Finding My Way, Chapter 1

Exactly one month to the day after Mama’s funeral I left home. Shortly after Mama died I caught myself again engaged in wishful thinking – if only her cancer had been caught earlier she might still be here. But it wasn’t caught earlier. By the time we realized her extreme tiredness and weight loss were due to something more than just overwork, the iron fist of cancer had already clutched her tightly.

I used to wish “if only” a lot. If only – I could have earned a better grade if only I had studied harder. If only I had been more careful the dress would not look so obviously homemade. Mama often admonished me: “Jess, you’ll never get anywhere wishing on ‘if only.’ Sometimes it takes a while to figure out that things always happen for a reason. Most times it doesn’t much matter whether or not we can’t figure out what that reason was. Life doesn’t give do-overs; work through whatever it is as best you can and move to whatever is coming next. Don’t let life pass you by while you are stuck wishing something from the past was different.”

Mama was a wise woman. She didn’t seem to let much of anything get her down, she’d just plow through and move beyond whatever troubles came our way. It seemed like she must have lived a hundred lives to be as wise as she was. I am thankful for her lessons about living life in the best way I can. No matter what circumstances I face, I know I can move on with my life.

A few months before she passed Mama called me to her sewing room; it was more like a big closet than it was an actual room. This was where she made the rag rugs, quilts, and smocked dresses she sold during the town market days in spring, summer and fall. She pulled out the bottom drawer of her fabric chest and lifted a flat wooden box that was hidden under the drawer. I knelt down beside her and looked on in wonder. Her hands trembled as she handed it to me and said, “My father made this for my sixteenth birthday. I think it’s time for you to have it.” It was about the size of a cigar box and inlaid in a checkerboard pattern lid with a center sunburst and had tiny brass hinges and clasp. As I opened it she told me she always put a little money aside from market days, “I hoped one day this would help you go to college.” Her blue eyes brimmed with tears, “I won’t get to see that now, but I’ll die knowing you have a chance to get started.” We held each other and wept, grieving over a future we knew we wouldn’t be sharing.

Pa and my brother, Jake, took off hunting about a month before she died. Neither of them could stand being around when her focus wasn’t on them or their needs. It was fine by me because they were about as useful as a bump on a pickle and I was busy caring for Mama, making meals, washing laundry and trying to keep the house a little cleaned up. With them gone there were fewer dishes and less laundry to wash. I could focus on what had to be done.

Before Mama had gotten so terribly sick that she couldn’t be left alone, I went to town on my own to buy groceries and her prescriptions. On those trips I stopped by the Goodwill thrift store. It amazes me the things people will donate for the charity stores to sell. How is it that people buy good quality things only to give them away? I picked up an almost new navy blue North Face backpack with a leather front pocket, top flap and bed roll straps at the bottom. Since my heavy coat was less than serviceable, I bought a navy LL Bean barn coat that had tartan plaid lining and hood and plenty of room if I need wear a heavy sweater underneath. On another visit to the store I couldn’t believe my good luck when I found a pair of fleece lined leather hiking boots in my size and they had never been worn! I already had a good enough sleeping bag and two thermos bottles to take along. I gathered things I wanted to take and carefully stored them with the box in the cupboard in Mama’s sewing room upstairs. I still had a little over three hundred dollars from Mama’s saved money to fund my escape when the time was right.

Mama’s funeral service was a very small. She hated funeral homes and viewings ... “Nothing but a bunch of people standing around talking about nothing important. The friends and family I care about can see me while I’m alive and that’s the way I want them to remember me.” I thought maybe my father and brother, Jake, would show up before the end but, typical for them, they didn’t. The funeral wasn’t about them, and the last we had heard of them was when Sheriff Spence came searching for them after a drunken brawl in town. Mama’s parents had passed years ago so there was no family to speak of except for her older cousin Mabel. She came about a week before Mama passed and stayed until the end. I had been to my grandmother’s funeral and remember being appalled at folks who said, “Doesn’t she look like herself?” I thought, “No! Grandma did not look like herself!” I admit, Mama did look more at peace than she had for a long time. The etchings on her face from constant pain were gone but she didn’t look anything at all like the vibrant, energetic woman I knew... Lord, I missed her sweet voice as she sang or hummed while doing chores.

A local United Methodist minister said a few kind words at the graveside service. A few vendors who knew Mama and me from the market attended. My high school English teacher and guidance counselor came to stand with me. After the service we went back to the house. Mama’s Cousin Mabel served coffee and homemade cookies she had brought. My teacher and counselor stayed for a while but they, and the market vendors, had to get back to their work. Before Cousin Mabel left she gave me a photograph of her and Mama when they were young; “I thought you might like to have this.” she said and looked at me. “You favor your mother. I look at you and see her at your age. Lord, we had a lot of big dreams back then.” Just before she left I offered Cousin Mabel one of Mama’s quilts, “I know Mama would want you to have this to keep you as warm as our memories of her.”

Later that night, after everyone was gone, I knew there wasn’t much point in me staying any longer than I had to. Mama was the one who made this a home and without her here it didn’t feel like home anymore. It was a lonesome place and time for me; and there was nothing to hold me here now. I woke up the next morning ready to go find my own life. I planned to go to Frostburg, find work and look for a place to stay. I thought perhaps I could take classes at the state college until I decided what career might suit me. I had admired several of my teachers in elementary and high school so I suspected I might like teaching. In addition to clothing I needed, I took the picture Cousin Mabel gave me and one of the last smocked dress Mama started but never finished. I didn’t forget the needles, scissors and thread. If I ever had a daughter I would finish the dress and she would have something from her grandmother.

I woke well before sunrise on Thursday morning; hardboiled the last of the eggs, made a couple bologna and cheese sandwiches, packed the rest of the deer jerky and oat crisp bread. I filled my water bottles and put them in the mesh bags on the sides of the back pack. My sleeping bag fit on the leather straps on the bottom of the pack and I took the quilt Mama made from my bed, rolled it and tied it to the top of the pack. I made one last trip through the house to store a few final memories of the only home I had ever known. I took mental snapshots of the evidence of Mama’s care in every room; the flowered sheets she made into curtains for the bedroom windows, the slip covers on the sofa and chairs, the quilted throws, the dried lavender in mason jars on the kitchen windowsill and the rag rug below the sink that hid the cracked, worn linoleum. All of these things that she did to try to brighten up our little home felt so very special to me. Without Mama here it just wasn’t the same anymore. In a way I was sorry to leave but comforted by my memories of her to keep me company on my journey through life. Even today I can think back on her sewing room and can see fabric dust floating in the shafts of light from the window, smell the faint scent of lavender and hear the rhythmic hum of her Singer treadle sewing machine and her melodic alto voice as she sang while she worked I vowed I will try to be more like her in the ways that would please her, to be strong and yet forgiving faults of others. I think the lesson she most wanted to instill in me was that I should be strong enough to believe in myself and soft enough to avoid becoming hardhearted towards others who struggled in life.