sausage made at home and brought as families arrive. There will be an egg hunt for children.  I will sing in the choir and ring with the handbell choir as we express joy and praise with some of the same hymns I sang with my family all those years ago.  Then we come back here to our house with all of our sons and their wives and children who can be here.  That will include our newest granddaughter, sweet Nora Opal, who is exactly one month old and celebrating her very first Easter.

Alleluia.

Bluebonnets and Friends

In Texas, each year's return of the bluebonnets is celebrated by all.  Driving from our house to visit their newest cousin last weekend, Skye, Maddie, and Jordann watched for this particular patch of wildflowers which in a little Wildflower Preserve in their neighborhood.  They were excited to find these in full bloom.  There was much conversation and admonishment.  "Don't ever pick them."  "They are our state flower." "You can only pick them if you grow them in your back yard." I loved the chattering and laughter, and they loved arriving to be allowed to hold the new baby.

On our way back, I stopped just long enough to stick my camera out the window and photograph bluebonnets, thinking I would frame a small print for each of them so they could have bluebonnets in their room.  They are always picking sweet bouqets for me, so I will enjoy giving them their own bluebonnets.

In the days just over a week ago when they knew their baby would soon be born,  I told my son that giving birth was hard work, yes, but that it was the most exquisite thing that ever happened to me. The beauty of welcoming a grandchild is another layer of that kind of breathtaking awe and wonder.  Part of this is being privileged to see that amazing awareness and tenderness in my son and his wife as they experience all it means to be a parent. Part is the hope, knowing, newness, and wonder in my granddaughter's eyes. Thank you, Ben and Kristen, and Nora!

"To have grandchildren is not only to be given something but to be given something back.

You are given back something of your children's childhood all those years ago. You are given back something of what it was like to be a young parent. You are given back something of your own childhood even, as on creaking knees you get down on the floor to play tiddlywinks, or sing about Old MacDonald and his farm, or watch Saturday morning cartoons till you're cross-eyed.

It is not only your own genes that are part of your grandchildren but the genes of all sorts of people they never knew but who, through them, will play some part in times and places they never dreamed of. And of course along with your genes, they will also carry their memories of you into those times and places too—the afternoon you lay in the hammock with them watching the breezes blow, the face you made when one of them stuck out a tongue dyed Popsicle blue at you, the time you got a splinter out for one of them with the tweezers of your Swiss army knife. On some distant day they will hold grandchildren of their own with the same hands you once held them by as you searched the beach at low tide for Spanish gold.

In the meantime, they are the freshest and fairest you have. After you're gone, it is mainly because of them that the earth will not be as if you never walked on it.

Frederick Buechner  on Grandchildren.    originally published in Beyond Words