Rose
They have said that they don't expect my great-grandmother to make it through the weekend.
We've heard that before--several times, actually. I know these things are difficult to predict.
I was fortunate to know all of my great-grandparents, save one--Zimrie, who passed away in 1984, two years before I was born. And it is his wife, Rose, who is my last-remaining, who will not be with us for long.
My mind jogs through memories of her. Both recent and long-ago.
Sometimes I tell my boys stories about "Little Rose." These are in fact the stories that Rose, my Nanny, have told me since I was small. I expound on her stories of growing up in Sutton, Arkansas on a farm with her three sisters and brother--Margaret, Bernice, Marion, and Arthur. I tell them how when she was born, her parents named her Eula Belle. And how Martha, Little Rose's mother, read a romance story in a magazine a week later and changed Eula Belle's name to Rose to match the lady in the story. I tell them about the time her mother gave her two eggs one morning and how she walked so carefully to the general store in order to trade them for two pieces of penny candy. How in the garden, it was her job to pick the ladybugs off the plants. How on Christmas morning she opened her eyes and saw a red apple, an orange, a coloring book, and five crayons and she closed her eyes again and was afraid to open them because she didn't think it could be real! She was so happy.
Maybe when they are older I will tell them about the day they got the letter saying that her brother, Arthur was missing in action. And that months later they sent home a box of ashes that might have been the remains from his felled plane. And how she did not believe it and would watch out the window for him to come home.
When she was older she moved back to Sutton, Arkansas, and I have a fair share of childhood memories in that century-old farm house. She would wake early in the morning and rise from her king-size bed where I slept beside her. She would walk across the blue painted wood floors and go outside to feed the birds. More than once she woke me to see the deer underneath the persimmon tree. But usually she would sit on the porch swing and read Psalms, and I would go out later and listen to her as she read them to me.
She sliced open the persimmons to show me the little knife and spoon inside. She would do a trick with toothpicks--breaking them and arranging them and then dropping water in the middle to make them spread out and form a star. I seem to have forgotten a crucial step as my attempt to duplicate this for the boys has failed. We would walk down the dirt road and pick flowers and wild blackberries.
She wrote a poem for me one afternoon--"Butterflies, Buttercups, Chocolate Cake, and Kittens," that was about all of my favorite things. She typed it out on her typewriter that she was so proud of. She often said, "I'm gonna write a book one day." And she believed it.
She sung in a ladies trio, sung hymns. I always begged to listen to her record, but she was reluctant to take it out of the plastic sleeve.
She in a sense, set the backdrop of my childhood. At her house we would always watch To Kill a Mockingbird and my cousin, Elizabeth and I would try to recite all the words to the intro. Elizabeth was always better than me. We'd also watch The Sound of Music, and to my dismay, The Quiet Man. She would read to me from a book called, Little Button Rose, but we never got passed the first few chapters. She taught me to play Silver Bells on her piano, she picked it out by ear.
My grandmother, Nanny's daughter, has started to go through some of her things that haven't been sorted, sold, packed away. In an old purse of Nanny's she found a wallet. It is falling apart, but you can still see Zimrie McDougald inscribed in the leather. Mimi is sending it to me to keep for my Zimrie until he is older. All my life I've heard stories of Zimbo, as his kids and grandkids called him. Mimi likes to tell me how every day before work he used to look in the mirror and smile and wink at his reflection and say mischievously, "You ole dog, you." And Nanny always said that when Zim smiled it took up his whole face.
In 2009, our first Christmas as a married couple, Seth and I went to Texarkana for the holiday and Nanny gave me what is probably my favorite present I've ever received. She had seen my Christmas list which consisted mostly of books, and so she gifted me with one--Dracula. A first edition that had been in Zimbo's library for years. His name was written inside the cover (along with my thirteen year old grandmother's writings which consisted of "boys boys boys boys boys," in pen, on so many pages. Also, "Dracula," with hearts around it. I guess that vampire trend goes back many a year.) But also inside the cover, Nanny had written a letter to me from my great-grandfather. Now I'm not really sentimental in theory. If someone had told me that Nanny would do that, I would think it was--well, frankly, a little weird. But opening the book and reading the letter she had written to me by the only great-grandparent I'd not met, was somehow so touching. I cried when I read it. I cry every time I read it:
Christmas 2009
To Kristen Julianna, my first great-grandchild
From Zimbo via Nanny
I'm delighted to pass onto you one of my books. I read continually from age 13 when my father moved us from the city to a wooded area on the banks of a bayou.
Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman not to be ashamed, rightly living the word of truth.
See you in heaven
Zimrie P. McDougald
I wonder if Nanny would be content with the life she has lived. She is a dreamer and was always talking about that book she would one day write, always fantasizing about going to Scotland and visiting all the places her ancestors were from. She was always apologizing for not having more money and not being able to give us expensive things. Yet she gave me some of my most treasured gifts--the book, yes, but also so many memories. And, ultimately, I don't think that any of her family members have a single doubt that she loves them. That is a life well-lived.
We've heard that before--several times, actually. I know these things are difficult to predict.
I was fortunate to know all of my great-grandparents, save one--Zimrie, who passed away in 1984, two years before I was born. And it is his wife, Rose, who is my last-remaining, who will not be with us for long.
My mind jogs through memories of her. Both recent and long-ago.
Sometimes I tell my boys stories about "Little Rose." These are in fact the stories that Rose, my Nanny, have told me since I was small. I expound on her stories of growing up in Sutton, Arkansas on a farm with her three sisters and brother--Margaret, Bernice, Marion, and Arthur. I tell them how when she was born, her parents named her Eula Belle. And how Martha, Little Rose's mother, read a romance story in a magazine a week later and changed Eula Belle's name to Rose to match the lady in the story. I tell them about the time her mother gave her two eggs one morning and how she walked so carefully to the general store in order to trade them for two pieces of penny candy. How in the garden, it was her job to pick the ladybugs off the plants. How on Christmas morning she opened her eyes and saw a red apple, an orange, a coloring book, and five crayons and she closed her eyes again and was afraid to open them because she didn't think it could be real! She was so happy.
Maybe when they are older I will tell them about the day they got the letter saying that her brother, Arthur was missing in action. And that months later they sent home a box of ashes that might have been the remains from his felled plane. And how she did not believe it and would watch out the window for him to come home.
When she was older she moved back to Sutton, Arkansas, and I have a fair share of childhood memories in that century-old farm house. She would wake early in the morning and rise from her king-size bed where I slept beside her. She would walk across the blue painted wood floors and go outside to feed the birds. More than once she woke me to see the deer underneath the persimmon tree. But usually she would sit on the porch swing and read Psalms, and I would go out later and listen to her as she read them to me.
She sliced open the persimmons to show me the little knife and spoon inside. She would do a trick with toothpicks--breaking them and arranging them and then dropping water in the middle to make them spread out and form a star. I seem to have forgotten a crucial step as my attempt to duplicate this for the boys has failed. We would walk down the dirt road and pick flowers and wild blackberries.
She wrote a poem for me one afternoon--"Butterflies, Buttercups, Chocolate Cake, and Kittens," that was about all of my favorite things. She typed it out on her typewriter that she was so proud of. She often said, "I'm gonna write a book one day." And she believed it.
She sung in a ladies trio, sung hymns. I always begged to listen to her record, but she was reluctant to take it out of the plastic sleeve.
She in a sense, set the backdrop of my childhood. At her house we would always watch To Kill a Mockingbird and my cousin, Elizabeth and I would try to recite all the words to the intro. Elizabeth was always better than me. We'd also watch The Sound of Music, and to my dismay, The Quiet Man. She would read to me from a book called, Little Button Rose, but we never got passed the first few chapters. She taught me to play Silver Bells on her piano, she picked it out by ear.
My grandmother, Nanny's daughter, has started to go through some of her things that haven't been sorted, sold, packed away. In an old purse of Nanny's she found a wallet. It is falling apart, but you can still see Zimrie McDougald inscribed in the leather. Mimi is sending it to me to keep for my Zimrie until he is older. All my life I've heard stories of Zimbo, as his kids and grandkids called him. Mimi likes to tell me how every day before work he used to look in the mirror and smile and wink at his reflection and say mischievously, "You ole dog, you." And Nanny always said that when Zim smiled it took up his whole face.
In 2009, our first Christmas as a married couple, Seth and I went to Texarkana for the holiday and Nanny gave me what is probably my favorite present I've ever received. She had seen my Christmas list which consisted mostly of books, and so she gifted me with one--Dracula. A first edition that had been in Zimbo's library for years. His name was written inside the cover (along with my thirteen year old grandmother's writings which consisted of "boys boys boys boys boys," in pen, on so many pages. Also, "Dracula," with hearts around it. I guess that vampire trend goes back many a year.) But also inside the cover, Nanny had written a letter to me from my great-grandfather. Now I'm not really sentimental in theory. If someone had told me that Nanny would do that, I would think it was--well, frankly, a little weird. But opening the book and reading the letter she had written to me by the only great-grandparent I'd not met, was somehow so touching. I cried when I read it. I cry every time I read it:
Christmas 2009
To Kristen Julianna, my first great-grandchild
From Zimbo via Nanny
I'm delighted to pass onto you one of my books. I read continually from age 13 when my father moved us from the city to a wooded area on the banks of a bayou.
Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman not to be ashamed, rightly living the word of truth.
See you in heaven
Zimrie P. McDougald
I wonder if Nanny would be content with the life she has lived. She is a dreamer and was always talking about that book she would one day write, always fantasizing about going to Scotland and visiting all the places her ancestors were from. She was always apologizing for not having more money and not being able to give us expensive things. Yet she gave me some of my most treasured gifts--the book, yes, but also so many memories. And, ultimately, I don't think that any of her family members have a single doubt that she loves them. That is a life well-lived.
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